Orlando Figes has no qualms about expressing unpopular truths. He confesses a sombre and blunt opinion to me as we sit on a Zoom call conversing about the possible outcome to the current geopolitical crisis in Ukraine.
“I’ve come to the conclusion, as most people have,” he says, “that the war can’t be won.”
As someone who’s been to and studied Russia for nearly 40 years, the British historian has built a large network of friends and colleagues for whom he is worried as they find themselves under the leadership of Russian president Vladimir Putin.
“Many of my friends have left Russia. One or two I haven’t heard from. And some I know are quite anxious about their children being mobilised.”
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He is “angry”, he says. “For me, personally, as I think for most people who spent even half the time that I have in Russia, what’s happening is a real tragedy.”
Maybe because of this, Figes has embarked on a mission to clear some of the fog around this conflict by providing a base for understanding of the Russian mindset. By his own admission, “Russian politics are too often analysed without knowledge of the country’s past”.
His latest book, The Story of Russia, is this effort: a romp through the past 1,000 years of Russian history, and a guide to understanding the narratives sculpted by the Kremlin that resonate so much with the Russian public and are at odds with the Western understanding of the world.
Some of these stories were captured by Vladimir Putin’s essay, published last year, entitled On the Historical Unity of Russia and Ukraine, which has become the pretext for the Ukraine invasion. Figes’s book covers the key periods cited in Putin’s narrative and the wider realm of Russian history. It opens on a symbolic episode that showcases the tug-of-war between Russia and Ukraine as they attempt to lay claims to their individual history.
It follows the 2016 unveiling of a bronze monument to Grand Prince Vladimir, ruler of Kievan Rus (the predecessor of Russia), in the centre of Moscow. That event prompted an outcry from Ukrainians, for whom Vladimir was already a national icon encapsulated in their own monument built many years prior – only under the name Volodymyr (the Ukrainian variation).
This clash demonstrates both countries’ sensitivity to historical details as they struggle to redefine themselves as nation states more than 30 years after the Soviet Union’s collapse. In many respects their plight follows the turbulent trajectory of further-flung republics such as Armenia, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan, which endured years of Civil War and bloody conflicts with their neighbours during the 1990s in a quest to re-establish their borders based on historical claims.
What adds a further dimension to this matter, however, is Russia – which does not possess an example of how to be a nation state in its history books, according to Figes. This is because it had never been a nation in the modern understanding of the term.
“Russia had existed as an empire for so long that it could not simply reinvent itself as a nation after 1991,” he writes. “Their identity had been subsumed in the Russian Empire, and then in the Soviet Union, where they were regarded as the leading nationality.”
The foundation of myths
Thus began the ill-fated process of plumbing history for stories – myths – and signposts on what Russia should look like on the world stage, a process destined to be hijacked by despotic actors. Putin has become the figurehead of this quest.
Increasingly isolated and unmoored in recent years, he has shaped the political reality of Russia – and its role in the international order – according to his own interpretation of historical events. He defines the country as the spiritual centre of a pan-Slavic empire – or ‘The Third Rome’ – and, seeing himself as the soul of this collective, has taken offence at historical misjustices carried out by the West in relation to Russia.
“The Slavophile trope that Russia is defined by higher spiritual values that somehow make it superior to the West, despite all of the West’s technology and material progress, is a pretty old idea. It goes back, like much of Putin’s interpretation of history, to 19th-century imperial traditions,” says Figes.
“But the Slavophilism that is adapted for present-day purposes – and whether [Putin] believes it genuinely or not I have no idea – is radicalised by some of the later 19th-century Slavophiles like [Nikolai] Danilevsky, who argued, not just like earlier Slavophiles that Russia should preserve its character and not let itself become Westernised or it will lose its identity, but by outright hostility to the West.”
The origins of this idea stem from Russia’s complicated relations with the West, a history in which the former was often perceived to be inferior or primitive due to its struggle to keep up with the technological and industrial advances of the West and its place on the map. It caused the West to impose all sorts of humiliating conditions on Russia, such as the Paris Treaty following the Crimean War, which required the complete dismantling of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet – a first for any great European power.
Frustrated Russian writers called for the abandonment of the Western model and advocated a course of development for their country that was defined by an opposition to Western secular values. Some scholars have applied Nietzsche’s concept of ressentiment to the phenomenon: a state of anger resulting from feelings of shame and envy and the inability to satisfy them.
All this and more has been dredged up by Putin to generate popular support in the present day and cultivate public anger towards the West. But the reason why these narratives have resonated so much is because a lot of middle-aged Russians – who form the bulk of Putin’s support – were aware enough to remember the 1990s, and could correlate their experiences directly to them. According to Figes, this was the time when it was possible to change the course of history and avoid disaster.
The role of the West
“With a wiser policy towards Russia after 1991, things might have been very different,” says Figes. “The basic core of the problem is that in the West there was always quite a lot of ignorance about Russia and its position in the Soviet Union – particularly its relations with Ukraine. There are recorded cases of American presidents turning up in Ukraine and asking: ‘Gee, which part of Russia are we in now?’
[ History is abused to underwrite politics of Putin’s RussiaOpens in new window ]
“Russia and the Soviet Union were basically equated in the West and, as a result, the West failed to see that Russians were also victims of the Soviet system. And after 1991, the result of that position in the West was that whereas other former Soviet republics or east European satellite states of the Soviet Union were given all sorts of help by the West to become sort-of normal countries, there wasn’t really that help given to Russia – because it was perceived [to be] the perpetrator of the whole problem and not as the victim of it as well.”
In those early years, Figes was visiting Russia for research on his second book, a work on the Russian Revolution entitled A People’s Tragedy. It went on to win many accolades, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was named one of The Times Literary Supplement’s 100 Most Influential Books Since the War (and one of David Bowie’s top 100 books).
While there, Figes was witness to the degeneration happening in the country, which saw the murder rate skyrocket and the economy sink and buckle, with the government eventually sliding into bankruptcy.
“Under Clinton, Yeltsin was basically told what to do. He was in a very weak position and dependent on the West – which imposed this shock therapy on Russia, which was such a disaster,” he says.
“It doesn’t explain the invasion and it doesn’t justify it, of course. But I think it does mean that the West, to some extent, is to blame for the position we ended up with.”
To Figes, Putin is the face of a national sentiment that stretches much deeper into Russian society. The president has only been successful at consolidating the anger and frustration that had already been there, shaping it into a powerful ideological force.
“If Putin was to die from a heart attack today, he’d be replaced by a Putin 2. Who knows, it could be an even more extreme nationalist leader than Putin, prepared to use even more extreme methods in this war to win it.”
So, how do you battle an ideology that is already innate, and de-indoctrinate the masses taken in by the myths Putin re-galvanised? Talk of de-Putinising Russia is unpractical at best, says Figes. It is foolish to even suggest a campaign of deradicalisation in Russian society such as that carried out in Nazi Germany after the second World War – primarily because it requires the total disarmament of the subject state, brought about by a military defeat.
“The most obvious way for that to happen is for Russia to suffer a decisive military defeat,” Figes says. “Then there is the possibility that the elites would get rid of [Putin] as the man to blame and start fighting among themselves about what should happen next, and maybe a more moderate win of a leadership might emerge at that point. But at the moment, that’s wishful thinking.”
The bleak prospects are having a visible effect on Figes, who says he is “depressed” over the entire affair. “It’s been personally a shock for me, as it has been for probably most historians of Russia. Naively, we thought it might become a different sort of place.”
He has not given up on the thought of Russians becoming masters of their own destiny. It is a scenario that he is not optimistic about, but one on which he pins his only hopes.
“What is this war for? It’s a completely unnecessary war. I don’t think the majority of Russians, if they knew what this war really was, would want it.”
On that note, we put a rest to the subject of Russia and Ukraine and the future of Europe and bid each other goodbye. The air we leave with may not be hopeful, but it is crystal clear.
The Story of Russia is published by Bloomsbury
