Customer Reviews

Russia: People and Empire, 1552-1917, Enlarged Edition

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I had modest expectations about this book and was pleasantly surprised. This is always better and much less common than the other way around.

According to Richard Pipes, there is nothing particularly new in the thesis of Hosking's book: the main problem of Russia is the delay in nation-state forming due to great tension between the people with its traditional culture and the Petrine Empire looking to the West for its inspiration and model. I suppose the idea must have occurred to some observers, myself included, but this is the first consistent attempt to follow it to its logical conclusion. Amazingly, it explains quite a lot, and many purported mysteries of the Russian history simply dissolve. The book is especially valuable because of the light it sheds on the present history: the sudden dissolution of the empire and the inability of the remainder to establish any meaningful relationship with the West. The Petrine initiative has run its course, and the country is feverishly building its identity from scratch - an odd and disturbing picture at the beginning of the 21st century when many claim the very idea of the nation-state is a thing of the past.

It is a great pity that such a book did not appear at least a decade ago: it would have got a wider notice and served a better purpose. As it is, the West has lost most of its interest in its erstwhile prime adversary. As to Russia itself, even though the book was been published there in translation, I was amazed to discover that it hardly made a stir. Perhaps my amazement is misplaced: nationalist fever is not the best vantage point for an objective evaluation of the past. Besides, the decades of Marxist scholarship has made a veritable mess of the language, and the very word "nation" is simply untranslatable into modern Russian, producing much confusion.

Mr. Hosking's book is very accessible and readable. My only quibble is that the thesis is a bit overexploited - a drawback I am inclined to excuse in such a pioneering effort.

This was the first book on Russian history I had ever attempted to read. I was a sophmore at the University of Colorado in 1999 and had enrolled in my first course in Russian history. I had to refer to a dictionary every few pages to comprehend the literature. Hosking has an unique writing style and prefers to show off his vocabulary. In his book, Hosking argues an underlying theme of Russian history that maintains the majority of Russians were alienated by an elite minority whom were struggling to find an indentity for a multi-ethnical empire all the while maintaing its constant expansion and antiquated yet functional political systems. After reading several books on russian history I returned to this book and beleived it to be a thought provoking and intersting and enjoyable read. Verse yourself in several books before attempting this specialized section of Russian history because this is not an introductory history of russia and if you have an interset in russia but have no books under your belt, then you will not be able to comprehend. Once you are fmailiar with russia's history, however, this book will be very engaging once you get past the over kill use of high vocabulary and become familiar with the general Russian vocabularies found in most historic readings. Lastly, the overriding theme of the book, not counting other themes which are constant in Russian history, I found that his general argument has not been duplicated in any other books I have read. His is merely one argument on the presentation of Russian history and it will allow you to formulate your own ideas on the subject and further your interest.