Orlando FigesRezensionen

An accessible account of the history of Russia, albeit a brief one. The overall impression I get is of a rather sparse and uni-dimensional history, compared with, say, our own in the subcontinent, with its numerous dynasties, philosophies, religions, languages and literatures. Russian history, like its landscapes, seems so dreary and self-damagingly futile, an impression only reinforced by the current misadventure with Ukraine, the latter by all accounts the source and fount of Russian civilization. The general air of penury is all the more surprising, when one thinks of the great flowering of Russian literature in the 19th century, with great names like Tolstoy, Gogol, Turgenev, Chekov, etc. part of our everyday sensibility. However, the account does throw some light on the nature of Russia's engagement with Europe, and the extreme sensitivity to any intimations of independence in the regions the Russians seem to think belongs to the central Russian sphere, e.g. Belorus, Ukraine, Caucasus, etc.

This is a vital article published recently in The Nation about this controversial book and why it was not published in Russia after two attempts by different publishers. I hope that in its wake its readers' rankings would be less upbeat.

Orlando Figes and Stalin's Victims. Peter Reddaway and Stephen F. Cohen
May 23, 2012

Many Western observers believe that Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian regime has in effect banned a Russian edition of a widely acclaimed 2007 book by the British historian Orlando Figes, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia. A professor at University of London’s Birkbeck College, Figes himself inspired this explanation. In an interview and in an article in 2009, he suggested that his first Russian publisher dropped the project due to “political pressure” because his large-scale study of Stalin-era terror “is inconvenient to the current regime.” Three years later, his explanation continues to circulate.

We doubted Figes’s explanation at the time—partly because excellent Russian historians were themselves publishing so many uncensored exposés of the horrors of Stalinism, and continue to do so—but only now are we able to disprove it. (Since neither of us knows Figes or has ever had any contact with him, there was no personal animus in our investigation.) Our examination of transcripts of original Russian-language interviews he used to write The Whisperers, and of documents provided by Russians close to the project, tells a different story. A second Russian publisher, Corpus, had no political qualms about soon contracting for its own edition of the book. In 2010, however, Corpus also canceled the project. The reasons had nothing to do with Putin’s regime but everything to do with Figes himself.

* * *

In 2004 specialists at the Memorial Society, a widely respected Russian historical and human rights organization founded in 1988 on behalf of victims and survivors of Stalin’s terror, were contracted by Figes to conduct hundreds of interviews that form the basis of The Whisperers, and are now archived at Memorial. In preparing for the Russian edition, Corpus commissioned Memorial to provide the original Russian-language versions of Figes’s quotations and to check his other English-language translations. What Memorial’s researchers found was a startling number of minor and major errors. Its publication “as is,” it was concluded, would cause a scandal in Russia.

This revelation, which we learned about several months ago, did not entirely surprise us, though our subsequent discoveries were shocking. Separately, we had been following Figes’s academic and related abuses for some time. They began in 1997, with his book A People’s Tragedy, in which the Harvard historian Richard Pipes found scholarly shortcomings. In 2002 Figes’s cultural history of Russia, Natasha’s Dance, was greeted with enthusiasm by many reviewers until it encountered a careful critic in the Times Literary Supplement, Rachel Polonsky of Cambridge University. Polonsky pointed out various defects in the book, including Figes’s careless borrowing of words and ideas of other writers without adequate acknowledgment. One of those writers, the American historian Priscilla Roosevelt, wrote to us, “Figes appropriated obscure memoirs I had used in my book Life on the Russian Country Estate (Yale University Press, 1995), but changed their content and messed up the references.” Another leading scholar, T.J. Binyon, published similar criticism of Natasha’s Dance: “Factual errors and mistaken assertions strew its pages more thickly than autumnal leaves in Vallombrosa.”

In 2010 a different dimension of Figes’s practices came to light. For some time he had been writing anonymous derogatory reviews on Amazon of books by his colleagues in Russian history, notably Polonsky and Robert Service of Oxford University. Polonsky’s Molotov’s Magic Lantern, for example, was “pretentious” and “the sort of book that makes you wonder why it was ever published.” Meanwhile, Figes wrote on Amazon, also anonymously, a rave review of his own recent The Whisperers. It was, Figes said, a “beautiful and necessary” account of Soviet history written by an author with “superb story-telling skills…. I hope he writes forever.”

When Service and Polonsky expressed their suspicion that Figes had written the reviews, his lawyer threatened Service with court action. Soon, however, Figes was compelled to admit that he had indeed written the anonymous reviews. Service summed up the affair: Figes had “lied through his teeth for a week and threatened to sue me for libel if I didn’t say black was white…. If there is one thing that should come out of this, it is the importance of giving people freedom to speak the truth without the menace of financial ruin.”

* * *

At about the same time, as we later learned, the true story of the Russian edition of Figes’s The Whisperers was unfolding behind the scenes in Moscow. In summer 2010, representatives of three Russian organizations involved—the publisher Corpus, Memorial and a foundation, Dynastia (which owned the Russian rights and paid for the translation)—met to consider what Memorial’s researchers had uncovered. According to a detailed account by one participant, the group tried to find a way to salvage the project, but the researchers had documented too many “anachronisms, incorrect interpretations, stupid mistakes and pure nonsense.” All of The Whisperers’ “facts, dates, names and terms, and the biographies of its central figures, need to be checked,” the participant added. It was too much. A decision was made against proceeding with the Russian edition. After re-examining the relevant materials, Dynastia informed Figes of the decision in an April 6, 2011, letter to his London literary agency.

Indeed, after looking at only a few chapters of The Whisperers, Memorial found so many misrepresentations of the life stories of Stalin’s victims that its chief researcher, a woman with extensive experience working on such materials, said, “I simply wept as I read it and tried to make corrections.” Here are just three examples, which we have also examined, whose gravity readers can decide for themselves:

§ To begin with an example that blends mistakes with invention, consider Figes’s treatment of Natalia Danilova (p. 253), whose father had been arrested. After misrepresenting her family history, Figes puts words in her mouth, evidently to help justify the title of his book: Except for an aunt, “the rest of us could only whisper in dissent.” The “quotation” does not appear in Memorial’s meticulous transcription of its recorded interview with Danilova.

§ Figes invents “facts” in other cases, apparently also for dramatic purpose. According to The Whisperers (pp. 215-17, 292-93), “it is inconceivable” that Mikhail Stroikov could have completed his dissertation while in prison “without the support of the political police. He had two uncles in the OGPU” (the political police). However, there is no evidence that Stroikov had any uncles, nor is there any reason to allege that he had the support of the secret police. Figes also claims that for helping Stroikov’s family, a friend then in exile was “rearrested, imprisoned and later shot.” In reality, this friend was not rearrested, imprisoned or executed, but lived almost to the age of 90.

§ Figes’s distortion of the fate of Dina Ielson-Grodzianskaia (pp. 361-62), who survived eight years in the Gulag, is grievous in a different respect. After placing her in the wrong concentration camp, he alleges that she was “one of the many ‘trusties’” whose collaboration earned them “those small advantages which…could make the difference between life and death.” There is no evidence in the interviews used by Figes that Ielson-Grodzianskaia was ever a “trusty” or received any special privileges. As a leading Memorial researcher commented, Figes’s account is “a direct insult to the memory of a prisoner.”

The Whisperers may be consistent with Figes’s other practices, but for us, longtime students (and friends) of victims of Stalinist and other Soviet-era repressions, the book’s defects are especially grave. For many Russians, particularly surviving family members, Stalin’s millions of victims are a “sacred memory.” Figes has not, to say the least, been faithful to that memory—nor to the truth-telling mission of the often politically embattled Memorial, which, despite the effort expended, honorably agreed with the decision against publishing the Russian edition. Still more, a great many Russians have suffered, even died, for, as Service put it, the “freedom to speak the truth.” Figes has not honored that martyrdom either.

* * *

Unfortunately, The Whisperers is still regarded by many Western readers, including scholars, as an exemplary study of Soviet history. These new revelations show, however, that Figes’s work cannot be read without considerable caution. Historians are obliged to be especially meticulous in using generally inaccessible archive materials, but Figes cannot be fully trusted even with open sources. Thus, in The Whisperers he also maligns the memory of the late Soviet poet and longtime editor of Novyi Mir, Aleksandr Tvardovsky, a bold forerunner of Mikhail Gorbachev’s anti-Stalinist thinking, by stating that Tvardovsky “betrayed” his own father to the police during the terror (p. 134). Figes’s allegation has been convincingly refuted in the Russian press.

We hope that in his latest book, Just Send Me Word, published in May, Figes has treated his unique sources with more care. This book tells the saga of a deeply moving, secret, more than eight-year correspondence between an inmate in Stalin’s remote Gulag and a devoted woman in Moscow, who later became his wife. Regrettably, the book conveys the impression that Figes retains the full support of Memorial, through, for example, the insertion at the end of the volume of “A Note from Memorial” (an analysis of the correspondence by a Memorial researcher that was apparently designed for another purpose).

In truth, Memorial has come to a different decision regarding Figes. In a letter, one of its leading figures recently wrote about Figes, “Many of us have formed an impression of him as being…a very mediocre researcher and an incompetent handler of sources who is poorly oriented in his chosen topic, but an energetic and talented businessman.” As a result, the writer continued, “In the future, we do not want to link his name with that of Memorial.”

Response From Orlando Figes

I have seventy-five words to respond to an article I’ve not been allowed to read. The first cancellation (Atticus, 2009) cited commercial reasons, though I speculated that politics was involved. The second (Dynastia, 2011) cited about a dozen “factual inaccuracies” and “misrepresentations.” I responded: some were in Memorial’s sources, others debatable, or mistranslated by Dynastia—leaving a few genuine errors in a book based on thousands of interviews and archival documents. These I regret.

It is longstanding Nation policy not to share the full text of an article with the subject of that article before publication. Our Letters page remains open to Figes. —The Editors

Orlando Figes writes the best books about Russia and I liked this one very much.

History, like every academic discipline, is fraught with jealousy and backbiting. Don't get involved in it. The New York Times review of "The Story of Russia" damns with faint praise and somehow puts the book down because Figes is covering old ground. Phooey. This book sets out to explain to the general reader how Russia came to be as it is. Of course Figes has written about this before. He's an academic historian who has been writing books and articles about Russia for decades. Not everyone will agree with him. Don't worry about that. There are enough reputable people who like this book that we can be reassured that we are not poisoning our mind with junk.

"The Story of Russia" is a stand alone book that traces the national myth of the Russian people for the past 1000+ years up to Putin. It helped me sort out the relationship between the Kievan Rus and the Russians (not the same) and the basis of Putin's crackpot idea of Russian destiny. It's also a pleasure to read.

And if you haven't read any other books by Orlando Figes, try "Natasha's Dance".

Even if one takes nothing else away from this elegant, tightly focused survey of Russian culture, it's impossible to forget the telling little anecdotes that University of London history professor Figes (A People's Tragedy) relates about Russia's artists, writers, musicians, intellectuals and courtiers as he traces the cultural movements of the last three centuries. He shares Ilya Repin's recollection of how peasants reacted to his friend Leo Tolstoy's fumbling attempts to join them in manual labor ("Never in my life have I seen a clearer expression of irony on a simple peasant's face"), as well as the three sentences Shostakovich shyly exchanged with his idol, Stravinsky, when the latter returned to the Soviet Union after 50 years of exile (" `What do you think of Puccini?' `I can't stand him,' Stravinsky replied. `Oh, and neither can I, neither can I' "). Full of resounding moments like these, Figes's book focuses on the ideas that have preoccupied Russian artists in the modern era: Just what is "Russianness," and does the quality come from its peasants or its nobility, from Europe or from Asia? He examines canonical works of art and literature as well as the lives of their creators: Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, Chagall, Stanislavsky, Eisenstein and many others. Figes also shows how the fine arts have been influenced by the Orthodox liturgy, peasant songs and crafts, and myriad social and economic factors from Russian noblemen's unusual attachments to their peasant nannies to the 19th-century growth of vodka production. The book's thematically organized chapters are devoted to subjects like the cultural influence of Moscow or the legacy of the Mongol invasion, and with each chapter Figes moves toward the 1917 revolution and the Soviet era, deftly integrating strands of political and social history into his narrative. This is a treat for Russophiles and a unique introduction to Russian history.

Figes (history, Univ. of London; A People's Tragedy) describes the twists and turns of Russian history through cultural and artistic events from the founding of Rus in the 12th century through the Soviet era. He uses Tolstoy's War and Peace as a centerpiece of art imitating life. The title of Figes's book comes from the scene in which Natasha Rostov and her brother Nikolai are invited by their "uncle" to a rustic cabin to listen to him play Russian folk music on his guitar. Natasha instinctively begins a folk dance that is prompted by "unknown feelings in her heart." Tolstoy would have us believe that "Russia may be held together by unseen threads of native sensibilities," writes Figes. Nowhere is the clash between the European culture of the upper class and the Russian culture of the peasantry more evident. "The complex interactions between these two worlds had a crucial influence on the national consciousness and on all the arts of the 19th century." This interaction is a major feature of this book, which traces the formation of a culture. The writing style is distinctly nonacademic, making for a very enjoyable read.
8 | Denunciarantimuzak | Dec 26, 2005 |

Stravinskij proclamo’:
L’odore della terra russa e’ diverso, e queste sono cose che non si possono dimenticare… (502)

Cosa significava essere russi? Qual era il posto e la missione della Russia nel mondo? E dov’era l’autentica Russia? In Europa o in Asia? San Pietroburgo o Mosca? L’impero zarista o il fangoso villaggio con la sua unica strada dove viveva lo “zio” di Natasa? Erano queste le “domande ossessive” che nell’età d’oro della cultura russa, da Puskin a Pasternak, occupavano la mente di qualsiasi serio scrittore, critico e storico letterario, pittore o compositore, teologo o filosofo. Sono le domande che, nella prospettiva di questo libro, si celano sotto la superficie dell’arte. (xv)

Il mio obbiettivo è di esplorare la cultura russa nello stesso modo in cui Tolstoj e, come l’aria al cui ritmo balla Natasa, la maggior parte delle “canzoni popolari” era giunta dalle città. (xvi)

Quando Pietro dichiarò “qui sorgerà una città”, le sue parole sembrarono echeggiare il comando divino “sia la luce”. E, secondo la leggenda, allorché le pronunciò, un’aquila prese a volteggiare sopra la testa dello zar andando poi a posarsi sul culmine di un arco formato da due betulle allacciate. (4)

San Pietroburgo era più di una città. Era un grande progetto, in certo modo utopistico, di ingegneria culturale per rimodellare il russo come uomo europeo. Dostoevskij nelle Memorie del sottosuolo, la definì “la più astratta e artificiosa città di tutto il globo terrestre”. Ogni aspetto della cultura petrina era designato a negare la Moscovia “medievale” (XXVII secolo). Nell’intenzione dell’imperatore, diventare cittadino di Pietroburgo voleva dire lasciarsi alle spalle gli “oscuri” e “arretrati” costumi del passato russo per entrare, come russo europeo, nel moderno mondo occidentale del progresso e dei Lumi. (9)

Ma questo senso di far parte dell’Europa produceva anche anime divise. “Noi russi abbiamo due patrie: la Russia e l’Europa”, scriveva Dostoevskij. (48)

Nei panorami settecenteschi di San Pietroburgo il cielo aperto e lo spazio connettono la città con un più ampio universo. Linee dritte tendono verso orizzonti lontani, oltre cui, siamo sollecitati a immaginare, giace a portata di mano il resto dell’Europa. La proiezione della Russia sull’Europa era sempre stata la raison d’etre di San Pietroburgo. Essa non era soltanto la “finestra sull’Europa” di Pietro - come disse una volta Puskin della capitale - ma un passaggio aperto attraverso cui l’Europa entrava in Russia e i russi facevano il loro ingresso nel mondo. (54)

“Per conoscere il nostro popolo, - scriveva il poeta Aleksandr Bestuzev, - bisogna vivere con lui e parlare con lui nel suo linguaggio, si deve mangiare con lui e celebrare con lui i giorni di festa, cacciare nei boschi l’orso insieme con lui, o recarsi al mercato su un carro contadino”. La poesia di Puskin fu la prima a ottemperare a questa esigenza. Parlare al più ampio ventaglio di lettori, tanto al contadino alfabetizzato come al principe, nell’idioma russo comune. Creare una lingua nazionale con la sua poesia fu la suprema realizzazione di Puskin. (71)

Come ben sanno i lettori di Guerra e pace, la guerra del 1812 rappresentò uno spartiacque nella cultura dell’aristocrazia russa. Fu una guerra di liberazione nazionale dallo scettro intellettuale della Francia: un momento in cui nobili come I Rostov e i Bolkonskij cercarono di liberarsi dalle abitudini straniere della loro società e iniziarono una nuova vita fondata su principi russi. (88)

Aksakov sosteneva che il “tipo russo” era incarnato nel leggendario eroe popolare Il’ja Muromec che compare in narrazioni epiche come protettore della terra russa contro invasori e infedeli, briganti e mostri, con la sua “forza gentile e la sua mancanza di aggressività, ma anche con la sua prontezza a combattere per la causa del popolo in una giusta guerra difensiva”. (117)

Con le sue casette in legno e le stradine tortuose, con i suoi palazzi dotati di stalle e di cortili chiusi dove pascolavano liberamente mucche e pecore, Mosca possedeva una peculiare atmosfera campagnola. Era chiamata “il grande villaggio”, un soprannome che ha mantenuto fino ad oggi. (132)

Nelle parole di Pasternak:

Tutto si coprira’ di nebbia favolosa,
similmente ai rabeschi sui muri
della camera indorata dei boiari
e alla chiesa del Beato Vasilij.

Al sognatore e al nottambulo
Mosca e’ piu’ cara d’ogni cosa al mondo.
Egli si trova a casa, alla sorgente
di tutto cio’ di cui fiorira’ il secolo. (190)

Perche’, come illustrano i famosi versi del poeta Nekrasov:

La Russia e’ racchiusa nel profondo della sua campagna
la’ dove regna un eterno silenzio. (193)

Optina Pustyn’, l’ultimo grande ricetto della tradizione eremitica che riconnetteva la Russia a Bisanzio, andra’ delineandosi come il centro spirituale della coscienza nazionale. Tutti i piu’ grandi scrittori dell’Ottocento - Gogol’, Dostoevskij, Tolstoj tra gli altri - vi si recheranno nella loro ricerca dell’”anima russa”. (251)

Cio’ che il russo non puo’ comprendere restera’ per sempre sconosciuto agli uomini. (270)

Nella sua lettera a Gogol’, Belinskij aveva riconosciuto che il contadino russo si caratterizzava per il timore e la devota reverenza verso Dio. “Ma mentre pronuncia il nome di Dio, si gratta la schiena. E dell’icona dice: “Va bene per pregare, ma anche per coprirci le pignatte”. (274)

Nelle Mie universita’ (1922), Gor’kij descrive un contadino da lui incontrato in un villaggio vicino Kazan’, il quale
… immaginava (Dio) come un vecchio grande e nobile, come un padrone buono e intelligente, che non poteva vincere il male solo perche’: “Non fa in tempo, ci sono troppi uomini oggi. Ma non importa, ci riuscira’ vedrai! … Per quanto ne so, Dio non e’ morto… (275)

Si tratto’, sembra, del tentativo consapevole da parte della Chiesa russa di appropriarsi del culto pagano di Rozanica, dea della fertilita’, e dell’antico culto slavo dell’umida Madre terra, ovvero della dea conosciuta come Mokos, da cui derivo’ il mito della “madre Russia”. Nella sua forma contadina piu’ arcaica, la religione russa era una religione della terra. (276)

Nella mentalita’ russa, la frontiera religiosa e’ stata sempre piu’ importante di qualsiasi confine etnico, e i piu’ antichi termini per “straniero” (ad esempio, inoverec) veicolano la connotazione di una fede diversa. E’ ugualmente significativo che la parola russa per “contadino” (“krest’janin”), che in pressoche’ tutte le altre lingue europee si radica nella nozione di paese o di terra, sia connessa invece alla parola per “cristiano” (“christianin”). (322)

Marciando verso il cuore dell’Asia, i russi tornavano al loro antico focolare. …
Ispirato dal soggiogamento dell’Asia centrale, anche Dostoevskij arrivo’ a pensare che il destino della Russia non fosse in Europa, come aveva a lungo reputato, ma in Oriente. (355)

Tarkovskij ha rivissuto questo mito nazionale in antitesi al sistema di valori del regime sovietico, con le sue idee aliene di razionalismo materialistico. “L’odierna cultura di massa…, - scrive Tarkovskij, - mutila le anime, sbarrando all’uomo la strada che conduce ai problemi radicali della sua esistenza, alla presa di coscienza di se stesso come essere spirituale”. Tale coscienza spirituale, egli pensava, era il contributo della Russia poteva offrire all’Occidente. Un’idea, questa, simboleggiata nell’ultima immagine iconica di Nostalghia (1983): una casa contadina russa inserita tra le rovine di una cattedrale italiana. (445)

Nel 1933 Bunin ottenne il Nobel. Fu il primo scrittore russo a ricevere questo premio che, arrivato mentre Stalin stava mettendo in catene la cultura sovietica, fu percepito dagli emigrati come il riconoscimento che la Vera Russia (sul piano della cultura) si trovava all’estero. (462)

La musica di Rachmaninov esprime lo spirito di questo paesaggio. “I russi sentono con il suolo un legame piu’ forte di qualsiasi altro popolo, - spiego’ a una rivista americana (pensando, evidentemente, soprattutto a se stesso). - Esso deriva da una tendenza istintiva alla quiete, alla tranquillita’, all’ammirazione della natura, e forse da una ricerca di solitudine. Mi sembra che tutti i russi siano un po’ eremiti”. (465)

Interesting. Figes sees Russia as held together by a set of mythologies about language, ethnicity, and culture, and a consequently mythologized view of its own history. Fascinating to read. Btw, he is not at all optimistic about the situation in Ukraine.

very thorough and well documented. An unparalleled level of useful detail.
I got bored, though, eventually, because I did not get along well with how it is structured. I would have preferred chapters with general presentation (it was like this in this period, or it was like this in this thing) and then entire life stories per each person/family. As it actually is (a mix of history and bits of life stories continued elsewhere) it turns confusing and thick.

CUPRINS

1. Prefata - pag. 5
2. Introducere - pag. 9

3. CAP. 1 - Inceputul - pag. 19
4. CAP. 2 - "Repetitia cu costume" - pag. 43
5. CAP. 3 - Ultimele sperante - pag. 62
6. CAP. 4 - Razboi si revolutie - pag. 82
7. CAP. 5 - Revolutia din Februarie 1917 - pag. 101
8. CAP. 6 - Revolutia lui Lenin - pag. 127
9. CAP. 7 - Razboiul civil si instaurarea sistemului sovietic - pag. 151
10. CAP. 8 - Lenin, Trotki si Stalin - pag. 174
11. CAP. 9 - Epoca de aur a revolutiei ? - pag. 188
12. CAP. 10 - Marea ruptura - pag. 207
13. CAP. 11 - Criza lui Stalin - pag. 224
14. CAP. 12 - Bate,oare, comunismul in retragere ? - pag. 240
15. CAP. 13 - Marea Teroare - pag. 258
16. CAP. 14 - Revolutie la export - pag. 275
17. CAP. 15 - Rezboi si revolutie - pag. 293
18. CAP. 16 - Revolutie si Razboi Rece - pag. 309
19. CAP. 17 - Inceputul sfarsitului - pag. 328
20. CAP. 18 - Socialismul matur - pag. 350
21. CAP. 19 - Ultimul bolsevic - pag. 368
22. CAP. 20 - Judecata - pag. 387

23. Note - pag. 399
24. Bibliografie selectiva - pag. 411
25. Multumiri - pag. 417
26. Index - pag. 419

Sebastapol, Alma, Inkerman, Balaclava. Raglan, Clarendon, Russell, Cardigan, Canning. The places and people of the Crimean War are imprinted on the map of my home town. Yet I really couldn't say that I knew that much about it, beyond the mythology of Florence Nightingale and the Charge of the Light Brigade.

Orlando Figes' book is a comprehensive account of the major battles of the Crimean conflict, particularly of the siege of Sevastapol. His account brings home the privations on both sides of the conflict, cutting through the mythology, and shows how the Crimean War remade Europe and also became the first war where the soldiers emerged with the plaudits instead of their aristocratic leaders.

While this is a compelling story, it is pretty padded at times. Figes gives us 200 pages of background before getting to the battle of the Alma. Understanding the political and religious contexts of the war is vital, but this could surely have been conveyed in a less expansive manner (as even the author suggests early on in the book). Similarly, the Epilogue is 25 pages of pure padding that could have been dispensed with. Apart from that, this was an absorbing and informative read.

I read this several years ago and found it a tour de force of culture through the millenium of Russia's tragic and violent history. Russia's great paintings are explored. Certainly her literature. Philosophy. Historical occasions. A thick, in depth read well worth the effort and time. Excuse the brevity here, but I read this a few years ago, but felt obliged to post it as an accompaniment to Figes recent, Story of Russia.

Topical indeed. Nothing close to, Natasha's Dance, but Figes explores the myths and their beginnings and how such myths have been used by Russia as well as Ukraine to inspire morale. Figes is at his best when he compares myth to the facts, or to rebut those myths with what facts we possess. I would suggest Natasha's Dance (by Figes) as part of any reading on Russia.

This book presents in a broad panorama the role technology played in creating a cosmopolitan European culture. It’s a point I first came across in an earlier book, Hugh MacDonald’s 1853 in Music, 2012. The two books complement each other. MacDonald’s focus is narrow: one technology (rail travel), one of the arts, and one year.
Figes, by contrast, covers the century from Napoleon’s downfall to World War I’s outbreak. He treats, in addition to music, visual arts, books and reading, and theatre. While the railroad is the first technology he focuses on, he also deals with other developments, such as lithographic reproduction. Figes also makes fascinating connections between art forms, such as the popularity of photography leading to a more visual style of fiction.
The role of wealth is a crucial factor: from the capital that financed the rail lines, opera houses, and museums to the growing wealth of the middle class (particularly in Britain — renowned more for its consumption of culture than its creation) that provided expanded audiences. Unfortunately, Figes pays little attention to the poverty and exploitation of the working classes that allowed the donor elite to accumulate wealth.
I learned many things in the book, mainly about the origins of cultural activities I’ve simply accepted as standard parts of life.
The cast of characters is vast. Figes wisely focuses on a triad, Louis and Pauline Viardot and their devoted friend Ivan Turgenev. Nevertheless, interweaving their storylines with all the other narrative paths the author pursued led to an irritating amount of repetition. For example, how often does the reader need to be reminded that Turgenev traveled constantly or that Pauline Viardot had to tour because the doors to Paris opera houses remained closed to her? And while one can understand the occasional mistake in a book with so much detail, I still was nettled that the Swiss author Gottfried Keller was twice referred to as German.
At the end of the book, in the Acknowledgements, Figes reveals that he and his sister reclaimed their German nationality following the Brexit decision. It is a poignant conclusion to the book’s ode to international exchange. Moreover, it corresponds to my nostalgia for how the cosmopolitan nineteenth century enriched European culture, which was why I chose to read this book.

This is not a comprehensive, detailed story of Russia. It takes a different perspective and places the events of the 21st century so far under the gaze of Russian history over the preceding centuries. Key events that shaped modern Russia are described but then the actions are shown to be mirrored in current times. In that respect this is a great little book as it makes links that may not be apparent to the modern, Western eye. It does not glorify Putin's actions, it does explain the rhetoric that is used as justification.

History of course is more complex – even if it is a story too.
Confident, concise history which is not afraid to make claims of historic trends and acknowledge multiple interpretations.
Russia now comprises four geographical zones:
• Treeless Tundra, above Arctic Circle, about one-fifth of Russia’s land mass
• Taiga forest zone - pine trees, spruce and larch, interspersed with marshes, lakes and rivers
• Central Agricultural zone, rich black soil
• Pontic Steppe - semi-arid grasslands and savannas

The history is told in eleven necessarily broad brush chapters that outline chronological developments and usually concentrate on a few individual stories to bring out the important changes.

1. Origins - Kievan Rus and Byzantium’s Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Creation of myth of Holy Russia with Mary as Mother, rather than Virgin (Roman Catholic interpretation).
2. Mongol Impact - 1223 and horsemen from the east. The capture of Kiev on 6 December 1240 effectively marking the end of Kievan Rus. With the subsequent rise of Moscow as a powerful principality, although subject to the Golden Horde, it was not until 1378 that the Mongols could first be successfully challenged. Today the Kulikovo victory is linked in the nationalist consciousness to other episodes when Russia’s military sacrifice ‘saved’ the West, in 1812–15 (against Napoleon) or 1941–5, for example; each time its sacrifice had been unthanked, unrecognised by its Western allies in these wars. The country’s deep resentment of the West is rooted in this national myth. Although gradually weakening, Moscow remained a vassal of the khans until 1502.
3. Ivan the Terrible (1530-84) and the conquest of Khazan and Astrakhan, with an unsuccessful attempt to conquer Livonia to access the Baltic Sea. The opening up of Siberia, which was conquered by Ivan’s son
4. Time of Troubles - civil war following Ivan the Terrible’s death without a successor (he had unintentionally(?) killed his son) and choosing of a Romanov as the next Tsar.
5. Russia faces West - Catherine the Great (1762-98) embraces the European Enlightenment, to a point, and creates the West facing St Petersburg.
6. The Shadow of Napoleon - the French Revolution turns Russia away from Europe, as does Napoleon’s invasion. I found this really interesting in highlighting Russian belief that Russia was responsible for defeating Napoleon.
7. An Empire in Crisis - the problem of making Russian farming and industry efficient, with serfdom eventually abolished (1861). Some Tsars embrace European ideas, whilst others are isolationist. The build up to revolution, or break down of the autocracy, is also outlined.
8. Revolutionary Russia - the 1917 revolution, civil war and creation of the Soviet state. There are more quotable insights: Throughout the peasant world Communist regimes have been built on the ambition of peasant sons to join the bureaucratic class. And plausible explanations as to the Bolsheviks success, as a: unifying goal (the defence of ‘the revolution’) with clear symbols (the Red Flag and the Red Army’s emblem, the Red Star) capable of winning mass support.
9. The War on Old Russia - Stalin’s “reign”, including the Five Year Plans, disastrous large scale agricultural collectivisation (kolkholzesj, and Stalin’s paranoia leading to the progroms and show trials in the 1930’s,
10. Motherland - the pragmatic reasons behind the 1939 Soviet:Nazi non-aggression pact (but also its betrayal of ideological Communism), the massive casualty rate in the Second World War, when the timing of the invasion had been unexpected. But also the patriotism and hatred of the Nazis that allowed the country to defeat the invasion (The cult of sacrifice was a more important factor than terror. It was the Soviet system’s main advantage over Western liberal societies where the loss of human life was given greater weight in the reckonings of the command.). Stalin died in 1953, to be followed by Krushchev, Brezhnev (1964), Andropov (1982), Chernenko (1984), and Gorbachev (1985), with the break up of the USSR.
11. Ends - discussion of the rise of Putin and how the potential for a more “Western liberal” government was lost, the possible missed chances, perhaps caused by the “West’s” understanding of Russia.

I found this narrative really useful to gain some understanding of modern Russia as throughout the book Figes highlights how Russian society was different from other European countries, and how some of these differences might explain the Russian public’s acquiescence to Putin’s current aggression to other countries. Recommended.

I received a Netgalley copy of this book, but this review is my honest opinion.

Good Russian history overview. Nice summary of 1910s and 1920s. Becomes quite perfunctory after that. Fine- but brief. Author frequently sets it up as "some think this" - "some thing that" .... Actually, the truth is .... Which i always find a bit annoying.

Pre-review comment: I used to think that people calling Soviets “Russians” was sloppy and half-insulting, like when people call everything from Britain “English” out of laziness. I’ve changed my mind. Perhaps some of this usage has been intended to be insulting, (from the verbal inflection), but this is not a comment on its correctness; there’s something to be said for it. Soviet Russia’s history has to be considered part of the greater thing of Russian history. (Soviet Ukraine is part of a greater Ukrainian history, but consists of when it was absorbed into Russia, like Ireland into Britain in old times.)

I think with Germany it’s different. Despite the roots of anti-Semitism in medieval German/European history, the Nazi period is so unlike what came before and after for the Germans, and a Nazi German book so different from other books, from general German history, that for me, in my classification system, the two have to be separated. [German and French anti-Semitism may have been similar in the 1300s, probably, but I understand that classifying is on some level like playing a silly game. It is mere habit.] I think that the Nazis were worse than the Stalinists (who were obviously much bloodier than other Soviet eras)—if we’re going to play this silly Worst Dictator game, but I admit that I play like everybody else. Hitler killed babies; he tried to exterminate races. The Stalinist Soviets were bloody minded tyrants, to be sure, but they were more an exaggerated version of the Praetorian Guard married to the Robespierre/Napoleon Guard, just bloodier. (Hitler killed many of the people who died on Stalin’s watch, but not all of them, obviously.) But, pace Eugene Kogon, (writing in 1950), the Nazis were not the Praetorian Guard or the Mahdi’s people; I do not know who they are.

But despite the seedier side of German political opinion and reactions to immigration, Angela Merkel is not Trump, whereas Russia has this super-Trump that’s not only not going away, but has started a large-scale shooting war in Europe, the first one in a long time. Yes, part of this is colored by current events for me, which is probably unscientific. Yes, bloodier wars are fought in Africa—the Congo, Darfur. But I’ll say what I say anyway. There’s much more continuity in Russian imperialism and government. They wanted an empire before they were Marxist-Leninists; they (despite everything!) wanted an empire while they were Marxist-Leninists, and, despite eventually being defeated and “changing” and doesn’t it seem impossible, but they still want an empire now that they’re not Marxist-Leninists anymore. They still want Ukraine; they want to be a superpower. They being, that is, the Russian government. Russian people on some level are like all people, all life. I still like Tolstoy, whose late life project was this revolution that eventually came full circle. But sometimes we admire Europeans; sometimes we are cynical about the West; sometimes we put them together with Russia. So it helps to remember that Russia’s government has been totally crazy and chauvinistic for centuries, and has remained so despite changing several times. That’s where this book comes in, showing the continuity across the different Soviet periods, and indeed between what went before and after 1917.

Additional comment: Of course I suppose the obvious difference is that Hitler’s was a right-dictatorship, and Stalin’s was a left-dictatorship; despite both being products of modern times there was that obvious difference. (Conservatives who think that Hitler was a liberal are almost arguing that there’s no room for calling anything right-wing if it’s modern.) Hitler’s the standard cartoon character villain, the reason man persecutes God, the reason that man is going to hell. (You can only push God so far.) But wait! Stalin is evil too! Wait up, middle-aged middle-class white man stigma, Stalin stigma is catching up! Maybe the people who like Black-led politics are gulag people, and we should lock them up before it’s too late! What do we do with that? After all, a cat can be skinned in more than one way. (I don’t mean to say that the above Fox News headline sort of populism is the studied opinion of this guy or any other professional student of Russian history, but Fox News is part of the world, and you know that eventually you’d have to address it somehow.)

For me, I think the answer is what many social workers (especially gerontologists) already say—not, indeed, that people in prison now are to blame for the mistakes of the people in power now, or any possible catastrophe in the future. No, indeed. (And it should be noted that while it’s good to understand risk factors, fantasizing about Bad Things That Might Happen Someday, especially if you have it better than many other people you don’t care about, is a dubious exercise.) But it is true that sometimes people have reasons to fear, not so much their neighbors or foreigners or even the poor, as their own children. Hitler killed whole races, but too many times in Soviet history tyrants killed their old friends and children killed their aging parents. So if from Russian revolutionary history we learn not to call the old or the middle-aged ugly names, or blame older adults for being less diverse racially than the young, (as if some sixty year old teacher can change by will that he is white and his student is Black), or, more troublesome, of course, but even more conventional, sometimes, in their opinions, since it is hard for the average person to change her mind, although the young can be conventional too, albeit in a more sexed-up way…. If we can remember some of that, then perhaps we have profited and not deluded ourselves from history.

…. To summarize, three points:

1. I don’t like the Russian government. They always seem to be skull-crackers. (Writing love letters to the oppressor clique is unhelpful.)
2. I don’t like “good white people”. “Good white people” are just like all white people, and all white people are just like all people who aren’t white: so there’s no category of “good white people”.
But,
3. It can’t be easy to live in a country where there’s a clique of skull-crackers calling themselves the government; it’s also not easy to leave your home—country and zone of linguistic comfort, and possibly your family.

But I’m not sure I’m going to write about every little subsequent catastrophe. Already with people plotting against the czar things are dicey, and I know that they’re only going to get worse.

…. I guess I forgot that there are periods of lawlessness in Russian history too, like the Civil War—which I guess makes sense because the country was quite unsettled in the 90s, too.

Plato would have loved the phrase ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. “…. And after anarchy comes the dictatorship of the proletariat, such as in Russia, or else a dictatorship characterized more by….”

Corrupt government, followed by excess of anarchy, followed by even more unconscionable tyranny. Do you not agree that it is so?
I do, Socrates.

…. It is funny though, because there is kinda a czarist or whatever reading of Russian history. What do you do with post-unfree labor? Punish it before it rebels!

So History asked them again, What do you want me to do with the one called Post-Unfree Labor? And shouted back, Punish it! Why? asked History. What evil has it done? But they shouted back all the louder, Punish it!

I really don’t know what else to say to this particular reading of history. I have it good, because I’m hurting you. My behavior possibly puts me or my people’s status in risk down the road, and you unquestionably suffer now, and probably also in any rebellion you might stage. What do I do?

I lash out! Because when people at the top act out, that’s acting the right way. ^^

…. It was a real vicious circle, and at every step along the way, from the czar to the White Guards to the Nazis, opposition and war just kept driving the commies deeper and deeper into insanity.

…. Lenin at various times, (New Economic Policy, Testament) realized that core parts of Leninism didn’t work, and that this is Lenin at his best is sad. Stalin wasn’t even loyal to his first country, Georgia, but purged and Russified it, something I never knew. Trotsky was a Jew, so I guess that was part of what made him such a convenient villain. Trotsky himself, the man, however, would not have been different, as he was basically just another militarist.

This is why I wasn’t going to talk about it; the more mud you muck through, the more bodies you find. I suppose this is what I like, though. Not the Russian Revolution, but dukkha itself (suffering, uneasiness, Not Supposed To Be This Way). The story of people who never found their peace of mind is quite interesting, sometimes.

…. One thinks of genocide as being shooting or gassing people, like the Nazis gassing Jews or Stalin shooting generals and army officers. There’s a sort of humanistic prejudice here, I’m not sure how to describe it, but anti-natural world. Hitler looks at a Jew funny, or Stalin his father, and then they order an execution. But most of the people that died in the USSR during that time—although the Nazis were surely shooting Ostjuden and Leninists the old men—died in famines. Urban Russian prejudice against the peasants and rural minorities translated into a violent offensive to gain control over agriculture, which damaged the food production system and led to people starving to death—which was fine as long as urban Russians got to have lunch at the factory.

…. And after all that blood and driving-Stalin’s-wife-to-suicide, after going to war against society Twice, 1917-1921, and 1928-1932, they decide…. As long as I’m the Tsar, Tsarism’s good! All that killing, for what? I’m not a Leninist, or even a Marxist really, but that’s just *erratic*. What exactly were they trying to accomplish?…. What are these people good at?

…. In a way Stalin’s grand strategy was a partial failure; the USSR ended the war much more scarred and weaker than they had anticipated.

It is notable that the country went through various periods of war against society (1917-21, 1928-32, 1937), and Russophile phases, but, I don’t know, on the whole they were pretty trigger happy. Even at its best it seems like it was more livable during certain periods only in the context of people being used to the ‘cold’, and putting up with ‘cold’.

…. Red-baiting, meet un-red-baiting

“There’s one more thing I have to do to make sure I get into hell….” (Stalinist anti-Semitism).

…. (general history-malice) I wonder why we torture each other, and why it’s such good sport to read.

(Khrushchev etc)
“Your story doesn’t seem true.”
“You’re right—all the money went back to Mark.”
~ “The Informant!” (movie quote)

…. “Things are shit, but you’ve got to keep yourself safe.”
“(long quote about fighting corruption or whatever).”
“Maybe AA is the revolution.”

…. Gorbachev was probably the best Soviet leader, ironically—probably better than I would be if I inherited that dragon…. Obviously it still led to societal collapse, which underlines the paradox of reality, which is basically the (at least sometimes) unreality of Louise Hay’s way of looking at things—Stop thrashing and lashing out and hating and making things worse! Then, you’ll feel better!

That, or the ground will collapse beneath your feet, for the sake of an at least partially-wasted opportunity for those who come after….

…. Gorbachev was probably the only honest Soviet leader…. Lenin, I don’t know, the only intelligent one. ^^

[Plato’s Republic quote here]

…. I don’t know if I should say this politely, but, whatever. If you don’t like Gorbachev better than Lenin, (and not the other way around, or even—I don’t know), then politically speaking there is probably something wrong with you.

…. Although obviously that’s setting the bar low, and Russia is still Russia, where it’s ‘cold’. It’s cold, inside.

…. There could be something after capitalism; probably there is—although perhaps it’ll be some form of spiritual monarchy, probably with socialist and capitalist elements. After capitalism, something, but never a Soviet economy, never Leninism after, or as a substitute, or even, you know, before.

…. I thought that maybe half of Russia didn’t like Stalin, like how the US is divided over Trump. It sounds like at least 80% of the country likes him. They never really divested themselves of their imperialism….

Yeltsin: Get kudos from the West for standing-on-tank bravado, and support from Russians for soft-balling democratic reform. And the West didn’t care, because at least the big banks were making big bucks…. Follow that? Man, there’s not wanting to be a militant and then there’s the Ultimate Pragmatist—Making money is great; capitalism, communism…. Just make money! The blind led the blind, and Russia fell into a pit.

Putin: Forget about economics, comrades—socialism is national chauvinism! We’re—National, socialists!

Un relato fascinante y una celebración de la grandeza de la cultura rusa y de las extraordinarias vidas de quienes le dieron forma.

Ótimo livro sobre a revolução russa se você tem interesse pelo diálogo entre os grandes escritores russos e a revolução de 17, além de suas opiniões privadas daquilo que a precedeu e a sucedeu. Perfeito livro se você tem interesse pelo diálogo entre Maxim Gorki e a revolução de 17, além de suas opiniões privadas daquilo que a precedeu e a sucedeu.

Figes (que eu só descobri agora que se pronuncia Faiges) faz um panorama muito detalhado e interessante do que levou à Revolução Russa. É difícil poder afirmar peremptório que fez uma análise imparcial, sem deixar detalhes relevantes de fora por causas outras quando não se é um especialista no assunto, mas Figes passa confiança. Tem suas opiniões, mas é até melhor que elas estejam bem claras.

O livro é fluido e tem aquele fatalismo britânico que é sempre adorável. Serve pra você poder sentir com mais propriedade a frustração de ver que ninguém que fala da revolução e do comunismo russo faz qualquer ideia de coisa alguma.

What I mostly picked this book up for related to what the author had to say about cosmopolitanism. What I found the most interesting was what Figes had to say about culture as business. As for the main historical characters here, Ivan Turgenev on one hand, and Pauline & Louis Viardot on the other, I'm going to admit that Pauline, the singer and musician, most captured my imagination, as opposed to Turgenev the literary figure and Louis the impresario and journalist. I found her embodiment of talent and hard-headed business sense to be particularly modern.

I enjoyed the first 2/3 of the book, however the last 1/3 was a trudge to get thru. I wished the book had ended sooner

los europeos es la historia apasionante del nacimiento de la cultura compartida de nuestro continente en el siglo XIX, contada a través de un maravilloso y extraño triangulo amoroso formado por el gran escritor Iván Turguénev, Pauline Viardot, de origen español, una delas cantantes de opera mas famosa del mundo , y su marido, Luis Viardot, hispanista francés y gran experto en arte.½

El siglo XIX europeo, un momento de logros artísticos sin precedentes, fue la primera era de la globalización cultural, una época en que las comunicaciones masivas y los viajes en tren de alta velocidad reunieron a Europa, superando las barreras del nacionalismo y facilitando el surgimiento de un verdadero canon europeo de obras artísticas, musicales y literarias. Llegado 1900, se leían los mismos libros, se reproducían las mismas obras artísticas, se representaban las mismas óperas y se interpretaba la misma música en los hogares y se escuchaba en las salas de conciertos a lo largo de todo el continente.

Partiendo de una gran cantidad de documentos, cartas y otros materiales de archivo, el aclamado historiador Orlando Figes examina cómo fue posible esta unificación. En el centro del libro hay un triángulo amoroso conmovedor: Ivan Turgenev, el primer gran escritor ruso en convertirse en una celebridad europea, Pauline Viardot, de origen español, una de las cantantes de ópera más famosas del mundo, además de compositora y profesora de canto, y Louis Viardot, director de teatro, activista republicano y gran experto en arte(autor de las primeras guías de grandes museos del mundo, el Prado entre otros)y esposo de Pauline, por cuya carrera musical sacrificó parte de la suya.

Juntos, Turgenev y los Viardot estuvieron en el centro del intercambio cultural europeo: conocían o se cruzaban con Delacroix, Berlioz, Chopin, Brahms, Liszt, Schumann, Hugo, Flaubert, Dickens y Dostoyevski, entre muchas otras figuras destacadas.

Como observa Figes, casi todos los grandes avances de la civilización se han producido durante los períodos de mayor cosmopolitismo, cuando las personas, las ideas y las creaciones artísticas circulan libremente entre las naciones. Vívido y perspicaz, L os europeos muestra cómo ese fermento cosmopolita fraguó tradiciones artísticas que llegaron a dominar la cultura mundial.

Figes takes us through about two centuries of literature, theatre, music and visual arts in Russia in the space of a little less than 600 pages, starting more or less with Pushkin's generation and ending with that of Nabokov and Shostakovich. That means we don't get very much about any one topic, and a lot of potentially interesting things get left out (e.g. Tchaikovsky, who barely gets more than a footnote). But we do end up with a very handy overview of who the main players were, and why they matter, and there is a generous bibliography to get us started with further reading.

There are some rather TV-like narrative tricks used to make the book more "inviting", such as picking a particular person or house as a kind of viewpoint character in each chapter — in particular, the Sheremetev Palace ("Fountain House") in St Petersburg, where Akhmatova had an apartment for a long time, and which allows Figes to establish a narrative bridge between the late 18th century and the Stalin-period. Fortunately, he doesn't invest too much in this fashionable silliness (as far as I know, the book never did result in a commission for a TV series), it's mostly just confined to a few pages at the start and end of each section, and only detracts a little from the interest of the book.

Figes seems to be equally comfortable talking about literature and music, which is unusual, but obviously very important for a book like this. On the musical side, he is especially interested in Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky and Shostakovich, and he has useful, if not necessarily very original, things to say about all of them. It was interesting to see him dismantling a lot of the usual notions about traditional sources for Russian music: most of the folk tradition (especially outside European Russia) seems to have been invented retrospectively by practitioners of art music. In literature most of the usual suspects get a fair crack of the whip — Pushkin, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Chekhov in the 19th century; Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva and Nabokov in the 20th. Others (Gorky, Pasternak, Bunin, etc.) get a quick burst of the spotlight from time to time but aren't discussed in detail.

There's quite a detailed discussion of the Moscow Arts Theatre, of Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes and of the early days of Soviet cinema (Vertov and Eisenstein), but not very much else about performing arts: even Chekhov's plays are passed over fairly swiftly. Painting and sculpture also get less space than you might expect.

A very useful, accessible introduction, but — inevitably for a book with such a wide scope — you're likely to find it rather thin on anything you already know something about.

Comme le premier tome, une somme d'histoire et d'humanité.½

Un chef d'oeuvre d'histoire et d’humanité.½