This crucial period in Russia's history has, up until now, been neglected by historians, but here Brian L. Davies' study provides an essential insight into the emergence of Russia as a great power.

For nearly three centuries, Russia vied with the Crimean Khanate, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire for mastery of the Ukraine and the fertile steppes above the Black Sea, a region of great strategic and economic importance - arguably the pivot of Eurasia at the time.

The long campaign took a great toll upon Russia's population, economy and institutions, and...

State, Power and Community in Early Modern Russia is a vivid reconstruction of life in one of the garrison towns built on Muscovy's southern steppe frontier in the early Seventeenth-century to defend against Tatar raids. It focuses on how the colonization process shaped power relations in a particular southern garrison community, both at the village level, within the land commune, and at the district level, between the general garrison community and the appointed officials representing state authority.