Vasili O. Kliuchevsky (1841-1911), professor of history at Moscow University, 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.

In The Seventeenth Century, the third volume of his Course in Russian History, Kliuchevsky takes Russia from the confused events of the Time of Troubles and the rise of the Romanov dynasty to the accession of Peter the Great. As Kliuchevsky tells this dramatic story, he traces the widening cultural divide between old Russia and its emergent aristocracy as well as the ambivalent relationship between Russia and the West.