LECTURE # 1

Introduction to the course. The important facts & figures you have to know about Russia. Studying the map of Russia. Goal settings & educational objectives of our course. Russia and some myths of Russian History. The problem of East & West in Russian history. The most Famous Russian historians: N. Karamzin, S. Soloviev, V. Kluchevskii.

Russia''s Physical and Social Infrastructure: Implications for Future Development
December 2000
This seminar series was sponsored by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the US Department of State. The NIC routinely sponsors unclassified conferences with outside experts to gain knowledge and insight and to sharpen the level of analysis and debate on critical issues. The views expressed are those of individuals and do not represent official US intelligence or policy posistions.

Executive Summary
Introduction
During the past two years, the National Intelligence Council and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the US Department of State sponsored a working group and four seminars with experts from outside the Intelligence Community to examine the impact of societal and infrastructural factors on Russia''s future over the next two decades. The factors identified--demography, health, intellectual capital, and physical infrastructure--all pose great challenges to Russia. The purpose of the project was to begin to think through in systematic fashion the difficulties and opportunities confronting Russia''s leadership in these four specific areas.
Key questions with which participants grappled included: What is the extent of the challenge in each of these areas? What are the trends, and to what extent are the outcomes of these trends over the next 20 years already determined? What are the key drivers that can influence these trends? When could government policy intervention or outside assistance be expected to have payoff, and how costly would it be? Is there a logical sequence of priorities for attention? What are the implications of alternate paths?
This report consists of three substantive sections. This Executive Summary is the first; it captures the main findings of the presentations and discussions at the seminars. The second is an essay by Marcus Noland, Senior Fellow at the Institute of International Economics and project adviser, who explores these themes in greater detail. The third section contains brief summaries of the papers presented at the seminars. The agendas of the seminars and lists of speakers follow in the appendixes.

Key Findings
Most of the challenges confronting Russia in the spheres of social and physical infrastructure are not unique. It is the confluence of so many challenges all at once--initiated by the abnormal existence and then the breakup of the Soviet Union, intensified by the stormy transition in Russia over the past decade, and then exacerbated by the collapse of the ruble in August 1998--that makes the Russian case extreme.

Demographic Trends
Experts noted that demography is one of the most reliable factors that can be used to make projections about a specific country. Demographics can help answer some narrow questions--such as likely pension burdens--and can sometimes be helpful with "middle-gauge" questions, such as future health care costs or housing markets. Demographics generally are not reliable or insightful for other questions, such as homicide rates or generational conflict. In Russia''s case the unique nature of the demise of the Soviet empire may place Russia outside the normal range of historical experience, moreover, and limit the predictive value of demographics.
Experts agreed that the combination of high Russian mortality rates and low birth rates will affect Russia profoundly in the coming decades.
High mortality rates are affecting all segments of the population. Russian statistics show that by 1999 life expectancy for men had fallen to 59.8 years, from a high of 64.3 in 1966 and to 72.2, from 74.2 in 1990 for women. The current mortality figures do not yet reflect the impact of the spread of AIDS and the rise in number of cases of infectious disease, including those of multiple drug-resistant tuberculosis.
The causes of early mortality are numerous, and include high rates of suicide, childhood injuries, alcoholism, infectious diseases, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Some trends result from the reduction of the state''s involvement and the absence of private structures to replace it, especially investment in medical technologies and drugs. Many health problems are the result of a health care focus on communicable diseases and nutrition without corresponding attention to prevention of chronic diseases. Experts disagreed as to whether economic improvement--which could bring enhanced nutrition, better water supply, and a reduction in crowded living conditions--would be sufficient to reverse negative health and demographic trends.
Russia is following the general European downward trend with regard to fertility. Overall, Russia''s total fertility rate stands at 1.17, and some believe that it can reach as low as 1.0--well below replacement level of 2.14. All agreed that it will not rise higher than 1.5 over the next 20 years. Russia''s abortion rate remains extremely high, and noted demographer Murray Feshbach claims that thirty percent of Russian women of childbearing age are infertile.
Internally, population growth among Islamic peoples of Russia, many concentrated in Russia''s south, continues to outpace that of ethnic Russians, while Northern and Far Eastern regions are slowly being depopulated as state-owned industries close and people move to European Russia. As a factor in population growth, immigration has outweighed emigration since the breakup of the former Soviet Union; barring civil wars or other disasters in the near abroad, it has probably peaked.
By 2020, Russia''s population is most likely to be smaller--according to Feshbach, it is very likely to decline from 146 million to 130 million in this timeframe--and with a higher median age than today''s. Russia''s State Committee for Statistics recently forecast that the population will shrink to 134 million by 2015. As Russia''s population ages, an increase in the dependency ratio is certain: by 2015 the ratio will be just four workers for every three nonworkers, with a dramatic shift among the nonworking population toward the elderly. The aging of the population and the increase in the dependency ratio suggest that domestic public and private capital available to refinance new investments may decline over the next two decades, underscoring and increasing the importance of creating the necessary conditions to attract investment from abroad.
Among Russia''s labor force, unemployment as a result of economic decline has hit the female work force disproportionately. This increasingly unused resource could compensate for Russia''s dwindling number of males, should a Russian economic recovery require additional labor.
Seminar participants saw both positive and negative implications of Russia''s declining population.
A smaller, younger population means fewer nonworkers to support and a reduced demand for daycare and health care. At the same time, however, Russia will have to go through its structural transition in the context of an aging, and likely less productive, population. A smaller work force could result in a labor shortage, even if the potential female labor force were fully employed.
From a military manpower perspective, Russia--which already lost much of its mobilization base with the independence of the former Soviet republics--will find it increasingly difficult to generate and deploy the large conventional forces it has historically relied upon to defend its borders. The manpower shortage will contribute to Russia''s increasing reliance on its nuclear deterrent.
Internal migration will result in changing regional dynamics and possibly in the concentration of the Russian population into a smaller number of regions. The population of some regions, such as the Far North, will most likely decline further as the Russian Government no longer continues to bear the high cost of maintaining infrastructure in areas where the economic base is not largely self sustaining. In the increasingly depopulated Far East, Moscow''s concern about the security implications of Chinese in-migration will heighten.

Health Trends
Another factor influencing Russia''s future demographic path for the worse--possibly making today''s grim predictions appear optimistic--is the Russian health crisis. Seminar participants agreed that the list of Russia''s health woes is extensive: continuing high rates of alcohol abuse with a resulting abundance of new fetal alcohol syndrome cases; pharmaceutical shortages; poor reproductive health and continuing high rates of abortion; rising rates of infertility; high rates of sexually transmitted diseases; cardiovascular diseases; anemia; poisoning from heavy metals and other toxic materials; environmentally associated cancers; high rates of injury; and malnutrition. One speaker pointed to the toll on health resulting from growing inequality in Russian society and associated stress, deprivation, and breakdown in social cohesion; another, however, warned of the methodological difficulty of differentiating causality from correlation in assessing the root of some health problems.
Experts noted that infectious diseases with the potential to spread beyond Russia''s borders are growing rapidly.
The rate of infection of tuberculosis has grown from 24 new cases per 100,000 in 1990 to 83 in 1998--as compared to 6.8 per 100,000 in the United States. Shortage of medicines and inadequate or outmoded standards of care result in antibiotic treatments of shorter-than-necessary duration and the increasing incidence of multiple drug-resistant strains.
While registered cases of HIV have grown to some 53,000, estimates by Russian experts of the real incidence range from 10 to 100 times as many.
Russia''s medical establishment is badly positioned to cope with the challenges it faces. It is still overcentralized, overspecialized, hierarchical, and strongly shaped by the beliefs and practices of the Soviet era. Health expenditures are treated as a residual claimant on the Russian budget, a problem compounded by the inefficiency of Russian health care delivery. "Therapeutic anarchy" and a reliance on what one speaker euphemistically called "non-evidentiary-based medicine" are widespread. Most key decisionmakers in Russian medicine have strongly resisted change and Western advice, even when practitioners accepted such advice, they have lacked the organizational capacity and resources to carry through on treatments, as in the case of tuberculosis.
Russia''s economic crisis has exacerbated many of the health problems. Shortage of resources has led to cuts in health spending and low salaries only irregularly paid to health-care workers, whose morale has plummeted. Russia''s experiment with a medical insurance scheme has met with uneven success to date, although it has succeeded in keeping the decline in health expenditures to a lower rate than that experienced by other sectors such as education and culture. In addition, frequent bureaucratic shakeups have resulted in eight different health ministers since 1995, making consistent policy difficult to sustain.
A few seminar participants thought that a new generation of medical leaders will be more open to change. The majority, however, appeared unconvinced that an attitudinal shift could take place with sufficient magnitude and speed to prevent a serious deterioration in Russia''s already abysmal health picture.
Finally, experts agreed that the trends in Russian health are of significance not simply for their negative demographic ramifications, but also for their probable strong negative impact on the future productivity of Russia''s work force and its overall quality of life.

Trends in Intellectual Capital
Experts agreed that Russian intellectual capital is under a high degree of stress.
Many contended that the bureaucracies responsible for its promotion--the Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Education, etc.--are highly resistant to much-needed reform.
Russia''s schools have deteriorated significantly, and many lack teachers in basic subject areas, especially in the poorer regions.
Russia''s science and technology base--greatly shrunken from the oversized Soviet complex but not disproportionate to Russia''s present size--is inadequately funded and not attracting sufficient new talent.
Russia has been losing significant expertise to a "brain drain" for over a decade.
Significant recent growth in some forms of education will prove critical to Russia''s emerging market economy. Enrollment in newly created business schools and management training courses is thriving and could result in significant future payoff. In addition, the growth of the Internet and global communications has provided new opportunities for more effectively organizing education across Russia''s wide expanses as well as for absorbing knowledge from abroad. Recent tightening of controls over information flows--such as media, publications, and computer mail--raise questions, however, about Russia''s future ability to benefit from greater interchange with other countries.
Russia''s ability to recover from the damage to its intellectual capital during the last decade will play a key role in its ability to compete in future world markets. Given that the majority of Russians who will be in the labor force for the next two decades have already received their formal education or will soon do so, many changes in educational policy today are likely to bear fruit only at a later date. Some experts argue, however, that the educational system is not a leading indicator of change and not the place to start. Globalization presents other paths to technological success through adaptation rather than innovation, and improvements in education tend to follow naturally upon economic growth.

Trends in Physical Infrastructure
Russia''s physical infrastructure reflects the legacy of Soviet-era priorities and relative Soviet autarky, ensuring that the transition to a new, more globalized economy will be difficult. Although assessments vary, many experts believe that a large proportion of Russian capital stock will have to be written off over the next decade. Investments have been made in industries in which Russia is unlikely to ever be internationally competitive, either because of poor quality or because the capital stock embodies technologies incompatible with international standards. Considerable capital has been invested in remote regions where neither the government nor private industry is likely to provide funds for upkeep or modernization. Demonetization, lack of institutional capacity, and inadequate property rights protection discourage investment in both public and private spheres.
The picture is mixed, however. In industry, some studies, such as that by McKinsey Associates, have found the potential for productivity improvement in many sectors. In housing, privatization appears to have given a boost to new construction, although the 1998 financial crisis interrupted this trend. In the transport sector, the extensive shakeout of Soviet-era bureaucracies, enterprises, and infrastructure that has taken place and is still occurring was necessary, but the potential for new companies to find new niches also seems high, if economic recovery continues.

Conclusions
Participants found that while the impact of certain trends, such as worsening demographics, is largely unavoidable for the next two decades, the Russian Government does have the capability, if not yet the demonstrated determination, to reverse or slow other negative trends in this timeframe. In some cases, timely action is required to prevent long-term adverse consequences. For instance, public policy decisions and directed resource flows could make a difference in education and health. Regional policy--from the center or decided locally--can also have great impact, and, together with other factors such as geography and resource wealth, could serve as a magnet to concentrate Russia''s population into a smaller number of "winner" regions. And as with most other problems in Russia, the new leadership''s ability to establish a predictable legal and fiscal environment--essential for ensuring economic stability, attracting private investment, and ultimately, stimulating economic growth--would increase Russia''s ability to reverse many of these negative trends.

From : http://www.fas.org/irp/nic/russia.html

FIVE GREAT RUSSIAN HISTORIANS

Vasily Tatishchev
Vasily Nikitich Tatishchev (1686-1750) was a prominent Russian statesman, and ethnographer, best remembered as the author of the first full-scale Russian history. Throughout this work, he entertains his favourite idea that autocracy is the perfect form of government for Russia.

Life
A male-line descendant of the 9th-century prince Rurik, Tatischev was born near Pskov on April 19, 1686. Having graduated from the Engineering school in Moscow, he took part in the 1700-1721 Great Northern War with Sweden. In the service of Peter the Great he gained a prominent post in the Foreign Office, which he used to oppose the policies of the Supreme Privy Council and support Anna''s ascension to the Russian throne in 1730.
He was entrusted by Anna with a lucrative office of the management of Ural factories. At that post he founded the cities of Perm and Yekaterinburg, which have since grown into the veritable capitals of Ural. A monument to him was opened in Perm in 2003. Tatischev finished his official career as a governor of Astrakhan (1741-44). He died at the Boldino estate near Moscow on July 15, 1750.

Works
Having retired from active service, the elderly statesman dedicated himself to scholarly pursuits. Feeling that the Russian historiography had been neglected, he discovered and published several legal monuments of great interest, e.g., Russkaya Pravda and Sudebnik of 1550. His magnum opus was the first sketch of Russian history, entitled Russian History Dating Back to the Most Ancient Times and published in 5 volumes after his death. He also compiled the first encyclopedic dictionary of the Russian language.
Scientific merits of Tatischev''s work have been disputed even in the 18th century. It is true that he used some chronicles that have since been lost, but most of them (notably the Ioachim Chronicle) were of dubious authenticity. It is also true that he could never tell a genuine work from a fake, and some incidents inserted in his history could have been products of his own fancy. Only recently some prominent historians have demonstrated that Tatischev''s sources may actually be relied on.

References
Popov N.: Tatischev and His Time. Moscow, 1861.
Deutch G. M.: Vasily Nikitich Tatischev. Sverdlovsk, 1962.
Peshtich S. L.: Russian historiography of the 18th century, vol. 1-2. Leningrad, 1961, 1965.

Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin
Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin (December 1, 1766--1826) a Russian author credited with reforming the Russian literary language. He is best remembered for his History of the Russian State, a 12-volume national history modelled after the works of Gibbon.

Early life
Karamzin was born at the village of Mikhailovka, in the government of Orenburg on the 1st of December (old style) 1765. His father was an officer in the Russian army. He was sent to Moscow to study under Professor Schaden, whence he afterwards removed to St Petersburg, where he made the acquaintance of Dmitriev, a Russian poet of some merit, and occupied himself with translating essays by foreign writers into his native language. After residing some time at St Petersburg, he went to Simbirsk, where he lived in retirement till induced to revisit Moscow. There, finding himself in the midst of the society of learned men, he again betook himself to literary work.
In 1789 he resolved to travel, and visited Germany, France, Switzerland and England. On his return he published his Letters of a Russian Traveller, which met with great success. These letters, modelled after Sterne''s Sentimental Journey, were first printed in the Moscow Journal, which he edited, but were afterwards collected and issued in six volumes (1797-1801). In the same periodical Karamzin also published translations from French, and some original stories, among which may be mentioned Poor Liza and Natalia the Boyar''s Daughter. These stories introduced Russian readers to sentimentalism, and Karamzin was hailed as "a Russian Sterne".

Karamzin as a writer
In 1794 he abandoned his literary journal, and published a miscellany in two volumes, entitled Aglaia, in which appeared, among other things, The Island of Bornholm and Ilia Mourometz, a story based upon the adventures of the well-known hero of many a Russian legend. In 1797-1799 he issued another miscellany or poetical almanac, The Aonides, in conjunction with Derzhavin and Dmitriev. In 1798 he compiled The Pantheon, a collection of pieces from the works of the most celebrated authors ancient and modern, translated into Russian. Many of his lighter productions were subsequently printed by him in a nice volume entitled My Trifles. Admired by Alexander Pushkin and Vladimir Nabokov, the style of his writings is elegant and flowing, modelled rather upon the easy sentences of the French prose writers than the long periodical paragraphs of the old Slavonic school.
In 1802 and 1803 Karamzin edited the journal the European Messenger. It was not until after the publication of this work that he realized where his strength lay, and commenced his History of the Russian State. In order to accomplish the task, he secluded himself for two years; and, on the cause of his retirement becoming known to the emperor Alexander, Karamzin was invited to Tver, where he read to the empero1 the first eight volumes of his history. In 1816 he removed to St Petersburg, where he spent the happiest days of his life, enjoying the favour of Alexander, and submitting to him the sheets of his great work, which the emperor read over with him in the gardens of the palace of Tsarskoe Selo. He did not, however, live to carry his work further than the eleventh volume, terminating it at the accession of Michael Romanov in 1613. He died on the 22nd of May (old style) 1826, in the Taurida palace. A monument was erected to his memory at Simbirsk in 1845.

Karamzin as an historian
As an historian Karamzin has deservedly a very high reputation. Till the appearance of his work little had been done in this direction in Russia. The preceding attempt of Tatishchev was merely a rough sketch, inelegant in style, and without the true spirit of criticism. Karamzin was most industrious in accumulating materials, and the notes to his volumes are mines of curious information. Perhaps Karamzin may justly be censured for the false gloss and romantic air thrown over the early Russian annals; in this respect he reminds us of Sir Walter Scott, whose writings were at this time creating a great sensation throughout Europe, and probably had their influence upon him.
Karamzin appears openly as the panegyrist of the autocracy; indeed, his work has been styled the Epic of Despotism. He does not hesitate to avow his admiration of Ivan the Terrible, and considers him and his grandfather Ivan III as the architects of Russian greatness, a glory which in his earlier writings, perhaps at that time more under the influence of Western ideas, he had assigned to Peter the Great. In the battle-pieces we find considerable powers, of description; and the characters of many of the chief personages in the Russian annals are drawn in firm and bold lines. As a critic Karamzin was of great service to his country; in fact he may be regarded as the founder of the review and essay (in the Western style) among the Russians.
Also, Karamzin is sometimes considered to be a founding father of the Russian conservatism. Upon appointing him a state historian, Alexander I highly valued Karamzin''s advice on political matters. His conservative views were clearly expounded in The Memoir on Old and New Russia, written for Alexander I in 1812. This scathing attack on reforms proposed by Mikhail Speransky was to become a cornerstone of official ideology of imperial Russia for years to come.

One instance of Karamzin''s verse
Chto nasha zhizn? - roman. Kto avtor? - anonim.
Chitaem po skladam, smeyomsya, plachem... spim.
What is our life? - a novel. Who''s its author? - Anonymous.
We spell it out falteringly, laugh, weep... and fall asleep.

Further reading
Yu. M. Lotman. Sotvorenie Karamzina. Moscow: Kniga Publishers, 1987.

Nikolay Kostomarov
Nikolai Ivanovich Kostomarov (Russian: Николай Иванович Костомаров; Ukrainian: Mykola Ivanovych Kostomarov) (May 16, 1817, vil. Yurasovka, Voronezh Guberniya, Russia - April 19, 1885, Saint Petersburg, Russia), of mixed Ukrainian and Russian origin, is one of the most distinguished Russian and Ukrainian historians, a Professor of History at the Kiev University and later at the St. Petersburg University, an author of many books, including his famous biography of the seventeenth century Ukrainian Cossack Hetman, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, and his fundamental 3-volume "Russian History in Biographies of its main figures" ("Русская история в жизнеописаниях её главнейших деятелей").
As a historian, Kostomarov''s writings reflected the romantic trends of his time. He was an advocate of the use of ethnography and folksong by historians, and claimed to be able to discern the "spirit" of the people, including "national spirit", by this method. On the basis of their folksongs and history, he claimed that the peoples of what he called Northern or Great Rus'' on one hand and Southern or Little Rus'' on the other (today''s Russians and Ukrainians, respectively) differed in character and formed two separate "nationalities". In his famous essay "Two Russian Nationalities" ("Две русские народности"), a landmark in the history of Ukrainian national thought, he propagated what some consider to be the stereotypes of Russians inclined towards autocracy, collectivism, and state-building, and Ukrainians inclined towards liberty, poetry, and individualism.
In his various historical writings, Kostomarov was always very positive about Kievan Rus'', about what he considered to be its veche system of popular assemblies, and the later Zaporozhian Cossack brotherhood, which he believed in part was an heir to this system. By contrast, he was always very critical of the old Muscovite autocracy and its leaders. In fact, he gained some popular notoriety in his day by doubting the story of Ivan Susanin, a legendary martyr hero viewed a savior of Muscovy.
Kostomarov was a very religious man and a devout adherent of the Orthodox Church. He was also active in cultural politics in the Russian Empire being a proponent for a more democratic and more decentralized political system. He was a major personality in the Ukrainian national awakening, a friend of the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, a defender of the Ukrainian language in literature and in the schools, and a proponent of a democratic form of Pan-Slavism, a popular movement in a certain part of the progressive intelligentsia of his time. In 1840s he founded a secret political organization called the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Kiev (for which he suffered arrest, imprisonment, and exile), and through the 1860s to the 1880s, he continued to promote the ideas of federalism and populism in Ukrainian and Russian historical thought. He had a profound influence on later Ukrainian historians such as Volodymyr Antonovych and Mykhailo Hrushevsky.

References
Mykola Kostomarov, "Two Russian Nationalities" (exerpts), and "A Letter to the Editor of Kolokol," in Towards an Intellectual History of Ukraine: An Anthology of Ukrainian Thought from 1710 to 1995, ed. Ralph Lindheim and George S. N. Luckyj (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), pp.122-45. Also available online in Russian;
Nikolay Kostomarov, "Russian History in Biographies of its main figures", in Russian, available online;
Thomas M. Prymak, Mykola Kostomarov: A Biography (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), ISBN 0802007589.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolay_Kostomarov"

Sergey Solovyov
Sergey Mikhaylovich Solovyov (Soloviev, Solovyev) (May 17 (May 5 (O.S.) 1820 — April 16 (April 4, (O.S.)), 1879) was one of the greatest Russian historians whose influence on the next generation of Russian historians (Vasily Klyuchevsky, Dmitry Ilovaisky, Sergey Platonov) was paramount. His son Vladimir Solovyov was one of the most influential Russian philosophers.

Life and works
Solovyov studied in the Moscow University under Timofey Granovsky and travelled in Europe as a tutor of Count Stroganov''s children until 1844. The following year he joined the staff of the Moscow University, where he rose to the dean''s position (1871-77). He also administrated the Kremlin Armoury and acted as tutor to the future Alexander III of Russia.
Solovyov''s magnum opus was the History of Russia from the Earliest Times, totally unprecedented in its scope and depth. From 1851 until his death, he published 29 volumes of this work. Among his other books, the History of Poland''s Downfall (1863) and the Public Readings on Peter the Great (1872) were probably the most popular.

Views and influence
Solovyov appreciated Russia''s position as the outpost of Christianity in the East. In his opinion, the Russian statehood resulted from a "natural and necessary development" of numerous political and social forces, which he attempted to trace. He took particular interest in the Time of Troubles and Peter the Great''s reforms, which he described as temporary diseases of the organism of Russian state.
In the words of the 2004 Encyclopedia Britannica, his History "wove a vast body of data into a unified and orderly whole that provided an exceptionally powerful and vivid picture of Russia''s political development over the centuries. The work inaugurated a new era in Russian scholarship with its depiction of Russia as evolving through organic and rational processes from a primitive, family-based society into a centralized, autocratic state".

Vasily Klyuchevsky
Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky (January 16, 1841 - May 12, 1911) dominated the Russian historiography at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. He is still regarded as one of three most reputable Russian historians, alongside Nikolay Karamzin and Sergey Solovyov.
A village priest''s son, Klyuchevsky studied in the Moscow University under Sergey Solovyov, to whose chair he succeeded in 1879. His first important publications were an article on economic activities of the Solovetsky Monastery near Belozersk (1867) and a thesis on medieval Russian hagiography (1871).
Kluchevsky was the first historian to shift attention from political and social issues to geographical and economical forces and agencies. He was particularly interested in the process of Russian peaceful colonisation of Europe, Siberia, and Far East. In 1882, he published his landmark study of the Boyar Duma, whereby he asserted his view of state as a result of collaboration of diverse classes of society.
In 1889, Klyuchevsky was elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences. Although his lectures were highly popular, he published but a handful of biographies of "representative men", including Andrei Kurbsky, Afanasy Ordin-Nashchokin, Feodor Rtishchev, Vasily Galitzine, and Nikolay Novikov.
The last decade of his life was spent preparing the printed version of his lectures. He also became interested in politics, and joined the Constitutional Democratic party.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Klyuchevsky"