The Story of Russia – Orlando Figes

 

The Story of Russia – Orlando Figes

Important distinction: This book is titled the STORY of Russia, not the HISTORY of Russia.  What exactly is the difference?  My guess is that whereas a “story” is in fact a “history”, it’s much shorter, hits mainly the highlights, and most importantly, tells an important lesson that is badly needed for 2023 Russia and its (probably lengthy) future.

Orlando Figes has written many massive volumes concerning Russian history, and I would argue is probably the best “go to” guy if you want to learn about the country.  My guess is that when he got to this one, he figured he has already told the in-depth history of Russia in a plethora of other volumes, that he instead set out to give a sort of “Cliff Notes” version of the story, with the focus being on “this is why the country is so messed up”.

He begins the book in present day with Vladimir Putin showing his blood-thirsty fangs towards neighboring Ukraine, and explaining how Putin misuses history into thinking that Ukraine “belongs to” Russia.  What Figes tells us at the beginning of this story is that there is lot of history of Russia that we don’t know.  We must remember that primitive countries and lands didn’t exactly keep meticulous notes of the comings and goings of everyday life, and it certainly didn’t help that Russia has such an expansive geography.

So Figes does his best with what we do have, and he pieces the story together based on what the majority of historians can conclude, is in fact, fact.  Once we get past the mythic origins, we read about such leaders as Ivan the Terrible (who didn’t come across as that terrible) and Peter the Great (who definitely didn’t come across as that great). We do read a lot about the Romanov dynasty, but for readers wanting an extensive account of much of the details, they should be advised to look elsewhere.

Again, the author’s point is to be somewhat brief.  There’s literally nothing here about the Russian-Japan War of 1905, and I think Premier Nikita Khrushchev gets less than one and-a-half pages.  The point, though, is to explain the country’s thinking and how it’s perception of itself has become somewhat warped.  Much is because of the misunderstandings of history, but a lot of it is because of poor leadership and overall ignorance of such a backward country.

When we arrive at the 1990s, the author is careful to point out that Russia never really intended to become an altruistic nation determine to right the many wrongs. No, the people were far too proud for that.  So even though “Communism failed” in 1991, Russia still had far too many warts and cancerous lesions to make any sort of clean break and do some sort of political control-alt-delete.

As this book went to press, Russia was in its third or fourth month into the war with Ukraine, and whereas the author isn’t surprised that it didn’t go as quick or smooth as Putin anticipated, he also alleges that even if Russia manages to “win” the war, they’ll still in fact, lose due to the exhaustion of many resources; including people. 

So sadly, it seems like Russia has a long, long way to go before they can ever get out of such a terrible quagmire. The only hope really is time, and lots of it.  It takes a lot of time to correct backward thinking, and for a country that has been through so much turmoil after so many centuries, it sadly doesn’t appear that the horizon will be any brighter anytime soon.