Russka: The Novel of Russia by Edward Rutherfurd

 This author is known for creating stories spanning for many centuries, rich in history, people, politics, and culture. This story is presented through four families who are divided by ethnicity but united in shaping the destiny of their land.

The story starts with creation of the first village in Russia, Russka, and its first Great leaders, followed by Mongol invasions, and Great Khan rule over Russia. In result, making some natives of southern lands to move northward, “where the Tatar patrols did not bother to come” to take census and collect taxes; some headed toward “a small town called Moscow. Nothing much,” and some to the village of Russka. With time Tatars reach even the northern villages.

In mid-16th century, the winning switches places. “Kazan: gateway to the empire once ruled by mighty Genghis Khan. Now it was Russian. (…) Moscow was then one of the greatest cities in all Europe – as big as sprawling London or powerful Milan.”

Peasant oppression creates a new move east toward unknown steppe. Further, the oppression gives birth to unruly Cossacks, who inhabit sparsely populated areas in the lower Dnieper of southern Russia & Ukraine. “By the end of 1648 half the population of the Ukraine were calling themselves Cossacks.”

With death of Ivan the Terrible, “who wreaked havoc at the slightest whim,” the Romanovs take over the throne. During their reign the scene enters Peter Tolstoy – “the distinguished ancestor of Russia’s great novelist.” (Leo Tolstoy).

Peter Romanov, 17, hardly on the throne and tsar yet, already stirring controversy by “his open and insulting mockery of religion.” With time his “strange adolescence continued” and it seems as only two things are of interest to him: war and boats; boats that go to sea.

At the age of 24, after the death of his invalid brother Ivan, he sits alone upon the throne. Two years later, in 1698, Peter travels abroad. “Something that no ruler of Russia had ever done.”

With gaining some access to Baltic Sea, he gets an idea of building a town up north in the marshes, which sounds as another absurd idea of his. In 1709, “he began forcibly to transfer whole villages of people to the rising city” of St. Petersburg. “Thus Peter began his new western capital.”

In 1812, in the months leading up to Napoleon’s great invasion of Russia, “many Russian landowners feared an internal revolution more than they feared the invader” as oppression of peasants was great.

In 1815 after Napoleon’s defeat, Russia is “No longer the barbarous Asiatic kingdom cut off from the Western world (…) the Russian tsar had taken lead.”

The famine of 1839 and 1840 gives an opportunity for one serf, who was greatly trying to buy his freedom. He searches and he finds an alternative crop – potato.

In 1857 Tsar Alexander signs Emancipation of the Serfs, but heavily imposed taxes, make them free only on paper.

In 1906 tsar grants the people a parliament “in which most Russian men could vote, but they did so grouped by class, each class able to send only so many deputies. The arithmetic of this system meant that each vote of a gentleman was worth that of three merchants, fifteen peasants, or forty-five urban workers.” On top of this, a second controlling chamber is added, pretty much giving the tsar autocracy. “What tsar gives…the tsar takes away.”

New revolutionaries appear, calling themselves Bolsheviks and are led by then unknown Lenin. The history of Russia continues to be marked by autocracy and rebellion.

In 1908, a meaning of a free man is true in fact as well as theory.

In 1937, “what Lenin had begun Stalin would complete. (…) And the transformation had been astounding: the entire countryside turned into state farms and collectives.”

It is interesting to be reading about places which once where just tiny villages and today are known as one of the most beautiful places in the world. The book has a slow start, but overall, it is a good read as any of his other books. 

If you're not familiar with this author, then I highly recommend starting with reading his books about Ireland and England. These are his most successful books.

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