Волга. История главной реки России

by Janet M. Hartley, Александр Коробейников (Translator)

Волга не нуждается в представлении. Но если нужно о ней напомнить, то вот лишь немногое из того, что неразрывно связывает ее с Россией:
- История: от хазар и Золотой Орды до походов Ивана Грозного и Сталинградской битвы. От крестьянских войн Разина и Пугачева до Гражданской и депортации народов.
- Экономика: от нижегородской ярмарки до астраханских торговых подворий армян, персов и индийцев.
- Технологии: от бурлаков и пароходов до каскада ГЭС.

Почти у каждого свои ассоциации с Волгой, но какими бы они не были, она — один из тех символов страны, без которого Россию абсолютно невозможно представить.

Genres: History, Russia, Nonfiction, Russian History, Geography, European History

560 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2023

Reviews

[Max Berendsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Truly a delightful read. A book which provides the reader with a unique knowledge on a river which is so central to the Russian identity, but which has been overlooked so often in books which deal with Russian history more generally.

The perspectives and historical information provided in the book are very original and enlightening for the (Western) reader. For example Hartley exposes the history behind the Russification process of the Volga lands and provides the reader with a treasure of knowledge on the history and anthropology of the Tatars, Chuvash, Mari and other nations which inhabited the region before the Russians arrived.

Furthermore the book contains rich historical descriptions of the cities along the Volga, as well as a host of enriching eyewitness accounts of the many wars, conquests, conversions and other historical developments which have made lands surrounding the Volga what they are today.

For some constructive criticism: The book could have been edited a bit better. At certain points accounts of the region's history read a bit chaotically due to a lack of chronological retelling of historical events. Hartley also tends to repeat herself a lot when providing the reader with historical facts, such as the reasons for the renaming of cities. This can be a bit annoying to the reader at certain moments.

But all in all "The Volga: A History of Russia's Greatest River" has been a really fascinating and enlightening read and I would recommend everyone with an interest in Russia/Russian history to read it!

[Gisela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and easy to read. To suggest the history of this great river is rich is an understatement. It's history: from the 7th Century: the races: the religions: the cultures: it's a wonderful read.

[The Sassy Bookworm · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been reading this one forever, it seems. And that isn't a reflection of how good the book is. Because it is actually a very well researched and interesting look at the Volga river. It's just quite hefty in its scope, but definitely worth the read. Especially if you are a history buff!

Side Note: I LOVE this cover!

**Arc Via NetGalley**

[Laurie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really more of a 3.5. Excellent information, rather plodding prose. I had hoped that the author had traveled down the Volga and shared personal insights but it wasn't a travelogue. Worthwhile reading if you are interested in this area of Eurasia.

[Davvybrookbook · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate to rate ‘good’ informative books three stars, but alas, for me it is a rating of the writing quality, the beauty of language, the structure of ideas. This is a ‘solid’ well-written history of Europe’s longest and ‘greatest’ river — the Volga (and in turn of the geo-historical area of the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, though no proto-history is presented). I knew neither of these two previous facts/claims before reading, and very very little about the diversity, rich history, modern development of Russia’s first frontier. The parallels to American history and the opening of the West provide false mirror to understand the openness and vastness of the Volga watershed.

The upper watershed is core to what we think of Russia as near to Moscow. Moscow’s Moskva River is a tributary flowing to the Oka River and onto the Volga. But the middle and lower Volga sections centered on Nizhniy Novograd, Kazan, Ulyanovsk (Simbirsk), Samara, Saratov, Volgagrad (Tsaritsyn/Stalingrad) and Astakhan present a great expansion on previous understanding of modern Central Asian history, i.e. reading Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. The particular insight into non-Russian minorities fills gaps in the people and migrations that have occurred across this ancient landscape: the Turkic Kazan Tatars, Bashkirs and Chuvashes; and the Finno-Urgic Mordvins, Ugmurts, Karelians, and Mari. This region is nearing the end of the Western Steppe. West of the Volga is fertile and pastoral with rolling hills. East is the beginning of the dry arid steppe, open and sparsely settled, as people were historically nomadic. The river empties into the Caspian Sea at Astrakhan, a cosmopolitan Muslim and Asiatic city before expansion beyond the Urals and into Siberia.

I am still unraveling all the threads to this history. I altogether enjoyed learning about the region if feeling but a little struggle to push through the chapters. I learned of some great art, Ilia Repin’s Barge Haulers on the Volga, and also 1000-page novels (Stalingrad, Life and Fate) by Vasily Grossman, so I have some next interests to build upon.

[Prayash Giria · Rating 3 out of 5]

An academic treatise re-assembled into a book, this is as tedious as it is undeniably painstakingly researched. Plenty of details border on the irrelevant, there are far too many inter-text references to keep track of, and in all it makes for a read that is hard to not zone out from. I’d have also appreciated some more insights into the environmental and ecological history of the river, as well as some more pre-history (if it exists). Worth a read if you’re especially keen on learning about Russia or great rivers, but not quite the most enjoyable means for the same.

[Michael Samerdyke · Rating 3 out of 5]

It sounds like I'm making a joke if I say that this book on the Volga is one of the dryest books on Russian history I've read in recent years, but that's how it left me feeling.

This book felt like an array of facts that marched along. If some passage struck me as interesting, it turned out to be a quote from a different book.

Perhaps the problem was the thematic organization of the book. The revolts of Stenka Razin and Pugachev were covered, and then the book moved on to religions of people along the Volga, and then there was the spread of disease along the Volga, and then the shipment of goods along the Volga, and I did not find this structure especially compelling.

[Theediscerning · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, I'm very glad to report this book is both very heavy in its subject matter – starting with pre-Norman city states with their varying influences on the locals – and highly readable. It serves as a great source for historians genning up on a lot of Russian (and indeed pre-Russian) history, and as a great time-passer for the general browser who might perchance stumble this way.

So the lower Volga, the half of it nearer its end at the Caspian Sea, was a spread of different regional influences, at least until one from slightly further north was in the ascendant – the Rus. They couldn't have it all their way, with Genghis Khan's grandson and the Golden Horde invading and staying around for generations. But they finally did, once they were more recognisably what we'd call Russians – they soon captured the key city-states of the river, and made it theirs with their monasteries and their kremlins. Two insurrectionists were major blips, but only showed why the Volga is still such a key note in the flavour that is Russia – a melting pot of ethnicities, tradesmen, brigands, whose banks combine a series of large river-port cities surrounded by days' sailing through wilderness, with agricultural success on one side and empty poverty on the other... Nothing seems at times more Russian – it even grows to be "an obedient subject of the Russian empress" in at least society thinking.

The book manages to swerve almost into geography (and a bit of psycho-, with the river's perception in the culture and psychology of Russians), and ecology, before hitting us and the region with serf rights and land reforms, and then all of the twentieth century and all that that entailed.

There's no doubting the book's heft, with almost a third given to notes, bibliography etc, and commendable maps and more. I only asked for it on an inkling that it would teach me something about a corner of the country I've not been privy to before (having only been to Russia the once), but my intuition was right. With all the possible authority or proof in possession of a non-historian, I can declare my assumption this takes an almost post-doc level of historical focus, and makes it as readable as if the whole thing were an A-level set text. I can only see myself giving it five stars as a result.

[Riet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Een heel interessant boek. Het is de geschiedenis van de Wolga rivier, maar toch ook van Rusland. Alleen ligt nu niet de nadruk op Petersburg of Moskou. De Wolga is een enorme rivier, zowel qua lengte als op veel plekken qua breedte. Wat het interessant maakt is vooral de bevolking langs de rivier en dan in de midden- en lage Wolga vooral omdat dat van oorsprong moslim volken waren en nog zijn. Het verhaal loopt van de Noormannen (hier Rus genaamd) tot aan de huidige tijd. Met natuurlijk de nodige aandacht voor de revolutie, de burgeroorlog en de slag om Stalingrad. Jammer, dat de rivier door de aanleg van dammen, waterkrachtcentrales en sluizen nu een ecologisch rampgebied is. Hopelijk komt dat ooit nog in orde.
Ik vond de eerste hoofdstukken wat taai en de kaarten hadden wat mij betreft ook wat duidelijker gekund.

[John Kaye · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very dense but comprehensive book on the history of the Volga river, its hinterland and the peoples who have occupied those regions. Lots of great details with enough links to wider Russian history to put things in context, but only just. Sometimes the author has to useg rather meagre detail to illustrate issues, but this reflects the difficulties with the original sources, I guess. But I learnt enough to inform my other Russian history studies.

[Iván · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un libro sobre el Volga que ayuda a entender la historia y complejidad de Rusia. Denso y con un estilo muy académico con infinidad de nombres y detalles. Interesante para aquellas personas muy interesadas en Rusia. La mayor parte del libro se refiere a épocas anteriores al siglo XX. Bibliografía muy extensa para quien quiera profundizar.

[Conor Primett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Janet M. Hartley’s The Volga: A History is one of those books that seems at first a narrow undertaking — the history of a single river, however vast — but quickly reveals itself as an anatomy of Russia itself. The Volga is not simply a geographic feature; it is an axis of history, a site of conquest and rebellion, a symbol of empire, a cultural archetype, and a psychological presence in the Russian imagination. Hartley’s achievement is to trace this history with an admirable balance of detail and accessibility, producing a book at once academically rigorous and eminently readable. Her account, with its meticulous maps, extensive notes, and wealth of primary sources, could easily have descended into an arid monograph. Instead, it flows like the river it describes, drawing the reader steadily along its course.

From the outset, I found myself hearing in Hartley’s pages the echo of Alexander Herzen, who insisted that Russian geography was destiny. Herzen’s writings on the vastness of the steppe, the isolation of villages, and the endless stretches of river and plain all suggest that Russia was less a nation than a geographical fate. Hartley’s Volga is a living proof of this claim. Even before there was anything called Russia, the river was already shaping lives: a corridor of trade linking the North with the Caspian, a magnet for brigands and nomads, a line of communication across otherwise impenetrable expanses. It was, in short, the condition of possibility for the state that would later emerge.

In describing the early trading cities along the Volga, Hartley makes clear how porous the region was. Scandinavians, Persians, Turks, and steppe nomads all left their traces. This was no closed, homogeneous space but a crossroads. Herzen argued that Russia’s historical peculiarity lay in precisely this position: on the edge of Europe, open to Asia, simultaneously central and marginal. The Volga epitomises this hybridity. When Genghis Khan’s grandson brought the Golden Horde to dominate the lower Volga, it was not simply an interlude but a formative influence, a layering of identity that would never be erased. The eventual Muscovite conquest was less a cleansing than a sedimentation. The Volga became Russian only by becoming a palimpsest.

By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Hartley shows, the Volga was made into an instrument of state ideology. The monasteries and kremlins built along its banks were symbols of possession as much as piety. The river itself was described as an “obedient subject of the Russian empress,” a phrase that reveals how geography was folded into politics. Tolstoy, writing later, would insist that land is not neutral but moral, that the soil itself exerts a kind of force on human beings. Hartley’s narrative confirms this: the Volga was not only water flowing through space but an emblem of sovereignty. To control the Volga was to declare imperial legitimacy.

Yet the Volga was always double. On one side, fertile agricultural districts and wealthy port cities; on the other, long stretches of barren poverty. Hartley insists on this inequality, showing how the river mirrored Russia’s internal contradictions. Herzen saw serfdom as the great crime of Russian civilisation, the evidence that geography had become tyranny. Hartley demonstrates how serfdom was lived along the Volga, where peasants laboured in proximity to abundance they could never share. Tolstoy’s moral critique of landownership — his insistence that the earth belongs to all who work it — resonates here. The Volga, as Hartley describes it, is a perfect case study in the gulf between natural abundance and social injustice.

The uprisings that erupted along the Volga, most famously Pugachev’s rebellion, illustrate this contradiction. To rebel on the Volga was to rebel against the empire itself, for the river symbolised the heart of Russian power. Hartley narrates the rebellion with precision, but one cannot help but hear Herzen’s voice again: rebellion in Russia was always both hopeless and inevitable, the eruption of injustice into geography. Pugachev’s defeat did not erase the Volga’s symbolism; it confirmed it. The river remained the stage on which the empire’s legitimacy was tested.

When Hartley reaches the twentieth century, the Volga becomes strategic in a new way. Industrialisation, collectivisation, and war transformed it from symbol into literal battleground. Stalingrad, on the Volga, became the hinge of the Second World War. Here Tolstoy’s sense of land as moral force acquires grim resonance: the river is no longer just backdrop but participant, a line that could not be crossed, a site where destiny was decided. Hartley is careful not to indulge in myth-making, but the implication is clear. The Volga, long a symbol, was now also a line of survival.

What makes Hartley’s account distinctive is her willingness to fold in ecology and psychology. She does not describe the Volga merely as resource but as presence: floods and forests, seasonal rhythms, the embedding of the river in song and folklore. Russian folk songs personify the Volga as mother, Volga-matushka. This is not sentimentalism but evidence of how geography becomes culture. Tolstoy would have recognised in this the moral imagination of the peasant, for whom the land was not property but kin. Herzen, too, saw in such metaphors the sign of how deeply Russians felt their geography. Hartley treats them seriously, as integral to the history.

I was struck by the accessibility of Hartley’s prose. For all its scholarly heft — a third of the book given to notes and bibliography — the writing is inviting, almost conversational. She has the Braudelian gift of making landscape into protagonist, much as The Mediterranean turned a sea into a stage of history. If there is a limitation, it is that Hartley does not pursue the allegorical or dialectical resonance that Benjamin or even Herzen might have sought. She does not allow the fragments to crystallise into allegory. But perhaps this is deliberate: she is a historian, not a philosopher. Her aim is reliability, not dialectics. And yet, as a reader, one cannot help but supply the allegory oneself.

My own encounter with the book was shaped by curiosity more than expectation. I requested it on an inkling, hoping to learn something about a corner of Russia I did not know, and found myself immersed in a history that confirmed Herzen’s dictum: geography is destiny. The Volga is not incidental to Russia; it is Russia in miniature, with all its contradictions of abundance and poverty, empire and rebellion, piety and oppression. Reading Hartley, I felt that I had travelled down the river myself, that I had glimpsed in its currents something of the Russian soul.

Why four stars and not five? Because while the book is remarkable, it is not transformative. It does not shift the discipline in the way Braudel did; it does not leave one stunned with interpretive brilliance. It is comprehensive, accessible, and authoritative, but it stops short of the visionary. Still, the four stars are given with enthusiasm, because Hartley accomplishes what she sets out to do: she makes the Volga live, for scholar and browser alike.

In the end, what lingers is the sense that the Volga embodies Russia’s destiny. Herzen’s geography-as-fate and Tolstoy’s land-as-morality converge here: the river is both destiny and conscience, both condition and critique. Hartley’s history, in its evenness, may not press this point, but it allows the reader to see it. The Volga flows not only through space but through the Russian psyche, through rebellion and empire, through song and sorrow. To read its history is to grasp why Russia is what it is, and why it remains, like the river itself, inexhaustible.

[Jean-Luc · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's simply impossible to dissociate the Volga from
Russia and its soul.
In this very exhaustive history of one of the most formidable and largest rivers in Europe, Janet Hartley gives us a very detailed history of the Volga and its place as the major meeting place of Eurasian civilization and
its historical, cultural, economical and social importance in Russian civilization & beyond.

Thoroughly researched and very scholarly, I found this incredible biography
so captivating that it was almost unputdownable. A worthy addition to Russian and European history and a very accessible book despite its length.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Yale University Press for giving me the opportunity to read this incredible book prior to its release date

[Stuart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Impressive in scope and research but poorly written--every chapter felt about ten pages longer than it needed to be, and the authorial asides detracted rather than added to the experience--a book about a river should flow, even if said river is frozen for half the year and virtually un-navigable for half of the remainder.

I feel like the book could have stopped at the Battle of Stalingrad, the final chapters seem tacked on and not nearly as educational/necessary. They also primarily concern themselves with pushing an LSE viewpoint re collectivization and Putin, at the expense of discussing the river in postwar and modern history. Also she doesn't actually talk to any sources about the river, the closest we get is a trip she took in 2018 to sightsee (museums and ceremonial sights appear "closed" but she couldn't telephone ahead to talk to anyone about it?) and a transcript from a television interview, which casts a pall over the latter sections of the book--why spend so much time doing expert research and then write 20% of a book on very little research?

Anyway it was fine, buy it for your dad or something.

[Chase Metcalf · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid and comprehensive history of the Volga and its place in Russian history. Comprehensive addressing social, political, military, ecological, and economic role in Russian history. That said I found myself at times having to “press through” based in part in my interests and in part based on the depth of material.

Recommended read for those seeking a deeper understanding of the critical role the Volga has played in Russian history.

[Rosalind Upton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well researched and authoritative guide to a part of the world I knew very little about. Accessible for a general reader like myself. Fascinating to discover how this great river is woven into history.

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent! It gives you the history of this wonderful river, the people, the country and all who graced the Volga's shores through the years, without all of Russia's intricate details. Very well researched. Thank you.

[And · Rating 3 out of 5]

Focused on the Volga. Can't argue with that.

Quite a fair bit of contextualising the people of the Volga. For example, they became a tartar minority (80:20) quite quickly after conquering, by the author's account. Such is life

[Akakiy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Volga: A History of Russia’s Greatest River is a concise, engaging overview of how the Volga shaped Russia’s culture and politics. It’s clear and informative, though occasionally a bit brisk, and offers a vivid sense of the river’s lasting influence.

[Marko Beljac · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Without the Volga, there would be no Russia.”

[Maxim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rusophobic shit.

[Liam Garman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Janet Hartley should be commended for her depth of scholarship in The Volga. However, to anyone considering this book, strap yourself in because you’re going to learn a WHOLE LOT about this river.

Hartley’s book covers such a broad range of topics that readers may be enthralled in one chapter only to find themselves skim reading the next. For some, this would make completing the book a challenge.

For those interested in military, politics, ethnography and religion, the first half of the book is utterly fascinating. Hartley begins The Volga unpacking the migration of peoples, cultures and ethnicities across a river which stood at a civilisational crossroads; separating the steppe from Europe, and providing a highway that stretched from Viking populations through to the Arab world.

However, later chapters diverged from this. Hartley spared no detail unpacking trade and commerce, town planning and the anthropological idiosyncrasies found along the river.

Hartley achieved what few history authors can. In writing a book on the Volga – she left no stone unturned – providing a holistic snapshot of a river which shaped the history of Europe and Asia. Though in her quest for thoroughness, some may find it challenging to complete the book, as the breadth of topics will undoubtedly leave some readers disinterested along the way.

[Grigory · Rating 4 out of 5]

Мне нравятся книги иностранных историков о России. Слёзкин (Дом правительства. Сага о русской революции), Хоффман (Олигархи. Богатство и власть в новой России). Возможно, историческая академическая школа в оксбриджах лучше, возможно взгляд со стороны интереснее. Эти книги короче, ёмче, разностороннее того что я читал у русских авторов. Волга - не исключение. Краткий курс русской истории за 1000 лет - что может быть приятнее?

[Mandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

An academic and meticulously researched exploration of the Volga river, which in spite of its scholarly approach manages to be at the same time an accessible and very readable text, and an enjoyable read.