An alternative story of Russia
mcsixth (Creative Commons rights-protected)
It all began in Kiev. That’s where the Russian adventure began.
Kievan Rus (10th-12th century) is the golden age. Kiev – ‘the mother of Russian cities’. Today, however, it is part of independent Ukraine and looking to get as far away from Russia as possible. The Orange Revolution wasn’t just another messy Eastern European election, it was the end of the Russian idea.
The idea says that the true faith passed in a direct line from Byzantium to Kiev to Moscow. When Constantinople fell, Moscow became the last harbinger of orthodoxy. The Russians were on a divine mission to save the world from the forces of darkness descending from the East. Moscow was the third Rome.
Roadkills Collective (Creative Commons rights-protected)
Ivan the Terrible (1533-84) united all the disparate Russian city-states, whacked the Tartars, and proclaimed himself Caesar (tsar). A new empire was born. It would grow to stretch from Finland to Japan.
The Renaissance and Enlightenment passed it by. Peter the Great (1682-1725) copied the architecture but never really got the point of liberalism or democracy. All attempts to ‘Europeanise’ the country were punished by the tsars and met with apathy by the peasants. No, Russia had a different fate to Europe. It had a Special Path.
This grew to its zenith when the Russian Empire became the Soviet Union in 1917. Except now the ‘true faith’ was Communism, and the force of darkness was the West. The Soviets slaughtered tens of millions of their own people in the name of the True Faith. You couldn’t buy bread but you knew you lived in a superpower.
gizz (Creative Commons rights-protected)
When it all collapsed in 1989 it looked like Russia might have another chance. But the Special Path just won’t let Russia go. The main buzzwords of the current government are ‘strong’, ‘unified’, ‘great’. ‘Prosperous’ or ‘free’ are luxuries when you’re on a divine mission. What that divine mission is no-one really knows any more…
Peter Pomeranzev
Peter Pomeranzev is a British film maker of Russian origin based in London and Moscow.
