Russia: Myths and Realities: The History of a Country with an Unpredictable Past
Publisher,Profile Books
Publication Date,
Format, Hardcover
Weight,
No. of Pages, 288
Shelf: GENERAL BOOKS / HUMANITIES / EUROPEAN HISTORY
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A short and pithy introduction to the history of Russia as we know it today.
A TIMES BEST HISTORY BOOK OF 2022
Russia is the largest country in the world, with the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons. Over a thousand years this multifaceted nation of shifting borders has been known as Rus, Muscovy, the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union. Thirty years ago it was reinvented as the Russian Federation.
Russia is not an enigma, but its past is violent, tragic, sometimes glorious, and certainly complicated. Like the rest of us, the Russians constantly rewrite their history. They too omit episodes of national disgrace in favour of patriotic anecdotes, sometimes more rooted in myth than reality.
Expert and former ambassador Rodric Braithwaite unpicks fact from fiction to discover what lies at the root of the Russian story.
About the Author
Sir Rodric Braithwaite is a former British diplomat and author whose long Foreign Office career took him to Indonesia, Poland, Italy, America and Russia. He was British Ambassador in Moscow during the fall of the Soviet Union, which he described in Across the Moscow River (2002, Yale). Rodric Braithwaite was subsequently foreign policy adviser to the Prime Minister, John Major, and Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee. He is author of Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan (Profile Books), Moscow 1941 (Profile Books), a bestseller translated into 19 languages and Armageddon & Paranoia: The Nuclear Confrontation (2017).
Dimensions: 14 x 3.2 x 21.8 cm
