A Short History Of Russia: How The World’s Largest Country Invented Itself, From The Pagans To Putin, by Mark Galeotti

This book is a deeply interesting one, and being as short as it is, it makes no pretenses to being a complete book about Russian history. This is a task that is difficult to accomplish fully in any sort of one-volume text, particularly one as slim as this one is. What the author does manage to do compellingly is discuss a few of the key patterns that one finds over and over again in both Russian history and Russian historiography, so much so that they can be seen as characteristic approaches to dealing with history on the part of Russia’s rulers and elites. As one might well imagine, a great deal of Russia’s consistent problems come from key problems that have existed within Russia from the very start of its history more than 1000 years ago in the wilderness of Eastern Europe that have never been solved over the whole period of Russian history but have only gotten worse. The author’s exploration of these problems makes this book a very worthwhile one, and the author manages to recommend a great many other books about Russia to read for those who are willing to do so–and many of the books seem pretty worthwhile to me.

Among the essential problems the author discusses are three that appear over and over again within Russian history. The first is that Russia has always lacked a unified core that would allow for a high degree of cohesion without authoritarian government. There has always been a great deal of division within the groups of people who became Russian, divisions in language, religion, political worldviews, societal order, and the like, and at no point has there been a cohesive Russia to begin with–nor has there been a Russia that is easily defensible, as Russia has always been deeply vulnerable to attacks from all sides, and has sought a defense in depth to deal with these problems that has only given it a more diverse and scattered population with even less cohesion than before. For another, Russian rulers and elites have never come to terms with the truth of their history, but have continually written and overwritten various myths that suit the ruler’s whims at the time but are subject to change at a moment’s notice if the story is no longer useful to support the current thing. So it is that Russians lie about inviting the Scandinavians to rule over them, lie about the problems of the Mongol yoke, and are unable to deal with their relationship with both the West and the East in a coherent manner. Nor have they ever been able to deal with the reality of their existence and history. In addition to this, contemporary identity issues have made it impossible to determine how it is that different parts of Russian history belong differently to various regimes and groups of people, a problem it must be admitted does not plague the Russians alone, it must be admitted.

In terms of its contents, this book is just over 200 pages in length. It begins with an introduction. This is followed by a discussion of the deceptive nature Russian history describes the origins of the Russian state in the late pagan period (1). After this, the author explores the deceptive way that Russian historiography tends to deal with the period of Mongol domination, even when and how it ended (2). This is followed by a discussion of the development of the Muscovite state (3) and the violence involved in that. This is followed by a chapter on the development of the Petrine state and the incoherent way that Russia attempted to adopt from the West without wresting with the nature of what it was adopting (4). After this the author examines the nature of the autocracy of Catherine the Great (5). This is followed by a discussion of the problems of 19th century in dealing with problems of orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality within the Russian Empire (6). This, in turn, is followed by a discussion of the problems related to history and life under Communist rule (7). The author then finishes the book with a chapter about post-Communist Russia and its continued issues (8), before ending the book with acknowledgements and an index.