To understand what Russia's future holds - to grasp what Putin's regime means for Russia and the world - we need to unravel the ideas and meanings of that history. How the Russians came to tell their story, and to reinvent it as they went along, is a vital aspect of their history, their culture and beliefs. No other country has been so divided over its own past as Russia. Lees een deel van de inleiding in vertaling én in het oorspronkelijke Engels.įrom the great storyteller of Russia, a spellbinding account of the stories that have shaped the country's past - and how they can inform its present. Based on a lifetime of scholarship and enthrallingly written, The Story of Russia is quintessential Figes: sweeping, revelatory, and masterful.Nu in onze boekhandels: Orlando Figes’ The Story of Russia én de Nederlandse vertaling door Frank Lekens en Toon Dohmen, Het verhaal van Rusland. 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. Whether he's 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 Russia's 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 Russia's unjust treatment by the West. No other country has reimagined its own story so often, in a perpetual effort to stay in step with the shifts of ruling ideologies.įrom the founding of Kievan Rus in the first millennium to Putin's war against Ukraine, Orlando Figes explores the ideas that have guided Russia's actions throughout its long and troubled existence. The Story of Russia is a fresh approach to the thousand years of Russia's 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.

The story of russia orlando figes