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Author Topic: A new history of Russia  (Read 5375 times)

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Offline Larry1

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A new history of Russia
« on: November 21, 2012, 03:11:30 PM »
Earlier this year Martin Sixsmith, longtime BBC correspondent in Moscow, published a short history of Russia, entitled "Russia, A 1,000 Year Chronicle of the Wild East".  As I picked the book up and noticed it was only 530 pages I found it difficult to imagine how a writer could cover 1,000 years of Russian history in such a short book.  I began reading and soon found the answer: by giving very short shrift to the early years.

The book devotes very little coverage to the days of Mongol suzerainty over Russia,  only seven pages to the reign of Ivan the Terrible (Ivan IV), and only 14 pages to the reign of Peter the Great.  As it gets closer to the 20th century, more in-depth coverage is given.

The best feature of the book is that is is highly readable.  It's certainly not an academic work, but a popular history.  But even so it does quote some of original sources, such as The Russian Primary Chronicle's description of Alexander Nevsky's defense of Novgorod against an invasion by the Teutonic Knights, which was later to become the subject of Sergei Eisenstein's notable 1938 film, "Alexander Nevsky".

The book also contains a great many interesting little stories.  One such story is a description of a hoard of ancient documents written on strips of birch bark.  The documents were discovered as the foundations for apartment houses were being excavated in Novgorod in the 1950s.  The documents included cribsheets for school exams and a love note from a girl:

Quote
I love you and you love me. So why don't we get married?

The author also relates a story about Ivan the Terrible's anger toward Queen Elizabeth I of England, apparently provoked by her ignoring his marriage proposal:

Quote
I thought you were the one who ran your own country. That is why I started this correspondence with you. But it seems other people are running your country besides you... You are still there in your virginal state like any spinster... Moscow can do without English goods...

If there is sufficient interest, I will continue this review in subsequent installments.
« Last Edit: November 21, 2012, 03:14:11 PM by Larry1 »

Offline jone

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Re: A new history of Russia
« Reply #1 on: November 26, 2012, 11:14:23 AM »
A Chronicle is not necessarily a history.  For us English reading chaps, I like Robert Service from Oxford.  "A History of Modern Russia".  But, by all means, continue your observations.  The birch bark anecdote is novel.  I had heard the story of Elizabeth.  I would be amused to hear what Sixsmith has to say about Catherine the Great (Polish prostitute).
Kissing girls is a goodness.  It beats the hell out of card games.  - Robert Heinlein

Offline Larry1

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Re: A new history of Russia
« Reply #2 on: January 20, 2015, 02:32:35 PM »
I set this book review aside because there did not seem to be much interest in it. I'm still not sure any of the regular participants might be interested in any topic other than events of the last year or so. But here goes another stab at reviewing Martin Sixsmith's book, "Russia, a 1,000-Year Chronicle of the Wild East".

I will start approximately where the book starts: with the arrival around the year 862 of the Viking Prince Rurik to the lands that later became Russia. Rurik arrived with a band of Vikings, who were later to become known as Varangians. Rurik first came to the Northern city of Novgorod. His descendants soon settled in the small town of Kiev on the bank of the Dnieper River.

One of the Varangians' primary goals was to engage in trade with the wealthy Byzantines in the City of Byzantium (now Istanbul).

I will now go out of chronological order to provide Sixsmith's material on The Holodomor, the great famine in Ukraine in the early 1930s. He avers that between two and four million people died in Ukraine.

Moscow suppressed all information about the famine for half a century, but a few foreign observers witnessed it and reported on it.  One such observer was the British diplomat Gareth Jones:

Quote
I tramped through villages in the snow of March. I saw children with swollen bellies. I slept in peasants' huts, and I talked to every peasant I met...Everywhere was the cry, "there is no bread; we are dying... In a train a Communist denied to me that there was a famine. I flung into the spittoon a crust of bread I had been eating. A peasant fished it out and ravenously ate it... The Communist subsided."

Offline AC

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Re: A new history of Russia
« Reply #3 on: January 20, 2015, 02:47:57 PM »
A Chronicle is not necessarily a history.  For us English reading chaps, I like Robert Service from Oxford.  "A History of Modern Russia".  But, by all means, continue your observations.  The birch bark anecdote is novel.  I had heard the story of Elizabeth.  I would be amused to hear what Sixsmith has to say about Catherine the Great (Polish prostitute).

She was Geman and I never heard that she was a prostitute.

 

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