The Story of Russia
- Author Orlando Figes
- Narrator David Sibley
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
- Run Time 12 hours and 41 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre European history, History, Revolutions, uprisings, rebellions.
Titles Purchased
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- 6-10
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Price p/Title
- £7.99
- £6.99
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Listen to a sample
What to expect
‘The history book you need if you want to understand modern Russia' ANNE APPLEBAUM
‘A magnificent, magisterial thousand year history of Russia . . . by one of the masters of Russian scholarship' SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE
‘A great historian at the peak of his powers' WILLIAM DALRYMPLE
'[An] excellent short study’ MAX HASTINGS, SUNDAY TIMES
‘If you really want to understand Putin’s Russia today, anchored in its past of myths, then you simply have to read Figes’s superb account’ ANTONY BEEVOR
'A lucid chronological journey that ably illustrates how narratives from the nation’s past have been used to shape its autocratic present’ OBSERVER
'A valuable, instructive overview' INDEPENDENT
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From the great storyteller of Russia, a spellbinding account of the stories that have shaped the country’s past – and how they can inform its present.
No other country has been so divided over its own past as Russia. None has changed its story so often. How the Russians came to tell their story, and to reinvent it as they went along, is a vital aspect of their history, their culture and beliefs. To understand what Russia’s future holds – to grasp what Putin’s regime means for Russia and the world – we need to unravel the ideas and meanings of that history.
In The Story of Russia, Orlando Figes brings into sharp relief the vibrant characters that comprise Russia’s rich history, and whose stories remain so important in making sense of the world’s largest nation today – from the crowning of sixteen-year-old Ivan the Terrible in a candlelit cathedral, to Catherine the Great, riding out in a green uniform to arrest her husband at his palace, to the bitter last days of the Romanovs.
Beautifully written and based on a lifetime of scholarship, The Story of Russia is a major and definitive work from the great storyteller of Russian history: sweeping, suspenseful, masterful.
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PRAISE FOR ORLANDO FIGES
‘An outstanding historian and writer, he brings distant history so close that you could feel its heartbeat’
KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD
'Figes knows more about Russia than any other historian'
MAX HASTINGS, SUNDAY TIMES
Critics Review
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Figes’s book is an absorbing and enlightening read, a triumph of concision, analysis and insight
Daily Mail -
A deeply 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
Spectator -
To understand Putin’s paranoia, read this book on Russia’s history
Telegraph -
A lucid chronological journey that ably illustrates how narratives from the nation’s past have been used to shape its autocratic present
Observer -
If you really want to understand Putin’s Russia today, anchored in its past of myths, then you simply have to read Figes’s superb account in The Story of Russia
Antony Beevor -
An indispensable survey of more than 1,000 years of history shows how myth and fact mix dangerously in the tales this crucial country tells about itself
Guardian
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