Russia: A 1000-Year Chronicle of the Wild East

When I picked up this book in January, I wanted to understand Russia and what place they hold within the world, seeing as they have the large span of Earth, yet they elude everyone and lurk in the shadows.I went from knowing that Catherine The Great and Ivan The Terrible existed, to what they’re rules were like, as well as the 900 and some years following it. It’s true that this book mostly covers the period of time from when Lenin came into power, through Stalin and the new order, into presidency and pseudo prime minister / presidency. Ending with non other than Putin.The point I want to make about this book, is that I firmly believe everyone should read it.It should be a requirement in high school history classes across America.I don’t know about you all, but I personally never received a proper education of Russia through my school system in California. If it was covered, I don’t remember it. And after reading the things I read in this book, I know that I would have remembered them.This culture has experienced horror and death beyond anything comprehendible by Americans. Possibly Vietnam compares.The gulag is the stuff that nightmares are made of, and I believe the world needs to understand this culture and how it wishes to infringe itself upon the world. Stalinism is alive in communism, and communism isn’t even communism for them, it’s fake communism, what is actually extreme socialism through decades of psychological trauma.Not to mention the level of corruption of their “government”. It doesn’t matter if the government is Tsarist, Democratic or a Dictatorship, corruption runs in the blood of the foundations of this society from page 1 to 530.I have never seen such instability and improper handling of lives, assets and land. This society flirts with democracy, it wants it, but doesn’t understand how to properly attain it. Suppression of western views developed an animosity for the communist enemy’s without understanding why those enemy’s are bad, they just are, because the Kremlin says it is so.Fascinating, and necessary to have any place to say one single thing about the affairs between the Russian government and the world.This is serious stuff, and I cannot believe no one explained this to me earlier in life.You. You need to read this book.You will never be the same, and you will never see the world the same way again.Inspired, next I will read the history of Japan, and eventually books covering the Gulag and the explosion of Chernobyl are on my list.That, and a documentary on KGB agent, turned 2nd President turned Prime Minister turned tsarist agenda in office for life, Vladimir Putin.Yeah.That guy has an agenda if I ever saw one.Read this book.

have not read the book yet, but the delivery and the product was excellent! thank you very much!

The book begins in the 9th century. The people who occupied what is now Russia were Slavic. They had a tribal society in which each tribe was at war with every other tribe. The story told to all Russians is that in order to achieve a more peaceful, productive state, the Slavic leaders went outside their society to the land of the Vikings, to a people known as the Rus. Three brothers were selected to rule as princes. The eldest, Rurik of Rus, located himself in Novgorod. From him, the Russian Land - Rus - received its name. The author discusses the various governments, the flirtations with democracy and then the eventual collapse into autocracy. This is a theme that permeates the book – why can Russia not maintain a free society and invariably collapse into an autocratic state. What was of particular interest to me was the fact that the Mongols controlled Russia from approximately 1240 to1480. A second point of great interest to me was the brutality of Stalin. The cruelty of Hitler is legendary but Stalin is his equal. I liked that the author had a detailed timeline at the back of the book. I didn't like that he would use some Russian words without translating them. Two other things I didn't like: he sometimes mixed time periods and also, I wished that he had labeled the chapters with the time periods he was discussing. Still a very good maybe not great book.

Prior to reading Sixsmith's historical understanding of the Russian psyche, I had faintly subscribed to Churchill's "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma". However, written in historical sequence, with insight borne of actual years of reporting from Russia in its turbulent years at the end of communism, and, as the author intended, "with no value judgements", I find this one of the best books I have read after putting down the last of Robert Fisk's. From the age of 15, when I first read Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn, I have been fascinated by the combination of Asiatic and Western values that Russia embodies. Working with Russian teachers and visiting Russia in 2007, I, three generations removed from my Russian roots, found it hard to believe that they would prefer a system based on secret police and lack of freedom of speech. Although Sixsmith does not do it, it is fascinating to compare the emergence of capitalism in Russia with that of China. As the author points out, when Yeltsin tried to enter the capitalist world, he did so at breakneck speed with little information and knowledge about the direction and relied on Western advice, (This at the time of "Greed is Good" in western financial markets) but with the rapid easing of state control. Whereas China has been more successful because they have changed over a period of decades and have only very gradually loosened the grip of state control. Sixsmith also points out the Russian tradition of State before the individual people and the autocratic domination, passed down since the beginning of their times which is perhaps why, at deciding points in their history, from a Western viewpoint, the road less travelled has been taken. This book has made me think about Russia for weeks after, regrettably, coming to the end. Unlike some journalists in the ADHD world of modern journalism who rush to a spot, spend six weeks there and then write their opinions of it, Sixsmith has lived and researched his material and couched it in a very readable style.