She was born in 1729 as Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, a German princess, but by 1762 had become Empress of All Russia and went on to rule for 34 years as Catherine II. She regarded herself as an enlightened despot who embraced the ideas of the Enlightenment and consorted with the French philosophes. Russian historian Andrei Zorin introduces the remarkably industrious and able politician who is remembered as Catherine the Great.

His father had clawed his way up into the minor aristocracy, but Fyodor Dostoevsky chose to live the life of an impecunious author. He was sentenced to death, but his execution was stayed and he spent years in a Siberian labour camp instead. His books are about human compassion, but he was a difficult man who had trouble with his own personal relationships. Alex Christofi, author of a brilliant new biography of Dostoevsky, one of Russia’s greatest novelists, recommends five books to learn more about the man and his work—including the novel of which Tolstoy said he ‘didn’t know a better book in all our literature’.

Every year since 2013 the Russian Book Prize run by Pushkin House, a UK charity, has carried out the important task  of drawing attention to books that “encourage public understanding and intelligent debate about the Russian-speaking world.” Here, Harvard historian Serhii Plokhy, chair of this year’s judging panel, talks us through the books that made the 2020 shortlist.

Journalist and author Edward Lucas explains how a revanchist Russia can be traced back to Putin’s sense of betrayal after the collapse of the USSR

The Soviet writer bore witness to the horrors of Russia’s World War Two and the Shoah — and deserves a place in literary history, says scholar Maxim D Shrayer. He recommends the best books by and about Vasily Grossman.

Journalist and author Edward Lucas gives an excoriating critique of Putinism and explains how Russia’s amoral present is rooted in a failure to come to terms with its past.

The Russian revolution was the beginning of the modern age, says award-winning author Roland Chambers. He tells us what Solzhenitsyn imagined Lenin was like, and about the children’s author who led a double life as a spy in Bolshevik Russia.

In Russia, it’s often fallen to writers to challenge conventions and speak the truth, says the translator and biographer Rosamund Bartlett. She makes a personal selection of some of the most exhilarating Russian short fiction.

Vladimir Putin has crafted a careful narrative about his rise to power and rescuing of Russia. The trouble, says author and academic Simon Pirani, is it isn’t true. He recommends the best books on Putin’s Russia.

Esteemed historian of the Soviet Union recommends five books on Communism, from novels and personal narratives to theoretical works.

Russian literature specialist Michael Nicholson, Emeritus Fellow at University College, Oxford, talks us through the best books to learn more about the great Soviet dissident and winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Robert Chandler, one of the best known translators of Russian literature, recommends some of his favourite tales of Soviet Russia. There’s the one about a dog in space and the one about the Soviet café which stocked nothing but champagne and Mars bars…

Former BBC Moscow correspondent Martin Sixsmith chooses five great works on Russia’s doomed democracies

Acknowledged expert on the unresolved conflicts of the South Caucasus selects five books that encapsulate the fragility of the region and the impact of the desperate scramble for the spoils of the Soviet Union

Reading about Russia’s 20th century is like finding another vision of how the world might have been. Francis Spufford, author of Red Plenty, recommends books that tell the story of Russia in the last century — from Soviet science fiction set in capitalist wastelands to Khrushchev as raconteur.

Bilingual author and translator with his pick of the five must-reads by – and about – Nabokov. Says a revisionist biography of the writer is due, which comes to terms with the Jewish influence on his work

Author and former Reuters correspondent in Moscow chooses books on the Caucasus and says the only language Russia understands is unconditional surrender, whether they are ruled by the Tsars, the Communists or Putin

The author and academic talks about KGB tricks to get American victims of the Great Depression in Russia to take Soviet citizenship. ‘They had to hand over their American passports temporarily and never saw them again’

Eminent historian on pre-Soviet Russia with unique access to the Moscow archives says Dostoevsky’s Demons is about Russia’s future. ‘It’s about what has happened, and what’s going to happen … You smell it and taste it’

Rated by the British Library as among the top ten foreign poets based in London, Nigar Hasan-Zadeh discusses a range of books—from love stories, to poetry, to oil field reporting—to boost our insight into Azerbaijan.

Robert Service, Professor of Russian Studies at Oxford, when forced to choose between Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin, says Stalin was definitely the worst of the lot. He takes a look at the dynamics of totalitarian Russia, gleaning insights from Thucydides to Orwell.

From Eisenstein to Tarkovsky, film scholar Ian Christie looks at the titans of Russian cinema and draws attention to the pre-Revolutionary Siberian gold merchant’s daughter who opened a cinema purely for the upper classes.

Dr Stephen Lucas is a partner in the banking group of an international law firm, Linklaters LLP and a student of Soviet law. He recommends books on communist legislation in the former USSR

Best-selling author Thomas Keneally explains that the Cold War biographies couldn’t afford to say that Stalin was attractive, or that Lenin was magnetic, but they were, because otherwise people wouldn’t have followed them. He picks some great introductions to Revolutionary Russia.

Award winning reporter and novelist says there are no superlatives too superlative for Anna Politkovskaya, who, after three books and innumerable investigative reporting trips to Chechnya, was murdered in Moscow