How Putin manipulated history to help Russians feel good again

Every country has an origin story but none has ‘changed it so often’ as Russia, according to Orlando Figes. The subject is inseparable from myth. In this impressive and deeply immersive book, the author sets out to reveal Russia’s history, its people’s perception of their past and the manifold ways in which those in power manipulate both events and legend to shape the present. It is a saga of multi-millennial identity politics.

A bestselling historian with a storied background himself, Figes arranges his material chronologically over ten chapters, beginning with the medieval chronicles of Kievan Rus. Those sources launched myths that became fundamental to the Russian understanding of nationhood. He then proceeds to scrutinise the Mongol influence, following the 13th-century ‘invasion’ – actually a gradual migration of nomadic tribes. Russian historians like to deny the Mongol legacy, but Figes argues convincingly that ‘in fact its impact was immense’.

In these early sections he draws on ethnogenesis and ethno-archaeology, revealing the baleful ways in which even those fields became politicised. He then ushers in Ivan IV, the Terrible (grozny), the first tsar to take on the ‘manufactured aura of ancient lineage and imperial status’. Through the times of trouble (smutnoe vremia) following Ivan’s rule, the imposition of serfdom in the 16th century and through much else, Figes weaves his themes. They include the role of geography, notably the problem of controlling such a vast territory (in the 17th century it took two years to get a message from the capital to Okhotsk) and the fact that the Urals ‘aren’t a real barrier between Europe and Asia’, though they are regularly touted to be.

Peter the Great reformed much, including time itself (he adopted the western BC-AD system). Figes shows that after the Petrine state militarised society ‘a pattern soon emerged in the history of the armed forces – namely Russia’s dependence on quantity because it lagged behind in quality’. He is keen on patterns, and by the end of the book so was I.