This is a select bibliography of post-World War II English-language books (including translations) and journal articles about the Early Slavs and Rus' and its borderlands until the Mongol invasions beginning in 1223. Book entries may have references to reviews published in academic journals or major newspapers when these could be considered helpful.

A brief selection of English translations of primary sources is included. The sections "General surveys" and "Biographies" contain books; other sections contain both books and journal articles. Book entries have references to journal articles and reviews about them when helpful. Additional bibliographies can be found in many of the book-length works listed below; see Further reading for several book and chapter-length bibliographies. The External links section contains entries for publicly available select bibliographies from universities.

Inclusion criteria

Works included are referenced in the notes or bibliographies of scholarly secondary sources or journals. Included works should either be published by an academic or widely distributed publisher, be authored by a notable subject matter expert as shown by scholarly reviews and have significant scholarly journal reviews about the work. To keep the bibliography length manageable, only items that clearly meet the criteria should be included.

Citation style

This bibliography uses APA style citations. Entries do not use templates. References to reviews and notes for entries do use citation templates.

If a work has been translated into English, the translator should be included and a footnote with appropriate bibliographic information for the original language version should be included.

When listing works with titles or names published with alternative English spellings, the form used in the latest published version should be used and the version and relevant bibliographic information noted if it previously was published or reviewed under a different title.

General works on Russian history which have significant context for Russian history in general or content about this bibliography's timeframe of history.

• Acton, E. (1995). Russia: The Tsarist and Soviet Legacy (2nd ed.). London: Longman.^[1]
• Ascher A. (2017). Russia: A Short History. (3rd Revised Ed.). London: Oneworld Publications.^[2]
• Auty R., Obolensky D. D. (Eds.) (1976-1981). Companion to Russian Studies (3 vols.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Bartlett, R. P. (2005). A History of Russia. — Basingstoke; N. Y.: Palgrave Macmillan. (Macmillan Essential Histories).^[3][4]
• Billington, J. H. (1966). The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.^[5]
• Blackwell, W. L. (1994). The Industrialization of Russia: A Historical Perspective (3rd ed.). Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson.^[6]
• Blum, J. (1961). Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.^[7][8]
• Bogatyrev, S. (Ed.). (2004). Russia Takes Shape: Patterns of Integration from the Middle Ages to the Present. Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.^[9][10]
• Borrero, M. (2004) Russia: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present. New York: Facts on File.^[11]
• Boterbloem, K. (2018) A History of Russia and Its Empire: From Mikhail Romanov to Vladimir Putin. (2nd Ed.) Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.^[12]
• Boterbloem, K. (2020) Russia as Empire: Past and Present. London: Reaktion Books.^[13]
• Breyfogle, N., Schrader, A., & Sunderland, W. (Eds.). (2007). Peopling the Russian Periphery: Borderland Colonization in Eurasian History. London: Routledge.^[14]
• Bushkovitch, P. (2011). A Concise History of Russia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.^{[15][16][17][18]}
• Chatterjee, C. (2022). Russia in World History: A Transnational Approach. London: Bloomsbury Academic.^[19]
• Cherniavsky, M. (Ed.). (1970). The Structure of Russian History: Interpretive Essays. New York, NY: Random House.
• Christian, D. (1998–2018). A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia (2 vols.). Oxford, UK: Blackwell; Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.^{[20][21][22][23]}
• Clarkson, J. D. (1969). A History of Russia (2nd ed.). New York: Random House.^[24][25]
• Connolly, R. (2020). The Russian Economy: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Dmytryshyn, B. (Ed.). (1991). Medieval Russia: A Source Book, 850–1700 (3rd ed.). Fort Worth: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.^[26][27]
• Dmytryshyn, B. (1977). A History of Russia. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.^[28][29]
• Dukes, P. (1998). A History of Russia: Medieval, Modern, Contemporary, c. 882–1996 (3rd ed.). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.^{[30][31][32][33][34]}
• Evtuhov, C., Goldfrank, D., Hughes, L., & Stites, R. (2004). A History of Russia: Peoples, Legends, Events, Forces. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.^[35]
• Figes, O. (2022). The Story of Russia. New York: Metropolitan Books.^[36]
• Forsyth, J. (1992). A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia's North Asian Colony 1581–1990. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.^{[37][38][39][40][41]}
• Freeze, G. L. (Ed.). (2009). Russia: A History (3rd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.^[42]
• Gleason A. (Ed.). (2009). A Companion to Russian History. — Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. (Wiley-Blackwell Companions to World History).^[43][44][45]
• Grousset, R. (1970). The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia (N. Walford, Trans.^[a]). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.^[46]
• Hosking, G. (1997). Russia: People and Empire, 1552–1917. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.^[47][48][49]
• Hosking, G. (2001). Russia and the Russians: A History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.^[50]
• Kochan, L., & Abraham, R. (1983). The Making of Modern Russia (2nd ed.). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books.^[51][52]
• Lieven, D. (2000). Empire: The Russian Empire and Its Rivals. London: John Murray.^[53][54]
• Lieven, D., Perrie, M., & Suny, R. (Eds.). (2006). The Cambridge History of Russia (3 vols.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.^{[b][55][56][57]}
• Longworth, P. (2005). Russia: The Once and Future Empire from Pre-History to Putin. New York: St. Martin's Press.
• Mazour, A. G. (1962). Russia: Tsarist and Communist. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand.^[58][59]
• Moss, W. G. (1997–2005). A History of Russia (2 vols.; 2nd ed., 2003–2005). London: Anthem Press.
• Pares, B. (1953). A History of Russia (Definitive ed.). New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
• Pipes, R. (1974). Russia Under the Old Regime. New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons.^{[60][61][62][63]}
• Poe, M. T. (2003) The Russian Moment in World History. Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press.^{[64][65][66][67]}
• Riasanovsky, N. V., & Steinberg, M. D. (2025). A History of Russia (10th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.^[68]
• Shubin, D. H. (2005). A History of Russian Christianity (4 vols.). New York: Algora Publishing.
• Sumner, B. H. (1943). A Short History of Russia. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock.^[69]
• Vernadsky, G. (1943–1969). A History of Russia (5 vols.). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.^[c]
• Vernadsky, G. (1961). A History of Russia (6th rev. ed.). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• Ward, C. J., & Thompson, J. M. (2021). Russia: A Historical Introduction from Kievan Rus' to the Present (9th ed.). New York: Routledge.
• Wren, M. C., & Stults, T. (2009). The Course of Russian History (5th ed.). Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.^{[70][71][72][73]}

• Alef, G. (1983). Rulers and Nobles in 15th-Century Muscovy. London, UK: Variorum.
• Birnbaum, H., Flier, M. S., & Rowland, D. B. (1984, 1994). Medieval Russian Culture (2 vols.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.^{[74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81]}
• Martin, J. (2007). Medieval Russia, 980–1584. Cambridge University Press.^[82][83]
• Meyendorff, J. (1997). Byzantium and the Rise of Russia: A Study of Byzantino-Russian Relations in the Fourteenth Century. St Vladimirs Seminary Press.^[84][85]
• Nicolle, D., & PhD, D. N. (1999). Armies of Medieval Russia, 750-1250 (Illustrated edition). Osprey Publishing.
• Ostrowski, D., & Poe, M. T. (Eds.). (2011). Portraits of Old Russia: Imagined Lives of Ordinary People, 1300-1745. London, UK: Routledge.^[86][87]
• Paszkiewicz. H. (1954). The Origin of Russia. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.^[88][89]
• Presniakov, A. E. (1970). The Formation of the Great Russian State. A Study of Russian History in the Thirteenth to Fifteenth Centuries. (A. E. Moorhouse, Trans.) Chicago: Quadrangle Books.^[90]
• Stefanovich, P. S. (2016). The Political Organization of Rus’ in the 10th Century. Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 64(4), 529–544.

• Franklin, S. (2002b). Writing, society and culture in early Rus, c. 950-1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.^{[217][218][219][220][221][222][223][224][225][226][227][228]}
• Gasparov, B., & Raevsky-Hughes, O. (Eds.). (1993). Slavic cultures in the Middle Ages. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
• Lazarev, V. N. (1966). Old Russian murals and mosaics. London: Phaidon.^{[229][230][231]}
• Lenhoff, G. (1989). The martyred princes Boris and Gleb: A socio-cultural study of the cult and the texts. Columbus, OH: Slavica.^{[232][233][234][235][236][237]}
• Thomson, F. J. (1999). The reception of Byzantine culture in mediaeval Russia. Aldershot: Ashgate.^{[238][239][240]}
• Zguta, R. (1978). Russian minstrels: A history of the skomorokhi. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.^{[241][242][243][244][245][246][247]}
• Zguta, R. (1972). Skomorokhi: The Russian Minstrel-Entertainers. Slavic Review, 31(2), 297–313.

• Blakey, K. (1924). Folk Tales of Ancient Russia. (Byliny of Lord Novgorod the Great). The Slavonic Review, 3(7), 52–62.
• Bremer, T. (2013). Cross and Kremlin: A Brief History of the Orthodox Church in Russia (E. W. Gritsch, Trans.; Translation edition). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.^[248]
• Challis, N., & Dewey, H. (1987). Basil The Blessed, Holy Fool Of Moscow. Russian History, 14(1/4), 47–59.
• Clucas, L. (Ed.). (1988). The Byzantine Legacy in Eastern Europe Boulder, CO: East European Monographs.^[249][250]
• Ericsson, K. (1966). The Earliest Conversion of the Rus’ to Christianity. The Slavonic and East European Review, 44(102), 98–121.
• Fedotov, G. P. (1966). The Russian religious mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.^[251]
• Fennell, J. L. (2015). A History of the Russian Church to 1488. London: Routledge.
• Franklin, S. (2002). Byzantium-Rus-Russia: Studies in the translation of Christian culture. Ashgate/Variorum.
• Kivelson, V. A., & Worobec, C. D. (Eds.). (2020). Witchcraft in Russia and Ukraine, 1000–1900: A Sourcebook (NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies). DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press.
• Kulik, A. (2023). Jews in Old Rus´: A Documentary History (Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies). Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.
• Levin, E. (1989). Sex and society in the world of the Orthodox Slavs, 900-1700. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.^{[252][253][254][255][256][257][258][259][260][261]}
• Majeska, G. P. (2005). Patriarch Photius and the Conversion of the Rus’. Russian History, 32(3/4), 413–418.
• Paul, M. C. (2003). Episcopal Election in Novgorod, Russia 1156–1478. Church History, 72(2), 251–275.
• Poppe, A. (2007). Christian Russia in the Making (Variorum Collected Studies CS867). Ashgate.^[262]
• Poppe, A. (1976). The Political Background to the Baptism of Rus’: Byzantine-Russian Relations between 986–89. Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 30, 195–244.
• Poppe, A. (1982). The rise of Christian Russia. London: Variorum.^[263]
• Senyk, S. (1993). A history of the Church in Ukraine: Vol. 1. To the end of the thirteenth century. Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale.
• Ševčenko, I. (1960). The Christianization of Kievan Rus’. The Polish Review, 5(4), 29–35.
• Shchapov, Ia. N. (1993). State and church in early Russia 10th-13th centuries (V. Schneierson, Trans.). New Rochelle, NY: Aristide D. Caratzas.^{[264][265][266]}
• Shepard, J. (2017). The Expansion of Orthodox Europe: Byzantium, the Balkans and Russia. London, UK: Routledge.^[267][268]
• Shubin, D. H. (2005). A History of Russian Christianity (4 vols.). New York: Agathon Press.
• Vlasto, A. P. (1970). The entry of the Slavs into Christendom: An introduction to the medieval history of the Slavs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.^{[269][270][271][272][273][274][275]}
• Weickhardt, G. G. (2001). The Canon Law of Rus’, 1100–1551. Russian History, 28(1/4), 411–446.
• White, M. (2013). Military saints in Byzantium and Rus, 900-1200. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.^{[276][277][278]}

• Feldbrugge, F. J. M. (2009). Law in Medieval Russia. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers (Law in Eastern Europe, Vol. 59).^[279][280]
• Franklin, S. (2007). On Meanings, Functions and Paradigms of Law in Early Rus’. Russian History, 34(1/4), 63–81.
• Kaiser D. H. (1980). The Growth of the Law in Medieval Russia. Princeton: Princeton University Press.^[281][282]
• Kaiser, D. H. (1980). Reconsidering Crime and Punishment in Kievan Rus’. Russian History, 7(3), 283–293.
• Kleimola, A. M. (1975). Justice in Medieval Russia: Muscovite Judgment Charters (Pravye Gramoty) of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries // Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, Vol. 65, Part 6. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.^[283][284]
• Zguta, R. (1981). Medicine as Reflected in the Laws of Early Rus’. The Russian Review, 40(1), 47–54.

• Bell, J. (2023). Slavic Seiðr? Reconsidering the Volkhvy of Northern Rus´. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 24(2), 245-268.
• Birnbaum, H. (1981). Lord Novgorod the Great: Essays in the History and Culture of a Medieval City-state. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers/Indian University.
• Franklin, S. (1985). Literacy and Documentation in Early Medieval Russia. Speculum, 60(1), 1–38.
• Halperin, C. J. (2022). The Rise and Demise of the Myth of the Rus' Land (Beyond Medieval Europe). Arc Humanities Press.
• Hartley, J. M. (2021). The Volga: A History. New Haven: Yale University Press.^[285]
• Herlihy, P. (1991). Joy of the Rus’: Rites and Rituals of Russian Drinking. The Russian Review, 50(2), 131–147.
• Koloda, V., & Gorbanenko, S. (2020). Agriculture in the Forest-Steppe Region of Khazaria (East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450, Vol. 60). Leiden: Brill.^[286]
• Kulik, A. (2014). Jews and the Language of Eastern Slavs. The Jewish Quarterly Review, 104(1), 105–143.
• Lelis, A. A. (2005). The View from the Northwest: The Chronicle of Novgorod as the Mirror of Local Experience of Rus’ History, 1016–1333. Russian History, 32(3/4), 389–399.
• Miller, D. B. (1989). Monumental Building as an Indicator of Economic Trends in Northern Rus’ in the Late Kievan and Mongol Periods, 1138-1462. The American Historical Review, 94(2), 360–390.
• Pritsak, O. (1998). The Origins of the Old Rus' Weights and Monetary Systems: Two Studies in Western Eurasian Metrology and Numismatics in the Seventh to Eleventh Centuries (Harvard Series In Ukrainian Studies). Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.^[287][288]
• Schaeken, J. (2019). Voices on birchbark: Everyday communication in medieval Russia. Leiden: Brill.

• Butler, F. (2008). Ol'ga's Conversion and the Construction of Chronicle Narrative. The Russian Review, 67(2), 230–242.
• Dimnik, M. (1981). Mikhail, Prince of Chernigov and Grand Prince of Kiev, 1224–1246. Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.^{[289][290][291][292][293][294][295]}
• Hurwitz, E. S. (1980). Prince Andrej Bogoljubskij: The man and the myth. Florence: Licosa Editrice.^{[296][297][298][299][300][301]}
• Isoaho, M. (2006). The image of Aleksandr Nevskiy in Medieval Russia: Warrior and Saint. Leiden; Boston: Brill.^[302]
• Luciw, J. (1986). Sviatoslav the Conqueror: Creator of a Great Kyivian Rusʹ Empire. State College, Penn.: Slavia Library.^[303]
• Raffensperger, C. (2009). Shared (Hi)Stories: Vladimir of Rus’ and Harald Fairhair of Norway. The Russian Review, 68(4), 569–582.

• Confino, M. (2009). The New Russian Historiography, and the Old—Some Considerations. History and Memory, 21(2), 7-33.
• Franklin, S. (2001). Pre-Mongol Rus’: New Sources, New Perspectives?. The Russian Review, 60(4), 465–473.
• Hanak, W. K. (2013). The nature and the image of princely power in Kievan Rus', 980-1054: A study of sources. Leiden: Brill.^{[304][305][306]}
• Karpovich, M. (1943). Klyuchevski and Recent Trends in Russian Historiography. Slavonic and East European Review. American Series, 2(1), 31–39.
• Mazour, A. (1937). Modern Russian Historiography. The Journal of Modern History, 9(2), 169–202.
• Miller, D. (1986). The Kievan Principality in the Century before the Mongol Invasion: An Inquiry into Recent Research and Interpretation. Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 10(1/2), 215–240.
• Pelenski, J. (1998). The Contest for the Legacy of Kievan Rus'. New York, NY: East European Monographs, Columbia University.^[307][308]
• Vernadsky, G., & Pushkarev, S. G. (1978). Russian Historiography: A History. Belmont, MA: Nordland Publishing.

A limited number of English language translated primary sources referred to in the above works.^[d]

• Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. (1967). De administrando imperio (G. Moravcsik, Ed., & R. J. H. Jenkins, Trans.; 2nd ed.). Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks.
• Cross, S. H. (2012). The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text (O. P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor, Ed.). Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America.
• Franklin, S. (Trans.). (1991). Sermons and rhetoric of Kievan Rus. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Golb, N., & Pritsak, O. (1982). Khazarian Hebrew documents of the tenth century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Hanak, W. K. (2013). The nature and the image of princely power in Kievan Rus', 980-1054: A study of sources. Leiden: Brill.^{[309][310][311]}
• Heppell, M. (Trans.). (1989). The Paterik of the Kievan Caves Monastery. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Hollingsworth, P. (Trans.). (1992). The hagiography of Kievan Rus. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Kaiser, D. H. (Ed. & Trans.). (1992). The laws of Rus': Tenth to fifteenth centuries. Salt Lake City, UT: Charles Schlacks.
• Kaiser, D. H., & Marker, G. (1994). Reinterpreting Russian History: Readings, 860—1860s (First Edition). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• Michell, R., & Forbes, N. (Trans.). (1914). The Chronicle of Novgorod, 1016-1471. London: Royal Historical Society.
• Ostrowski, D., Birnbaum, D. J., & Lunt, H. G. (Eds.). (2003). The Povest' vremennykh let: An interlinear collation and paradosis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.
• Vernadsky, G., Fisher, R. T., Jr., Ferguson, A. D., Lossky, A., & Pushkarev, S. G. (Eds.). (1972). A source book for Russian history from early times to 1917 (Vol. 1). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• Zenkovsky, S. A. (Ed.). (1963). Medieval Russia's Epics, Chronicles, and Tales (First edition). New York, NY: E. P. Dutton.

• Kievan Rus. (2016). Encyclopedia Britannica.
• Auty, R., Obelensky, D., et al. (2010). Companion to Russian Studies (Vol. 1, An Introduction to Russian History; Vol.2, Russian Language and Literature; Vol. 3, An Introduction to Russian Art and Architecture). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Barnes, I., & Lieven, D. (2015). Restless Empire: A Historical Atlas of Russia (Illustrated edition). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
• Brown, A. et al. (1982). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Channon, J., & Hudson, R. (1995). The Penguin Historical Atlas of Russia. New York: Penguin.
• Gilbert, M. (2007). The Routledge Atlas of Russian History (4th edition). London: Routledge.
• Ivan Katchanovski, Kohut, Z. E., Nebesio, B. Y., & Yurkevich, M. (2013). Historical Dictionary of Ukraine. (Second edition). Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
• Langer, L. N. (2001). Historical Dictionary of Medieval Russia. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press.
• Lerski, H. (1996). Historical Dictionary of Poland, 966-1945. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing.
• Magocsi, P. R. (2017). Carpathian Rus': A Historical Atlas. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.^[312]
• Millar, J. R. (Ed.). (2004). Encyclopedia of Russian History (4 vols.). New York: Macmillan Library Reference.
• Wieczynski, Joseph L. et al. (Ed.). The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History (1976–...). Academic International Press.

• Bibliography of Russian history (1223–1613)
• Bibliography of Russian history (1613–1917)
• Bibliography of Ukrainian history
• Bibliography of the history of Belarus and Byelorussia

Many of the above works contain bibliographies. Included below are a selection of works with large bibliographies related to Russian history.

• Blum, J. (1961). Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Bocek, V., Jansens, N., & Klir, T. (Eds.). (2020). New Perspectives on the Early Slavs and the Rise of Slavic: Contact and Migrations. Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag Winter.
• Dmytryshyn, B. (Ed.). (1991). Medieval Russia: A Source Book, 850–1700 (3rd ed.). Fort Worth: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
• Langer, L. N. (2001). Bibliography. In Historical Dictionary of Medieval Russia. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press.
• Martin, J. (2007). Medieval Russia, 980–1584. Cambridge University Press.
• Perrie, M. (2006). Bibliography. (2006). In M. Perrie (Ed.), The Cambridge History of Russia (The Cambridge History of Russia, Vol. 1, pp. 663–721). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Everyday life and microhistory in Russia: A selected bibliography of critical studies. Indiana University, Bloomington.
• Janet Martin—Bibliography. (2015). Russian History, 42(1), 3–8.