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A review by lpm100
A Short History of Russia: How the World's Largest Country Invented Itself, from the Pagans to Putin by Mark Galeotti
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
A Short History of Russia
Mark Galeotti
"A Reader's Digest version of the complex history of a troubled place."
5/5 stars
This is an interesting book, and I really do like the (Russian-speaking) author's writing style.
Russia is an enormous place, that it world take several huge volumes of history to explain such a massive empire. ( Russia only started to become as large as it is after the reign of Ivan the terrible-- Adding about 13500 mile² per annum for a century.)
They started out as a bunch of warring principalities (like China about 1300 years earlier), And later they became subjects of the Mongolian Empire for hundreds of years.
Nationhood is a thing that came many centuries later, and then only in bits and pieces-- and inconsistently. And a lot of the patterns were set up by an outside power ( This is similar to the way that a lot of India/Pakistan are what they are because of British influence.)
*******
I would have to say that there are so many historical resonances to other times and places that they all start to run together on me. (That makes it hard to think of specific examples. )
And in that way, Russia is only a unique case because of a random constellation of events that happened in this case, but are a subset of all the other random events that have happened in countless other cases. ( No, you never step into the same river twice - - but there's not really any reason that you step into *this* river as opposed to *that* one.)
Ten such random events:
1. The case of an Empire that is just too big to manage- Both because reasons of geographical distance creating even more distance between central authorities and locals on the ground. And also because large amounts of space incorporate dramatically different ethnic groups. (Such as the Roman Empire.)
2. The case of a country desperately seeking modernization and with leadership that wants it but with difficulty getting the hoi polloi to be engaged. (Egypt.)
3. The case of wars being played out over the heads of the overwhelming majority of the unreactive middle by the extremes on both sides. Also, the people people from the countryside/conservative places are cannon fodder for hare-brained schemes of would-be social engineers. (American soldiers sent to Vietnam. Iran and the Shah.)
4. A country that stays troubled for hundreds of years with no ostensible reason And no forthcoming solution. (Haiti.)
5. The case of experimentation being done on peasants and working squares. There is NEVER a time that the elite of any country put their own children on the front lines to test stupid ideas. (China and the Great Leap Forward. All of the socialist-Communist projects of the last century. )
6. The case of some people somewhere reinterpreting a mythologized past as necessary in order to create a foundation for national greatness. The author returns to the metaphor of Russia as a palimpsest, and it's so appropriate that it's almost impossible to over-use it. (Japan was a feudal society, and they seem to have forgotten that.)
7. The case of some people somewhere looking for a strong man (and making a Faustian bargain therewith) to help them reclaim national greatness/force the trains to run on time. ( Mussolini. Adolf Hitler. Chairman Mao. Xi Jinping.)
8. The strange European case of all these Royal families incessant intermarrying and swapping places in countries that are ostensibly at war with one another. (Alexandra Feodorovna started out as Alix of Hesse; The British Royal family is actually German, and their surname used to be Saxe-Coburg-Gotha before WWII.)
9. The case of a country taking hundreds of years to figure out what orbit they properly belong in-- and for some reason, this vexes the elite of the country much more than it does working squares. ( Is Russia a democratic European/Occidental country, or does it have more elements of an Asian/ Oriental despotism? Turkey has been having similar national introspection for some number of centuries, with no clear decision yet in sight.)
10. The case of completely accidental leadership. One leader will be brilliant, and the next 3 or 4 will be complete idiots. No rhyme, no reason. Too many examples to elaborate.)
*******
As fascinating as the history of Russia is, this book is simultaneously too much and not enough.
The topic is so huge that it would require an extended reading journey to unravel it--And aint nobody got time for that, so this Reader's Digest version will have to do.
But, once all of those things have been learned and then you have have a country that came together because of happenstance-- like any of the other current 195 or so on Earth.
Verdict: The number one lesson for countries' leadership SHOULD BE *neutrality and non alignment.*
I recommend this book at the 2nd hand price.
Mark Galeotti
"A Reader's Digest version of the complex history of a troubled place."
5/5 stars
This is an interesting book, and I really do like the (Russian-speaking) author's writing style.
Russia is an enormous place, that it world take several huge volumes of history to explain such a massive empire. ( Russia only started to become as large as it is after the reign of Ivan the terrible-- Adding about 13500 mile² per annum for a century.)
They started out as a bunch of warring principalities (like China about 1300 years earlier), And later they became subjects of the Mongolian Empire for hundreds of years.
Nationhood is a thing that came many centuries later, and then only in bits and pieces-- and inconsistently. And a lot of the patterns were set up by an outside power ( This is similar to the way that a lot of India/Pakistan are what they are because of British influence.)
*******
I would have to say that there are so many historical resonances to other times and places that they all start to run together on me. (That makes it hard to think of specific examples. )
And in that way, Russia is only a unique case because of a random constellation of events that happened in this case, but are a subset of all the other random events that have happened in countless other cases. ( No, you never step into the same river twice - - but there's not really any reason that you step into *this* river as opposed to *that* one.)
Ten such random events:
1. The case of an Empire that is just too big to manage- Both because reasons of geographical distance creating even more distance between central authorities and locals on the ground. And also because large amounts of space incorporate dramatically different ethnic groups. (Such as the Roman Empire.)
2. The case of a country desperately seeking modernization and with leadership that wants it but with difficulty getting the hoi polloi to be engaged. (Egypt.)
3. The case of wars being played out over the heads of the overwhelming majority of the unreactive middle by the extremes on both sides. Also, the people people from the countryside/conservative places are cannon fodder for hare-brained schemes of would-be social engineers. (American soldiers sent to Vietnam. Iran and the Shah.)
4. A country that stays troubled for hundreds of years with no ostensible reason And no forthcoming solution. (Haiti.)
5. The case of experimentation being done on peasants and working squares. There is NEVER a time that the elite of any country put their own children on the front lines to test stupid ideas. (China and the Great Leap Forward. All of the socialist-Communist projects of the last century. )
6. The case of some people somewhere reinterpreting a mythologized past as necessary in order to create a foundation for national greatness. The author returns to the metaphor of Russia as a palimpsest, and it's so appropriate that it's almost impossible to over-use it. (Japan was a feudal society, and they seem to have forgotten that.)
7. The case of some people somewhere looking for a strong man (and making a Faustian bargain therewith) to help them reclaim national greatness/force the trains to run on time. ( Mussolini. Adolf Hitler. Chairman Mao. Xi Jinping.)
8. The strange European case of all these Royal families incessant intermarrying and swapping places in countries that are ostensibly at war with one another. (Alexandra Feodorovna started out as Alix of Hesse; The British Royal family is actually German, and their surname used to be Saxe-Coburg-Gotha before WWII.)
9. The case of a country taking hundreds of years to figure out what orbit they properly belong in-- and for some reason, this vexes the elite of the country much more than it does working squares. ( Is Russia a democratic European/Occidental country, or does it have more elements of an Asian/ Oriental despotism? Turkey has been having similar national introspection for some number of centuries, with no clear decision yet in sight.)
10. The case of completely accidental leadership. One leader will be brilliant, and the next 3 or 4 will be complete idiots. No rhyme, no reason. Too many examples to elaborate.)
*******
As fascinating as the history of Russia is, this book is simultaneously too much and not enough.
The topic is so huge that it would require an extended reading journey to unravel it--And aint nobody got time for that, so this Reader's Digest version will have to do.
But, once all of those things have been learned and then you have have a country that came together because of happenstance-- like any of the other current 195 or so on Earth.
Verdict: The number one lesson for countries' leadership SHOULD BE *neutrality and non alignment.*
I recommend this book at the 2nd hand price.