Russia Under the Old Regime (1st ed. 1974, 2nd ed. 1995) by Richard Pipes is a history book on Russia which traces the evolution of the Russian state from the ninth century to the 1800s.
Russia Under the Old Regime[]
Boris Ivanovich Petrov, a Russian spy, came to Grantville's public library to learn about the future history of his country. One of the books he was given was Russia Under the Old Regime. When looking at the table of contents, he looked at "Chapter 4: The Anatomy of the Patrimonial Regime", but had trouble digesting the definition of the words "Anatomy" and "Patrimonial". Boris wondered if the latter meant that Russia was to be ruled by the church, but then considered that to be possible, given the relative political strengths of the contemporary patriarch and czar.
Boris then decided that reading Russia Under the Old Regime would be time-consuming, and set it aside it for another book. But after hours of reading the books on Russia as well as he could, found the analysis in Old Regime to be unusual, as if it had been filtered through a prism. He even wondered if Pipes was an idiot; but then reconsidered by comparing the situation to that of a citizen of Caesar's Rome responding to a history of Rome written by a contemporary scholar who had never seen the Coliseum.