Every country has an origin story but none
has ‘changed it so often’ as Russia, according to Orlando Figes. The subject is inseparable from myth. In this impressive and
deeply immersive book, the author sets out
to reveal Russia’s history, its people’s perception of their past and the manifold ways
in which those in power manipulate both
events and legend to shape the present. It is
a saga of multi-millennial identity politics.
A bestselling historian with a storied
background himself, Figes arranges his
material chronologically over ten chapters,
beginning with the medieval chronicles of
Kievan Rus. Those sources launched myths
that became fundamental to the Russian
understanding of nationhood. He then proceeds to scrutinise the Mongol influence,
following the 13th-century ‘invasion’ – actually a gradual migration of nomadic tribes.
Russian historians like to deny the Mongol
legacy, but Figes argues convincingly that
‘in fact its impact was immense’.
In these early sections he draws on
ethnogenesis and ethno-archaeology, revealing the baleful ways in which even those
fields became politicised. He then ushers in
Ivan IV, the Terrible (grozny), the first tsar
to take on the ‘manufactured aura of ancient
lineage and imperial status’. Through the
times of trouble (smutnoe vremia) following
Ivan’s rule, the imposition of serfdom in the
16th century and through much else, Figes
weaves his themes. They include the role of geography, notably the problem of controlling such a vast territory (in the 17th century
it took two years to get a message from the
capital to Okhotsk) and the fact that the Urals
‘aren’t a real barrier between Europe and
Asia’, though they are regularly touted to be.
Catherine the Great was wild for the Enlightenment – until the outbreak of the French Revolution
Peter the Great reformed much, including
time itself (he adopted the western BC-AD
system). Figes shows that after the Petrine
state militarised society ‘a pattern soon
emerged in the history of the armed forces
– namely Russia’s dependence on quantity
because it lagged behind in quality’. He is
keen on patterns, and by the end of the book
so was I. Patterns foster understanding.
Meanwhile, the reforming Peter dug a deep ‘cultural rift’ between urban elites and rural
peasants, which turned into ‘the fault line
along which the revolution would be fought’.
The nature of state power is another theme.
Figes likes big statements, and his evidence
and the way he builds arguments to back
them up are convincing: ‘The persistence of
autocracy in Russia is explained less by the
state’s strength than by the weakness of society.’ The Empress Catherine ‘paid lip service
to the idea of liberty but did not believe that
everybody should have it’. She was wild for
the Enlightenment until the outbreak of the
French Revolution, after which she banned
Voltaire’s works in a panic. Figes traces
ways in which the Russian path diverged
from western trajectories – for example,
an abstract state developed in the West as
a counterbalance to the monarch, but in Russia the tsar and state were one.
His method is to synthesise sources, mostly secondary ones. The book’s outstanding
feature is its brevity, and I mean this as praise:
the general reader will always prefer 300-odd
pages to 800. (Publishers say general readers don’t exist, but I know they do because
I’m one.) Academics may snipe at The Story
of Russia for its broadbrush summarising
without noting that their own books are neither read nor sold. And everyone knows it is
harder to write a short book than a long one.
Ukraine is seldom absent from the tightly structured narrative. In 882, Rus
warriors captured Kiev and the Khazar tribute-
paying lands between the Volga and the Dnieper. Kiev became the capital of Kievan Rus.
We are shown how both Ukraine and Russia have deployed the history they share
‘to reimagine narratives of national identity they could use for their own nationalist
purposes’. In fact the idea that Kievan Rus
was the birthplace of either modern state
is ‘absurd’.
The 1861 emancipation decree fell well
short of utopian hopes, even though civil
society was beginning to organise and represent itself through self-made institutions; and
when a bomb blew Tsar Alexander II to bits
20 years later, Figes says, ‘it is hard to think
of a more momentous turning point in Russian history’. Three centuries of Romanovs
culminated in the weak (at best) Nicholas II,
whom George V refused to shelter in Britain.
The Eastern Orthodox Church has stood
centre stage in this whole Greek tragedy ever
since 988, when Vladimir the Great converted and brought Russia into the cultural orbit
of Byzantium. In a hotly contested field, no
patriarch beats the present incumbent for
sheer un-Christian horror. Ask any Russian
about the reflection of the Breguet watch
on the desk (a story not cited here). Kirill is
a fan of the Ukraine war – of course he is.
Figes’s book Natasha’s Dance, published
in 2002 and to my mind his best, is the perfect accompaniment to his latest work. In that
earlier volume – a thematic cultural interpretation – he asks whether unseen threads of
a native sensibility hold the nation together.
The Story of Russia draws lightly on culture,
but I especially enjoyed its forays into film
as myth-manipulating propaganda. Vsevo-lod Pudovkin’s 1939 Minin and Pozharsky
retooled the events of 1612 to portray contemporary Poles as aggressors. The previous year, Sergei Eisenstein’s Alexander
Nevsky had trumpeted a patriotic message
of national unity against foreign invasion;
but Stalin withdrew the film when Molotov
and Ribbentrop signed the non-aggression
pact, trundling it out again when Germany
returned to enemy ranks.
Figes asks what the combatants then
understood by ‘motherland’. Post-war Politburo saurians stoked nationalism, as male
life expectancy dropped to the age of 62 (that
was in 1980). In seven pages devoted to the
Gorbachev era, we see the present state moving towards us like a slow-motion film. After
that, ‘the vacuum created by the Soviet collapse was being filled with debris from every
period of Russian history’.
Figes roots Russia’s resentment of the
West in the victory over the Mongols at
Kulikovo in 1380. According to the myth-
makers, that was the moment of national awakening. The event is certainly now
linked in the public imagination with other
military sacrifices in which Russia apparently saved the western world – notably from Napoleon in 1812-5 and, of course,
from the Nazis. Vladimir Putin, a keen student of history, repurposes every chapter in
his country’s story to justify his policies,
ensuring that school textbooks parrot his fabrications. ‘Putin’s version of people’s history’, writes Figes, ‘enabled them to feel
good as Russians again.’ I have observed
this playing out across 11 times zones.
I once sat on a sofa in a homestay in Chukotka in the Russian Far East as images of
Putin flickered in the corner and heard my
host, a widow, say: ‘A monster, yes – but our
monster’.
Figes speaks on every page in the crisp,
sober manner of a newsreader, while observing the action unfold with an eagle’s eye.
This is history not so much of longue durée
as haute altitude. In the final chapter he
gives his own interpretation of the current
war. Russia-watchers will fall on it, but it
will be a small tragedy if they don’t read the
preceding chapters first.
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