Russia: The Once And Future Empire From Pre-History To Putin (2006) - Plot & Excerpts
Overview:This is a well-written bird's eye view of the history of the Russian people. It's argument is that unlike other "empires," Russia's identity/strength doe s not disappear when her Empire falls. Russia has gone through four or five major empires in the past 1300 years. She becomes (relatively) stronger after each fall.Content:There isn't much to add that other historians haven't said, aside from the above thesis. But I do want to look at some historiographical interpretations. The author does a good job in descriping the psyche of the Russian people. While fascinating, and having me convinced, it really can't be proven scientifically. But scientific knowledge has its limits, too. The author paints Russian figures "warts and all." Sometimes this leads to too critical an analysis of the Russian church. I was displeased that scant (if any) reference was made to the legend of the conversion to Orthodoxy of the Rus.Final thoughts:The book is useful in summarizing difficult parts of history. The narrative is smooth and compelling. Someone commented that the author is a left-ist revisionist historian blaming the West for Russia's ills. Maybe. While I am more "right wing" (I hate the term) than the author, I think there is some truth to the criticisms. One interesting note is the author ends the book (written in 2004) with a note of cautious optimism for Russia. Putin's Constantinian leadership of Russia further strengthened the author's case. This is a good book worth reading.
Ultimately unsatisfying. While the first sections of the book are likely accurate portrayals of Russian history, they are too rushed to take much away from. I found the final sections dealing with the era from the Revolution on to be overly sympathetic to the Soviet era and Stalin in particular. The last chapters on Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin slip from history to opinion. He makes brief mention of an incident of a Russian SST crashing at the 1973 Paris Air Show. I checked other sources, and found his description of the incident to be inaccurate. Add to this the spelling and other sloppy editorial errors, such as using the word "effect" rather than "affect" (I too caught the "MacDonald's" error spotted by another reviewer), and much of this work become suspect.While I gained some historical insight into the current situation with Ukraine and Russia, this is not a work that I can recommend.
What do You think about Russia: The Once And Future Empire From Pre-History To Putin (2006)?
I thought this was an exceptional overview of Russian history, and a fun read. The author sprinkles the text with several theories and interesting facts surrounding critical and pivotal moments in the history of Russia that kept me engaged throughout the book. I think what I found particularly interesting in the book was the author's ability to detail the nature of a community's geography, land, and political development in order to illustrate how these aspects of a society's development are inseparable from the development of the national character / psyche. It is always difficult to place oneself in the mindset of the "Other" to truly understand the nature of conflict between persons or groups of people, but I feel that Longworth makes a noble attempt at helping us understand the growth and development of the Russian character and identity to perhaps better understand current events.
—Jerry
This book served its purpose. I'm a lover of history, and the history I covered over my college years included the U.S. Western Europe, and Asia/Middle East. What was conspicuously absent was the history of Russia. This text covered that period with a well written overview of the period. Yes, more detail during certain periods might have been nice, but this book was intended as an overview and it was well written and footnoted. My inspiration for reading this now was the Ukraine-Russia issues now. Reading this book helped put it all into focus, where the two entities have shared histories going back to 600 C.E. It helped me understand better the rhetoric between the two nations today based upon histories that have overlapped over the centuries. It also explains the desire Putin has to extend Russia's borders one more time.
—Jessica Wicks
