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A review by dansumption
Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation by Serhii Plokhy
3.0
this book traces the history of the ethnic Rus' and Russian people, the Russian nation from Kyiv and Muscovy onwards, the Russian Empire, the USSR, and all that followed in the break-up of the Soviet Union. But primarily it is about the Rus' people: whether Greater Russian, Ukrainian (Little Russian) or Belarusian (White Russian).
Despite being over long and and often repetitive, the book misses out a lot of detail that I would have hoped to learn more about. The vast part of Russia that exists to the east of the river Volga is only mentioned once before we reached the 1920s, and that in reference to Tsar selling Alaska to the Americans. How the Tsar obtained Alaska–or indeed Siberia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan…–is never explained. Even in the Ukraine (the Little Russian nation whose relationship to Greater Russia is the undercurrent running through the entire book), the Crimean War merits less than one of the book's 350 pages.
Despite being over long and and often repetitive, the book misses out a lot of detail that I would have hoped to learn more about. The vast part of Russia that exists to the east of the river Volga is only mentioned once before we reached the 1920s, and that in reference to Tsar selling Alaska to the Americans. How the Tsar obtained Alaska–or indeed Siberia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan…–is never explained. Even in the Ukraine (the Little Russian nation whose relationship to Greater Russia is the undercurrent running through the entire book), the Crimean War merits less than one of the book's 350 pages.