A Short History of Russia

May 15, 2020
A fine introduction to a nation that "has responded to its lack of clear frontiers by a steady process of expansion, bringing new ethnic, cultural and religious identities into the mix." "Russia is a country with no natural borders, no single tribe or people, no true central identity," writes Galeotti, an expert on Russian history and culture. The country's written history only begins in the ninth century, when the Vikings took notice. Readers aware that Norse raiders sailed west as far as America may be surprised to learn that they also traveled eastward as far as the Black Sea to trade and plunder. Called Rus' by the Slavs, by 900 they had settled in Kiev, adopted Christianity, and established a nation that neighboring Byzantium took seriously. The Mongols conquered Russia around 1240. While conventional histories describe "two centuries of Asiatic despotism," Mongol rule was fairly benign. By 1500, Moscow was the leading city, and four centuries of spectacular conquests began. Peter the Great (reign: 1682-1725) introduced European culture and technology. Under Catherine the Great (1762-1796), Russia became a European power. Although American and French revolutionary ideals penetrated Russia, Napoleon's traumatic 1812 invasion convinced the czars that democracy was "a product of dangerous, foreign-inspired freethinking." As a result, in the 19th century, the country sunk into despotism. As a visiting French aristocrat noted, "this empire, vast as it is, is only a prison to which the emperor holds the key." Galeotti reaches the 20th century only 50 pages before the end but delivers a fine, abbreviated chronicle. Lenin's Bolsheviks won Russia's revolution after a brutal struggle, but his early death meant that the Soviet Union was largely the creation of his heir, Stalin, whose epic cruelty disguises the fact that economic decline and misgovernment, not despotism, doomed his empire. The author blames the Soviet collapse on corrupt, unresponsive leaders, but, as Russia under Putin demonstrates, a corrupt kleptocracy remains popular as long as it provides stability, national pride, and jobs. A slim, accessible account of the megacountry.

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June 8, 2020
Think tank scholar Galeotti (We Need to Talk About Putin) explores the links between national identity, mythmaking, and statecraft in this brisk and idiosyncratic rundown of Russia’s 1,000-year history. Revealing how “grand historical narratives” cobbled from legends and twisted facts have been used to justify expansionist policies and “state-building schemes” from the 10th century to today, Galeotti rehashes the conquests, alliances, and conspiracies that make up Russia’s complex past. He debunks the “convenient” myth that Mongol dominion from 1240 until 1480 cut off Russia from Renaissance Europe and predisposed it to “despotism,” and notes that the Prussian-born monarch Catherine the Great exploited “tenuous” genealogical links to a Viking dynasty and an 800-year-old myth to take the Russian throne in the 18th century. The persistent theme—wielded by Lenin to build socialism, Stalin to modernize the Soviet Union, and Putin to seize the Crimea—behind these and other historical narratives, Galeotti writes, is that Russia’s “greater destiny” justifies its actions. Experts may balk at Galeotti’s self-acknowledged “broad brush” (Napoleon’s 1812 invasion only gets a few paragraphs, for instance), but he often finds clarity through concision and down-to-earth prose. This is an accessible and illuminating summary of how modern Russia came to be.