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In this subject, students examine the emergence, consolidation and development of Russian state and society in a hitherto 'wild' region in eastern Europe. The formative phase in the political, social and intellectual history of the Tsardom of Muscovy is traced. The focus is on the interplay of strange dichotomies like those between autocracy and oligarchy, patriarchy and communalism, xenophobia and Westernism, in shaping Russian state, society and culture in the turbulent era of Ivan the Terrible.