Introduction -- Origins -- The Mongol impact -- Tsar and God -- Times of Trouble -- Russia faces West -- The shadow of Napoleon -- An empire in crisis -- Revolutionary Russia -- The war on old Russia -- Motherland -- Ends

"From the founding of Kievan Rus in the first millennium to Putin's war against Ukraine, Orlando Figes explores the ideas that have guided Russia's actions throughout its long and troubled existence. Whether he's describing the crowning of Ivan the Terrible or the dramatic upheaval of the peasant revolution, he reveals the impulses that have driven Russian history. How the Russians came to tell their story and to revise as they went along is not only a vital aspect of their history; it is also our best means of understanding how the country thinks and acts today. Based on a lifetime of scholarship, The Story of Russia is sweeping, revelatory, and masterful"--