The history of Russia begins with the histories of the East Slavs.

Quotes

• Historians usually focus their attention on the past of countries that still exist, writing hundreds and thousands of books on British history, French history, German history, Russian history, American history, Chinese history, Indian history, Brazilian history or whatever. Whether consciously or not, they are seeking the roots of the present, thereby putting themselves in danger of reading history backwards. As soon as great powers arise, whether the United States in the twentieth century or China in the twenty-first, the call goes out for offerings on American History or Chinese History, and siren voices sing that today’s important countries are also those whose past is most deserving of examination, that a more comprehensive spectrum of historical knowledge can be safely ignored.
  • Norman Davies, Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe (2011)

• Russian history is the conflation of the Russian state with a personal ruler. Instead of getting the strong state that they want, to manage the gulf with the West and push and force Russia up to the highest level, they instead get a personalist regime. They get a dictatorship, which usually becomes a despotism. They’ve been in this bind for a while because they cannot relinquish that sense of exceptionalism, that aspiration to be the greatest power, but they cannot match that in reality.
  • Stephen Kotkin, as quoted in "The Weakness of the Despot: An expert on Stalin discusses Putin, Russia, and the West." (11 March 2022), by David Remnick, The New Yorker

• Few countries in history have started more wars or caused more turmoil than Russia in its eternal quest for security and status. It is also true, however, that at critical junctures Russia has saved the world’s equilibrium from forces that sought to overwhelm it: from the Mongols in the 16th century, from Sweden in the 18th century, from Napoleon in the 19th century, and from Hitler in the 20th century. In the contemporary period, Russia will be important in overcoming radical Islam, partly because it is home to some 20 million Muslims, particularly in the Caucasus and along Russia’s southern border. Russia will also be a factor in the equilibrium of Asia.
  • Henry Kissinger, As quoted in "World Chaos and World Order: Conversations With Henry Kissinger", The Atlantic, November 10, 2016

• In Russia, where the transition from one form of government to another was much more abrupt, post-Soviet governments have been grappling, with limited success, to make a new identity for Russia by using history. “These days,” the Russians say, “we live in a country with an unpredictable past.” While the new order clearly does not want to celebrate the November 7 anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, it does not want to alienate the citizenry by getting rid of what has been a two-day holiday. When Boris Yeltsin was in power, he kept the holiday but renamed it the Day of Accord and Reconciliation. The public remained largely in ignorance of the change. In 2005, Putin moved the holiday a couple of days forward, to November 4, and christened it the Day of National Unity. The change in date is to commemorate Russian success in driving out Polish invaders in 1612. The public, apart from the radical nationalists, still has no idea of what the holiday is supposed to be celebrating. What present-day Russia has shown little interest in remembering, at least so far, is the horrors of the Stalinist period. There are few official museums or sites to mark the Gulag or the thousands upon thousands who died in Stalin's prisons, and few memorials to those brave individuals, like Andrei Sakharov, who opposed the Soviet state.
  • Margaret MacMillan, The Uses and Abuses of History (2008), pp. 143-144
• One man’s monster is another man’s hero and such debates remain relevant today. Lenin benefited from one of the great whitewashes of history and is still revered by many misguided and ignorant people in Russia and the West: he remains honoured in his Mausoleum in Moscow’s Red Square. Stalin was denounced in 1956 but the Kremlin recently presented an official textbook for history teachers that acclaimed Stalin as ‘the most successful Russian leader of the 20th century’, a state-builder and triumphant warlord who ranks with ‘Bismarck and Peter the Great’.
  • Simon Sebag Montefiore, Monsters: History's Most Evil Men and Women (2009), p. xi

External links

• Encyclopedic article on History of Russia on Wikipedia