The Story of Russia (Large Print)

Description

From the great storyteller of Russian history (Financial Times), a brilliant account of the national mythologies and imperial ideologies that have shaped Russias past and politics--essential reading for understanding the country today The Story of Russia is a fresh approach to the thousand years of Russias history, concerned as much with the ideas that have shaped how Russians think about their past as it is with the events and personalities comprising it. No other country has reimagined its own story so often, in a perpetual effort to stay in step with the shifts of ruling ideologies. From the founding of Kievan Rus in the first millennium to Putins war against Ukraine, Orlando Figes explores the ideas that have guided Russias actions throughout its long and troubled existence. Whether hes describing the crowning of Ivan the Terrible in a candlelit cathedral or the dramatic upheaval of the peasant revolution, he reveals the impulses, often unappreciated or misunderstood by foreigners, that have driven Russian history: the medieval myth of Mother Russias holy mission to the world; the imperial tendency toward autocratic rule; the popular belief in a paternal tsar dispensing truth and justice; the cult of sacrifice rooted in the idea of the Russian soul; and always, the nationalist myth of Russias unjust treatment by the West. How the Russians came to tell their story and to revise it so often as they went along is not only a vital aspect of their history; it is also our best means of understanding how the country thinks and acts today. Based on a lifetime of scholarship and enthrallingly written, The Story of Russia is quintessential Figes: sweeping, revelatory, and masterful.

Orlando Figes is the author of many acclaimed books on Russian history, including A Peoples Tragedy, Natashas Dance, The Whisperers, The Crimean War, Revolutionary Russia, and The Europeans: Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture. His books have been translated into over thirty languages. He is a professor of history at Birkbeck College, London University.