John Elphinstone wrote a travelogue/memoir/apologia to blackmail the Russian government. I just edited, annotated and introduced it. Hakluyt Society published it. boydellandbrewer.com/978191693102...

I wrote this article about 18th century Russia’s approaches to empire in 2020, but it has strange resonances with Russian conquests today. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...