Russia

The last set of chapters traces the astonishing rise of Soviet Russia, the burgeoning of its empire following the defeat of Nazi Germany, and its no less astonishing and precipitous collapse. Chapter 15 describes post-Communist Russia, while the Conclusion summarizes the results of the inquiry and also assesses Russia’s place and prospects in the world in 2004.

IThe Russians: Who are They?

IN JANUARY 1547, within days of the deaths of Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France, at the other end of Europe a sixteen-year-old youth was crowned tsar of Russia. The ceremony took place in the Kremlin’s Cathedral of the Assumption, one of most richly decorated of all Europe’s cathedrals, and when the Tsar emerged, crowned and holding orb and sceptre, to be showered with gold to symbolize prosperity, all the bells of Moscow pealed out and the huge, enthusiastic crowds roared as if in expectation of great things to come. The youth they acclaimed was Ivan IV, first titular emperor of Russia, self-proclaimed descendant of the Viking Riurik and of the Roman Emperor Augustus. He was to prove himself a dedicated empire-builder, whose possessions came to extend right across Eurasia, from Sweden to Persia and from the Baltic to the Pacific. It was the largest imperial heartland in the world.

Most accounts of the Russian past begin here — or even later, with Peter the Great — and give only cursory treatment to the preceding periods, despite their relevance to the development of Russian imperialism. This history, however, will begin at the beginning. But what was the beginning? Russian tradition suggests the arrival of Riurik and his band of Vikings in the ninth century, but since they found the land inhabited should one not begin earlier? And should one begin with the people or with the land of Russia? Common sense suggests the land, but, since the Russian environment and ecology were formed to an extent simultaneously with human settlement, there is reason to deal with them together. Either course presents a problem, however, since this story begins long before the written records on which most history is based, and since no historical records of those times survive (even supposing they were ever made). We shall therefore have to reconstruct our account of what happened by inference, from the conclusions of sciences other than history.

Anthropologists, archaeologists, experts in linguistics and others have all contributed to our understanding of what happened, but there are questions on which there is, as yet, no consensus the live areas of scholarship fired by dispute. Even when written sources appear, they cannot be taken at their face value. The early chroniclers worked for princes. They recorded what was of interest to their masters and, like public-relations staffs today, did so in ways which showed them in the best light, suppressing inconvenient facts. They justified their princes’ actions, supported their claims, and blackened the reputations of their enemies.

Despite these problems, the data unearthed by scholars in a variety of fields allows us to construct a picture of even the earliest past of human society and its environment. The information is patchy, disputed at points, and tells us little or nothing about some things we would like to know -such as the stories of individual human beings. The best picture we can build of the Russians’ earliest past, then, will resemble an old, imperfect silent movie. It will describe a long-drawn out process in a series of brief rushes; the definition will often be indistinct, and the film will break off altogether at certain points. Yet there are some certainties about human existence in what is now Russia from as early as twenty millennia ago, and even a sweeping survey of this difficult prehistoric ground may yield clues that could prove vital to later conclusions about the nature of Russians and their expansionist tendencies.

The territory of European Russia had been populated before the Ice Age. Among the earliest remains that have so far been discovered is a grave at Sungir, near Vladimir in central Russia. It dates from between 20,000 and 26,000 years ago, and contained the bones of a twelve- or thirteen-year-old boy and a girl of six or seven. The dead wore garments similar to modern anoraks and leather trousers that were sewn directly to their moccasin-like shoes — a device which Siberians still use to fight the cold. Their clothes had been decorated with thousands of shell beads. These and the variety of stone tools, pierced antler rods, ivory bracelets, and the two spears made from straightened mammoth tusks found with them suggest that the children were the offspring of a chief.¹