Vasily O. Kliuchevsky ( 1841-1911) was the most eminent Russian
historian of his day--a pathbreaking scholar, a spellbinding lecturer,
an engaging stylist, and a great synthesizer whose works have stood
the test of time. He was a long-time professor of Russian history at
Moscow University before his death. His lectures, published as A
Course in Russian History, have exerted a powerful influence on
Russia's conception of its national history, not only before 1917 but in
the Soviet period and to the present day. This is the first reliable
translation of the section of the Course on Catherine the Great.

Marshall S. Shatz is Professor of History at the University of Massa-
chusetts at Boston. He is the author of Soviet Dissent in Historical
Perspective ( 1980) and Jan Waclaw Machajski: A Radical Critic of the
Russian Intelligentsia and Socialism ( 1989). He has also edited and
translated a number of works on Russian intellectual history, including
(with Judith E. Zimmerman) Vekhi (Landmarks), published by M.E.
Sharpe in 1994.

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