Reply to Books on Russians

Forum Index » Entertainment and Pop Culture

Reply to "Books on Russians"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]"Nicholas and Alexandra" by Robert K. Massie is an iconic volume. At this point, it's pretty dated (written in 1967) and of course it's from an outside historian perspective, but it's still iconic and probably the best known work out there about the fall of the Romanov dynasty, the relationship of Nicholas and his wife, the Russian imperial court and the foibles of the tsarist system. There's a lot of information in those pages. Though fair warning, he goes into brutal, graphic detail on what happened to the family in July 1918. That chapter stuck with me for a long time. While Nicholas and Alexandra are hardly the first monarchs to meet a bloody end in a revolution, the way their children and servants were butchered is an appalling disgrace.

I don't think you can just focus on the USSR in your readings. The Soviet Union formed as it did in response to the uniquely Russian institution of tsarist autocracy and the legacy of serfdom. You have to go farther back. Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky are great and should definitely be read, but I don't see how they're any less limited than historians, just from a different perspective. They were already atypical for being well-educated and able to read and write, which marked them in a certain class with a certain viewpoint. And between the tsars, the Orthodox Church, the USSR, and now Putin, Russia has never had a truly free press, so some outside analysis is definitely needed. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics