Red Fortress: History and Illusion in the Kremlin (92 page)

57
.
Corriere della Sera,
25 August 1999.

58
.
New York Times,
8 September 1999. Turover’s reliability as a witness was later challenged.
Moscow Times,
6 March 2001.

59
.
New York Times,
13 April 2001.

60
.
Moscow Times,
16 April 2001.

61
. For more, see its website,
www.mabetex.eu
, where visitors can explore its promise that ‘we build the future’.

62
. Grigorii Smolitskii, ‘Moskovskii kreml’ mogut iskliuchit’ iz spiska Iunesco’,
Izvestiia,
10 August 2012, available at
http://izvestia.ru/news/532590
.

63
.
Moscow Times,
18 March 2002.

64
.
Ekspress gazeta online,
3 November 2006, available at
http://www.eg.ru/daily/sports/8410
(accessed 25 Aug. 2011).

65
. For the full text, in English translation, see
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/monitoring/584845.stm
.

66
. Shevtsova in Brown and Shevtsova,
Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin,
p. 93.

67
. Lilia Shevtsova, writing in Lilia Shevtsova and Andrew Wood,
Change and Decay: Russia’s Dilemma and the West’s Response
(Washington, DC, 2011), p. 42.

68
. There are many accounts of the bombings, allegedly staged by the FSB, that precipitated the second Chechen war. For a recent summary, see Satter,
Long Time Ago,
p. 301.

69
. For officially derived figures, see Hans-Henning Schroder, ‘What kind of political regime does Russia have?’, in Stephen White, ed.,
Politics and the Ruling Group in Putin’s Russia
(Basingstoke, 2008), p. 20.

70
. Taylor,
State Building,
p. 293.

71
. Anders Aslund, ‘The hunt for Russia’s riches’,
Foreign Policy,
152 (Jan–Feb 2006), p. 47.

72
. Figures cited by Lilia Shevtsova in Shevtsova and Wood,
Change and Decay,
p. 102.

73
.
http://valdaiclub.com/politics/37000.html
, cited by Clifford Gaddy and Fiona Hill, ‘Putin and the Uses of History’, Valdai Discussion Club, 10 January 2012, p. 4.

74
. As witnessed by the late British interpreter, K. A. (Tony) Bishop, interviewed in July 2006.

75
. For reportage in English, see Andrew Osborn’s article in the
Daily Telegraph,
14 February 2011, available at
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/8323981/Vladimir-Putin-has-600-millionItalianate-palace.html
.

76
. Yeltsin,
View,
pp. 210–11.

77
. Gaddy and Hill, ‘Putin and the Uses of History’, p. 2.

78
. For commentary, see Satter,
Long Time Ago,
p. 188.

79
. A point made by Arkady Ostrovsky, ‘Enigma variations’,
The Economist,
29 November 2008, pp. 3–18. See also Satter,
Long Time Ago,
pp. 212–15.

80
. Lilia Shevtsova,
Putin’s Russia
(Washington, DC, 2003), pp. 169–70.

81
.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/kremlin-funded-blockbuster-casts-putinin-a-tsar-role-1.829539
(accessed 15 Jan. 2013).

82
.
Nezavisimaia gazeta,
26 October 2007 (‘Russkii tresh’).

83
. ‘Liubim li my Moskvu?’,
Moskovskaia pravda,
30 August 2007.

84
.
Gibel’ imperii: Vizantiiskii urok
(a book based on the film was also published by Eksmo in 2008). I am grateful to Sergei Ivanov for introducing me to this material at a lecture in London in 2009.

85
. ‘Uroki istorii: rabota s natsional’noi ideei’,
Nezavisimaia gazeta,
30 December 2008.

86
. On the proposed textbook, by Aleksandr Filippov, see
Novaia gazeta,
24 September 2007, ‘Poslednii pisk istorii gosudarstva rossiiskogo’, and the critical remarks by Iurii Afanas’ev (‘Eta kniga – sledka s sovest’iu’). On its fate, see also Satter,
Long Time Ago,
p. 212.

87
. The statues were described to me by K. A. Bishop. On Putin’s devotion to Petr Stolypin, and also on the prominent displays of historical figures that Valdai Club members observed in the Kremlin of 2005, see Gaddy and Hill, ‘Putin and the Uses of History’, pp. 1–2.

88
. The episode,
Neizvestnyi kreml’,
was broadcast in 2004.

89
. ‘Aleksandra Nevskogo predlagaiut v pokroviteli FSB’,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/hi/russia/newsid_7629000/7629205.stm
(accessed 26 Sept. 2008).

90
. The book, whose general editor was Sergei Mironenko, was entitled
The Moscow Kremlin: Russia’s Citadel
(
Moskovskii kreml’: tsitadel’ Rossii
).

91
.
marker.ru/news/3124
(accessed 2 Sept. 2011).

92
. These and other comments can be accessed on
autotravel.ru/otklik.php/3490
.

93
.
http://valdaiclub.com/history/a162860813.html
(accessed 31 Jan. 2013).

94
. ‘Na bashniakh Kremlia obnaruzheny ikony’,
Izvestiia,
12 May 2010.

Suggestions for Further Reading

This book has covered nine hundred years in the history of the Russian state, and a bibliography that attempted to catalogue every source would present a formidable and probably impenetrable challenge to the reader. I have given full references in the endnotes, but here I offer a more general guide to further reading, restricting myself mainly to materials that are available in English.

GENERAL

The brave company of authors who have written on the whole sweep of Russian history is small but distinguished. Among the best general books are Geoffrey Hosking’s
Russia and the Russians: A History from Rus to the Russian Federation
(London, 2001) and James A. Billington’s
The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture
(New York, 1966). In preparing this book, I also consulted W. Bruce Lincoln’s
Between Heaven and Hell: The Story of a Thousand Years of Artistic Life in Russia
(New York, 1998), Nicholas Riasanovsky’s
Russian Identities: A Historical Survey
(Oxford, 2005) and Mark D. Steinberg and Nicholas Riasanovsky’s two-volume
A History of Russia,
7th edn (New York and Oxford, 2005). Michael Cherniavsky’s
Tsar and People: Studies in Russian Myths
(New York, 1969) was an inspiration, as was the much older
The Russian Idea
(London, 1947) by Nikolai Berdyaev. For an equally ambitious work that was written, refreshingly, by an expert in the medieval and early modern Russian world, see Marshall Poe,
The Russian Moment in World History
(Princeton, NJ, 2003). Readers with a taste for controversy will also enjoy Richard Pipes’ classic
Russia Under the Old Regime
(London and New York, 1974), which proposes the idea of the patrimonial state. By contrast, a brilliant collective endeavour, the
Cambridge History of Russia
(multiple volumes, 2006–8), presents very recent research in accessible form. Many of the individual essays are cited elsewhere in this survey.

The general histories of the Kremlin are more disappointing. The most serious one in English is Arthur Voyce’s
The Moscow Kremlin: Its History, Architecture and Art Treasures
(London, 1955). For more sumptuous illustrations (but fewer words), see David Douglas Duncan,
Great Treasures of the Kremlin
(New York, 1967). By contrast, Laurence Kelly’s collection of excerpts,
Moscow: A Traveller’s Companion
(London, 1983) includes a section on the Kremlin that provides glimpses of the fortress and the myths that have surrounded it. For the architecture of Moscow in general, see also Kathleen Berton Murrell’s
Moscow: An Architectural History
(London, 1977).

William Craft Brumfield’s
History of Russian Architecture
(Cambridge, 1993) is the best general introduction to its subject, while Dmitry Shvidkovsky’s
Russian Architecture and the West
(New Haven, Conn. and London, 2007) contains much valuable new material in a stunningly beautiful volume. There are several general histories of Russian art (the classic English-language work, in three volumes, is George Hamilton’s
Art and Architecture of Russia
(Harmondsworth, 1954)), but one of the most accessible is Tamara Talbot Rice,
A Concise History of Russian Art
(New York, 1963). Icons are discussed in illuminating ways by John Stuart,
Ikons
(London, 1975) and Oleg Tarasov,
Icon and Devotion: Sacred Spaces in Imperial Russia,
trans. Robin Milner-Gulland (London, 2002). As for the Orthodox Church itself, Timothy Ware,
The Orthodox Church
(London, 1997) provides the best general introduction.

MEDIEVAL RUSSIA

Among the best introductions to the story of Rus is Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard,
The Emergence of Rus 750–1200
(London and New York, 1996). The early chapters of Janet Martin’s wonderful
Medieval Russia, 980–1584
(Cambridge, 2007) also cover early Rus. The Byzantine connection is beautifully presented in Dmitri Obolensky,
The Byzantine Commonwealth
(London, 1971) and John Meyendorff,
Byzantium and the Rise of Russia: A Study of Byzantino-Russian Relations in the Fourteenth Century
(Cambridge, 1981). Omeljan Pritsak,
The Origin of Rus
(Cambridge, Mass., 1981) deals with important controversies about the traders from the north. On Bogoliubsky, see Ellen S. Hurwitz,
Prince Andrej Bogoljubskij: The Man and the Myth
(Firenze, 1980).

A traditional survey of early Muscovy is provided by John Fennell’s two volumes:
The Crisis of Medieval Russia, 1200–1304
(London, 1983) and
The Emergence of Moscow, 1304–1359
(London, 1968). A bracing antidote can be found in D. G. Ostrowski,
Muscovy and the Mongols: Cross-Cultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier
(Cambridge, 1998), which delivers a refreshing view of the lasting role of Mongol culture. Further grist to that mill appears in G. A. Fyodorov-Davydov,
The Culture of Golden Horde Cities
(Oxford, 1984), C. J. Halperin,
Russia and the Golden Horde: The Mongol Impact on Russian History
(London, 1987), and even Michel Roublev, ‘The Mongol tribute’, in M. Cherniavsky, ed.,
The Structure of Russian History
(New York, 1970), pp. 29–64. For the role of trade, as well as a discussion of the region’s international networks, see Janet Martin,
Treasure of the Land of Darkness: The Fur Trade and its Significance for Medieval Russia
(Cambridge, 1986).

For an introduction to the sacred architecture of the Orthodox world, see Cyril Mango,
Byzantine Architecture
(New York, 1976). The impact of Mongol conquest on building in the Moscow region is traced in David B. Miller, ‘Monumental building as an indicator of economic trends in Northern Rus’ in the late Kievan and Mongol periods, 1138–1462’,
American Historical Review,
94 (1989), pp. 360–90, and the same author has written on the most famous of Russian icons in ‘Legends of the icon of Our Lady of Vladimir: a study of the development of Muscovite national consciousness’,
Speculum,
43, 4 (October 1968), pp. 657–70. The artistic connections between Byzantine and early Russian art are explored in Robin Cormack’s useful introduction,
Byzantine Art
(Oxford, 2000).