There is no single book on medieval and early modern Russia and Ukraine that I would consider appropriate as a text for this course. However, there is one survey volume covering much of the period which is reliable for reference and is available in paperback: Janet Martin, Medieval Russia 980-1584 (Cambridge University Press). It is heavily focussed on details of political history and correspondingly light on cultural subjects. Since it begins in the time of Prince Vladimir, there is really no coverage of many of the issues which are the focus of the early chapters of Franklin and Shepard; Martin's book ends with the death of Tsar Ivan IV (the "Terrible").
Most of the standard general textbook histories of Russia are not written by specialists on the early period and thus tend to be weak on that area. There is one new collectively-authored text, which has some good survey chapters that are up-to-date and well-informed: Gregory Freeze, ed., Russia: A History (Oxford UP). The chapter on Muscovy by Nancy Kollmann is a brilliant synthesis.
There are at least two good, recent general survey histories of Ukraine, which would provide a Ukrainian perspective on these early centuries we cover: Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, 2nd ed. (Toronto, 1993); Paul Robert Magocsi, A History of Ukraine (Seattle, 1996). Both are available in paperback.
For terminology, one can consult Sergei Pushkarev, comp. Dictionary Russian Historical Terms from the Eleventh Century to 1917.
The most accessible historical encyclopedia with extensive coverage of material relevant to this course is the Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History. It is somewhat uneven in quality, although the later volumes tend to have a stronger group of contributors.
As anyone who has surfed the web knows, finding the good stuff is often difficult, given the fact that most of what is out there is something else. In fact we are rather badly served on the web when it comes to materials for a course with our subject, which is one reason so much of what you are using is being created or digitized specifically for this course. Probably the most comprehensive site for Russia/East Europe-related material of any type is the REES Web, updated regularly at the University of Pittsburgh. It can be searched by keyword.
The best guide to web-based resources for medieval history in general is the Internet Medieval Sourcebook. It does have a few links to material relevant for this course and somewhat more material for Byzantium. The focus is, however, on the medieval West, which so far is much better served by those who have been digitizing material. Specifically for Medieval and Early Modern Russia and Ukraine, see my pages, although there is significant overlap between them and what is already linked to the web site for this course.
For most searches of library resources, one can start with the UW Libraries on-line catalogue, within which it can be especially helpful to go to the subject page for the social sciences and via that to History. There are various subheadings, e.g., for Medieval History.
A number of the sources you will be reading here have been linked from a Russian History site at the University of Durham in the U.K. It includes documents and some helpful chronologies (which, I should note, I have not checked for accuracy). Several of the Russian law texts that have been made available electronically by Daniel Kaiser are included in your readings for the course, but he has a few others that have not been required.
For materials on art, there are various resources. Some have extended and good commentary; others are valuable mainly for the pictures. There are some good pages providing an overview at Boguslawski's Russian Painting. For images of icons, see Mitrevski's Icons. Many of the architecture/city slides you will see during the quarter can be found in the Cities/Buildings Database, based at UW. There are two versions of the archive, the newer searchable one (linked here) being the site to which new material is being added all the time.
You might find it of interest to check on Russian city sites, at least some of which have fairly substantial material in English. The connection to the Russian servers tends to be slow though. The one for Novgorod is particularly rich. It has a lot on architecture, a good overview of icon painting, and an amazingly large collection just of pictures of the icons.
© 2003 Daniel C. Waugh. Last updated September 25, 2003.