The Story Of Russia, by Orlando Figues

How do you write a concise book about Russian history that seeks to be relevant to a Western audience in explaining Russia’s own perspective while not making the book unreadable in its length? The author manages this by seeking to uncover themes and patterns within Russian history that lead down to the present day. Among these themes are the feeling on the part of Russians that they are part of the West, part of Europe, but not respected or regarded like the rest of Western civilization is. Another theme is the stark division felt in Russia between trying to appeal to its own complex history on the border between Europe and Asia and trying to adopt more and more Western ideals and practices as a way of keeping up with the Joneses. Still another theme is the relative poverty of civic institutions that tends to make the state the only agent of change and has led to repeated periods of tyranny in order to stave off anarchy and fears over national disaster. Russia has some issues, and this book manages to demonstrate how those issues reappear over and over again in history, so that the present of Russia’s problematic history makes sense in light of its past, which it seems unable to escape from.

This book is about 300 pages long and is divided into eleven chapters. The book begins with an introduction that provides the author’s perspective that Russia’s history is little known and thus the context of their geopolitical situation is not well appreciated or understood. This is followed by a discussion of the shadowy origins of Russia in the Kievan Rus (1), where some basic cultural patterns were set that remain fought over to this day. This is followed by a discussion of the Mongol Impact, which led some areas of Kievan Rus to move more towards Poland-Lithuania and the rest of Europe while others remained under the Mongol yoke and were eventually incorporated into a Muscovite state (2). The author then naturally moves into a discussion of Tsar and God that looks at the development of Russia’s authoritarian and often insecure political culture (3). This is followed by a look at the times of Trouble in the late 1500s and early 1600s after the collapse of the Rurikid dynasty (4), and the turn to Europe that happened during the time of Peter the Great about a century later (5). Russia’s westward turn was, not surprisingly, soon followed by a time of crisis when Russia was faced with invasion from Napoleon in the early 1800s (6). Before too long, in the 19th century, Russia found itself as an empire in crisis, unable to make the reforms that could have staved off violence (7), which soon led to the horrors of Revolutionary Russia (8). The author discusses the Communist war on Old Russia that followed (9), the way that the Russian Motherland was patriotically defended during World War II (10) even as the Soviet system threatened to fall apart afterwards, and the book ends in an unsettling place in the War in Ukraine (11), after which the book ends with notes, picture credits, an index, and acknowledgements.

Not everyone would be well-equipped to write a concise book that seeks to illuminate themes and patterns within Russian history, but this author is well-equipped to do so, having written a variety of books about the nation that deal with the Russian Revolution, Russia’s cultural history, the gulag, the Crimean War, and the identity of Europe. This is, in other words, an author who has done the research in Russia’s history that allows him to get a sense of Russia’s historical problems and the inability that Russia has had in seeking to develop a strong enough civic culture that would allow a republican culture to thrive. This is admittedly difficult under the best conditions, and Russia’s conditions have been far from good. As it is commonly pointed out, the core of Russia exists in a steppe region without natural borders that extends from Central Europe to East Asia, and Russia has always been threatened from nations on at least three sides, with frequent invasions from Central/Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, from the steppe regions to the South, and from East Asia (most notably during the time of the Mongols). It is also continually pointed out that Russia’s combination of church and state has also led to a continual cult of the strong leader, which continues to the present day, and it seems unlikely that these long-term historical constraints will cease to give Russia a troubled history that someone takes advantage of.