Its murders are, of course, legion (as Madame de Staël put it, “In Russia the government is autocracy tempered by assassination”). So now should be a promising time for a book that puts our horror on pause for a moment to tell Russia’s dramatically grand-scale stories and explain the thousand years or so that have brought it to today. Its invasion of Ukraine, which deteriorated into atrocities against civilians and POWs, and the razing of cities (full of Russian-speaking families), has obliterated its standing as a civilised member of the rules-based order.
Russia has played countless roles for the West – foe, ally, scapegoat, magnificent cultural exemplar, mystical giant, eternal puzzle – but never has its reputation in our sphere slumped to the state of moral and geopolitical blackness it currently occupies.
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