Published by Random House UK, 2021, hardcover, illustrated, 190 pages, condition: new.
Can anyone truly understand Russia? Let one of the world's leading experts show you how, using the fascinating history of a nation to illuminate its future.
Russia is a country with no natural borders, no single ethnos, no true central identity. At the crossroads of Europe and Asia, it is everyones other. And yet it is one of the most powerful nations on earth, a master game-player on the global stage with a rich history of war and peace, poets and revolutionaries.
In this essential whistle-stop tour of the worlds most misunderstood nation, Mark Galeotti takes us behind the myths to the heart of the Russian story: from the formation of a nation to its early legends - including Ivan the Terrible and Catherine the Great - to the rise and fall of the Romanovs, the Russian Revolution, the Cold War, Chernobyl and the end of the Soviet Union plus the arrival of an obscure politician named Vladimir Putin.
Russia is a country with no natural borders, no single tribe or people, no true central identity. Russia is everyone's perennial "other" with Europeans considering it Asian and vice versa. It has been invaded by outsiders from Vikings to Mongols, crusading Teutonic orders to the Poles, Napoleon's French and Hitler's Germans. It has also responded to its lack of clear frontiers by a steady process of expansion, bringing new ethnic, cultural, and religious identities into the mix. Russians are thus themselves palimpsest people, citizens of a patchwork nation that more than most shows their external influence in every aspect of life.
These are the foundational observations in A Short History of Russia: How the World's Largest Country Invented Itself, from the Pagans to Putin, which was written by Mark Galeotti. He is not your typical academic historian; his PhD was earned in government from the London School of Economics. As Galeotti puts it , he specializes in "fairly murky and morally dubious subjects: modern Russia history and security affairs and transnational and organized crime of both past and present."
