This book offers the first book-length English language biography of Russian emperor Paul I (1754–1801), since a 1913 translation. Most of the essays have been written expressly for this volume.  They examine Paul’s education, his mental pathology, his administrative aims, curious relations with the knights of Malta and with Bonaparte, and his struggles with the threatening ideas emanating from the French Revolution.  There is also a provocative new view of the conspiracy that took Paul’s life.

Hugh Ragsdale was professor of history at the University of Alabama and is an independent scholar living in Charlottesville, Virginia. He studied at Moscow University and the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow and is the author of numerous books and articles on Russian history.