Russia
A 1,000-Year Chronicle of the Wild East
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
Russia is a country of contradictions: a nation of cultural refinement and artistic originality and yet also a country that rules by 'the iron fist'. In this riveting history, Martin Sixsmith shows how Russia's complex identity has been formed over a thousand years, and how it can help us understand its often baffling behaviour at home and abroad.
Combining in-depth research and interviews with his personal experiences as a former BBC Moscow correspondent, Sixsmith skilfully traces the conundrums of modern Russia to their roots in its troubled past, and explains the nation's seemingly split personality as the result of influences that have divided it for centuries.
A Sunday Times bestseller, Russia is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the complex political landscape of this country, and its unique place in the modern world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Twenty years after the U.S.S.R.'s collapse, Russia remains a world-class power, and former BBC Moscow correspondent Sixsmith (Putin's Oil: The Yukos Affair and the Struggle for Russia) delivers a thoroughly satisfying history. He reaches the 20th century well before the text's one-third point, but skillfully summarizes the semilegendary ninth century merging of Slav and Viking tribes to form the "Rus" people. Two centuries of Mongol rule after 1200 isolated the country from Renaissance cultural values, but recovery under the Romanov Tsars (1612 1917) produced the world's largest empire, a rich culture, and a stubbornly autocratic government that persists despite a reforming czar (Peter the Great), the Enlightenment (Catherine the Great), and two revolutions (1917, 1991). Sixsmith interrupts his story to visit historical sites and speak to Russians about their past, a tactic that may stir readers to do the same. A lively, opinionated narrative.
