Orlando Figes - The Story of Russia

form of ancient Rome. None of the triumphant arches in the illustration existed.

The Mice are Burying the Cat (Lubok print, c.1760), a popular satire on the foreign manners of the deceased Tsar Peter.

Vigilius Eriksen, Equestrian Portrait of Catherine II (1729–96) the Great of Russia (18th century). Catherine’s love of horses gave rise to the absurd myth that she was killed by one in the act of copulation.

The Bronze Horseman, Étienne-Maurice Falconet’s equestrian statue of Peter the Great (1782), a source of many myths about St Petersburg and the nature of imperial power in Russia.

Ilya Repin, 17 October 1905 (1907), an idealistic image of the people’s revolutionary unity.

Peasants of a northern Russian village, 1890s. Note the lack of shoes and the uniformity of their clothing and their houses. This was the ‘communal harmony’ imagined by the Slavophiles and Populists.

Ivanovo textile mill, 1905. Women and children were heavily employed in the textile industry.

Nicholas II and the Empress Alexandra with their haemophiliac son, the tsarevich Alexei, during the Romanov tercentenary celebrations of 1913 in Moscow. The jubilee cemented the Romanov myth of a mystical union between tsar and people.

That myth collapsed in the revolution of February 1917, when Romanov symbols and statues were destroyed. The head here belonged to a statue of Alexander III in Moscow.

Fedor Shurpin, Morning of our Motherland (1948), a classic example of socialist realist portraiture in the service of the leader cult. Stalin’s gaze is fixed ahead, beyond the frame, to a future only he can see.

Irakli Toidze, Mother Russia Calls (1941). The mother shows a military oath and calls on Russia’s sons to defend her from the enemy.

A United Russia party electoral poster (2003). The map of Russia is filled with portraits of historic Russian figures, including Stalin – the first time he appeared in Putin’s historical mythology.

Part of Alexander Nevsky’s exhibit in the St Petersburg ‘My History’ park. The panels on the left emphasise the role of Nevsky in defending Russia from ‘the aggression of the West’, while those on the right show his statesmanship in forging new alliances with the Mongols and Asia.

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First published in Great Britain 2022

This electronic edition first published in 2022

Copyright © Orlando Figes, 2022

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ISBN: HB: 978-1-5266-3174-9; TPB: 978-1-5266-3176-3; EBOOK: 978-1-5266-3167-1; EPDF: 978-1-5266-5689-6

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