Nothing in it can be taken as fact.īut in the first half of the 18th century, when history writing in Russia was in its infancy, a German scholar called Gerhard Friedrich Müller scandalised the newly founded St Petersburg Academy of Sciences by concluding, based on his readings of the chronicle, that the Russians owed their origins to the Vikings. The chronicle was a patchwork of narrative poems, epic songs, Norse sagas, Slav folklore, old Byzantine annals and religious texts. The Primary Chronicle – compiled in the 1110s by monks in Kyiv – tells of a concordat reached in 862 between warring Slavic tribes and a group of Viking princes. And 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. But as Orlando Figes argues in this excellent survey of Russian history over 1,200 years, no other country has been so divided over its own beginnings. In The Story of Russia, Orlando Figes brings into sharp relief the vibrant characters that comprise Russia´s rich history, and whose stories remain so important in making sense of the world´s largest nation today – from the crowning of sixteen-year-old Ivan the Terrible in a candlelit cathedral, to Catherine the Great, riding out in a green uniform to arrest her husband at his palace, to the bitter last days of the Romanovs.īeautifully written and based on a lifetime of scholarship, The Story of Russia is a major and definitive work from the great storyteller of Russian history: sweeping, suspenseful, masterful.A timely reminder of the malign uses to which history can be put, Orlando Figes examines the origins of modern Russia and the myths Vladimir Putin is using to shape the present as an excuse for conquestĪll countries have foundation myths. 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. From 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.
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