An Outline of Russian History

Georgy Vernadsky (1887–1973) was a professor, one of the founders of the Eurasianist school, and a Russian historian who spent most of his life in exile. His book “Sketch of Russian History” was first published in 1927 and became, in essence, the foundation on which all subsequent Eurasianists built their theories—from Vernadsky himself to Lev Gumilev. The book covers a huge period of Eurasian history, from the Huns to the Bolsheviks, but for the most part it is devoted to the history of the Russian people, which, in the author’s view, is “the gradual mastering by the Russian people of their land of development—Eurasia.”

The process of forming the Russian Empire across the vast spaces of Eurasia is presented by the author as absolutely natural from the standpoint of geographic, ethnocultural, and geopolitical prerequisites. The author shows how, over many centuries and at the cost of the greatest strain of forces, the Russian people achieved the political unification of enormous territories from the Baltic to the Pacific and the consolidation of many tribes and peoples into a single Russian state.