As Orlando Figes’ new story methodically unfolds, this is both myth of the first order and of great importance to understanding Russia today. From Ivan to Peter, Catherine to Nicholas, Russia’s leaders have reshaped these myths to suit their own purposes, sometimes as a defensive model to rally the people, sometimes as a badge of heavenly honor to establish Moscow’s position as the savior of the West. Often both at the same time. In July 2021, Vladimir Putin published his own history of Russia, a 5,000-word essay on the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians, which can now be read as his justification for the invasion he launched seven months later on to bring his brother “little Russians”. » back into the arms of big brother Rus. Returning to the fog of myth, he sees the idea of Ukraine as a Trojan horse, an “anti-Russian plan” since the 17th century, and that the current state is located on “historical Russian lands.” As Figes makes clear, anyone with even the most rudimentary understanding of the shape of Europe, from Berlin to the Urals, will know that borders are determined by raw power, not some mystical racial bond. Flip through any historical atlas of the past 1,000 years and states appear, disappear, and circulate with surprising but telling regularity. Empress Catherine, a German, may have founded Odessa (Figes interestingly uses the Russian spelling for the Ukrainian cities) to record world grain trade in 1794. But just years before that, the Black Sea coast was part of Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Ukrainian horror is the post-imperial disaster of a Russia struggling to come to terms with what happened with the collapse of the Soviet Union This historical primer has only traces of the original thinking exhibited by Figes’s other major works on Russia, but it effectively describes with considerable clarity the “structural continuities” of power, how the state and ruler, whether tsar or Stalin , “united in the body of a single being… the sanctification of the power of the tsar.” He takes us on a chronological journey, in the process highlighting how Putin and his propagandists have filled the void left by the collapse of the Soviet Union with what Figes calls “the debris of Russian history.” Pride, fear and resentment, aggression and defensiveness have merged into the toxic present, which offers a retreat into a conservative celebration of communal sacrifice, with little prospect of a constructive future. In the post-invasion briefing, Figes highlights the importance of Patriarch Kirill’s “day of forgiveness” speech, in which he called the war in Ukraine a crusade for the “salvation of man,” reminding people that Moscow and the Orthodox Church they are the saviors of Christianity, the last bastions of true morality. Russian soldiers, it has emerged, are giving their lives to contain the onslaught of gay pride parades, a Kremlin obsession for the past 20 years. The church has once again nailed its colors to the authoritarian fabric, alienating European notions of government and thought and undermining any serious development of a civil society capable of challenging central government. Figes notes the irony that it was the choice of Christianity that opened the gateway to Europe for Moscow in the first place, which makes Putin’s pivot to all things Western so ultimately disastrous. For while geopolitics make an alliance with Beijing an immediate strategic imperative, page after page of Russian history has been defined by the constant, often highly creative friction between Western ideas and Russian Slavic exceptionalism. The word Eurasian is circled as if the balance of cultural influences were equal, but in fact, since the Mongols helped establish Muscovy as the main state in the 15th and 16th centuries, what is striking is how marginal the influence of Asia and the civilization was in Russia. As abhorrent as Eurasia is to the “Soviets” and the Russians, Moscow became and remains an imperial power, ruling at different times in Europe, Siberia, and later central Asia. Russian icon of Grand Prince Vladimir. Photo: Heritage Images/Getty Images Today’s Ukrainian horror is the post-imperial devastation of a Russia struggling to come to terms with what happened with the collapse of the Soviet Union and that empire in 1991. As always with Russia, the costs on all sides will be enormous. 1812. 1917. 1945. These dates indicate the astonishing impact Russia has always had, twice claiming the role of savior of civilization after its invasion, as well as the protagonist of world revolution for over a generation. Add 2022 to that list, as I suspect we will have to do, and the long-term reverberations of Putin’s current destruction of Ukrainian cities and confrontation with the West become clear. Is it any wonder that Russians, both leaders and people, have struggled to accept a more humble status in the world? Figes cites the “extraordinary” findings of the respected Levada Center, whose poll suggests that Homo Soviet is not dead, with “low material expectations, social conformity, intolerance of ethnic and sexual minorities, acceptance of authority” . Indeed, reading the list of oppression that the Russians endured, with their heads bowed before their rulers, Homo Rus is not all that different from Homo Soviet, both before and after the Soviet era. Despite knowing that between 10 and 30 million of their own people were unjustly oppressed under Stalin, more than three-quarters of respondents believe that his policies were “a terrible necessity”. Figes documents how in 2021 Putin attacked history directly by shutting down Memorial, an organization purposely created to gather information about the past. Who knows now how the people really feel about their new tsar’s attempt to restore the empire at such a cost not only to the Ukrainians but to themselves? Reading the History of Russia you would bet against history to suggest that Putin and his current boys do not reflect something deep in Russian history. Yet in Kyiv, Putin is now creating another myth that won’t be easily forgotten, about a country he doesn’t believe exists: Ukraine. Filmmaker Angus Macqueen helped create an award-winning documentary platform, Russia on Film
