Kingdom and a Village by Simon Morrison

A deeply learned yet highly readable and entertaining history of Moscow, a city defined by its survival and reinvention, and whose rich history offers crucial insight into contemporary global politics.

An erudite and entertaining history of Moscow, a city whose rich past offers crucial insight into contemporary global politics

Moscow stands at the centre of a nation comprising eleven percent of the globe’s landmass, eleven time zones, and nearly one hundred and fifty million people, some thirteen million of whom live in the capital. In A Kingdom and a Village, acclaimed historian Simon Morrison offers a vividly rendered history of Russia’s heart and soul, tracing its transformation from a ‘big village’ – the demeaning nickname the St. Petersburg nobility gave to its provincial neighbour – into a spectacular metropolis of vast geopolitical import.

That arc is the stuff of dramatic, violent, stranger-than-fiction historical narrative- the last century alone has featured invasions and costly battles, the destruction (and reconstruction) of sacred cultural and religious landmarks, and the collapse of the Soviet republic – not to mention the rise of an authoritarian leader who is a keen student of Russian history. Morrison reaches back to the city’s founding as a fortress on a river nearly a millennium ago. In the centuries that followed, any number of external forces – from Tatar Mongols and Swedes to Napoleon and Hitler – set their sights on Moscow, bolstering its self-conception as both a glittering prize and a site of perpetual defence and resurrection.

Drawing on a rich array of archival materials, Morrison shows us that to understand Moscow is not only to unlock the spellbinding mysteries of Russia’s past, but also to grasp the grim logic of its present.

A Kingdom and a Village is a magisterial biography of a place – and an essential guide to a people and a nation.

About the Author: SIMON MORRISON is a professor of music and Slavic languages and literatures at Princeton University.

He is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and London Review of Books and has written for Time Magazine, New York Review of Books, and New York Times. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and holds a PhD and an MFA in Music History from Princeton University.

26 Mar 2026
 

A Kingdom and a Village: A One-Thousand-Year History of Moscow by Simon Morrison ISBN 9781847926524