Orlando Figes is a historian and the author of 10 books on Russian and European history, including the multi-award-winning A People’s Tragedy, about the Russian Revolution – named one of the “100 most influential books since the war” by the TLS. Born in London in 1959, Figes studied and lectured at Cambridge and later became professor of history at Birkbeck – a position from which he recently retired. His latest book is The Story of Russia, which condenses 1,000 years of history into a tightly written, illuminating 300-odd pages.
You’ve written extensively about Russian history in previous books. What new perspective did you want to offer here?
I was aware of the growing disconnect between how we [in the west] see Russian history and the way the Russians see it – particularly the way in which the Putin regime has propagandised a version that is increasingly imperial. I felt it was important to talk about the ideas of Russia’s history because, we now see, they were being weaponised to justify and sustain this war [with Ukraine]. I wanted to give the western reader a sense of the sacred power of the tsar, Russia’s special mission in the world, and so on.
Do you think that throughout its history, Russia has been more reliant on myths than other countries – Britain, for example?
We all have our national myths, Britain probably more than many, but I think the role of myths in Russia is particularly important. As [cultural historian] Michael Cherniavsky put it, the harder life becomes, the more the Russians seek hope and salvation in myths transcending everyday realities. That’s an idea developed by the church and by the state over many centuries.
Can Putin’s grip on be explained by looking back at past Russian rulers?
I think it can. Putin has consciously built a cult around his personality in a way that is similar to Stalin – this brooding autocrat with responsibility for the whole country on his shoulders. Likewise, I think he’s built his regime very consciously on the monarchical principle of authority. As Stalin said, the Russians need a tsar. Putin has obviously taken a leaf out of Stalin’s book in that sense. This [his rule] also relates to Russian statecraft and conceptions of authority, which are not just monarchical but sacralised. The power of the tsar comes from Byzantium, from the conception of the tsar as one side of a sacred power. And in Russia that is complicated further by the patrimonial tradition – namely that the tsar rules Russia like it’s his personal household. Nicholas II, in the first Russian census of 1897, put his occupation as “owner of Russia”. This patrimonial tradition is long and still very much alive.
What can we learn from this?
The failure to understand the importance of that patrimonial tradition is one of the reasons why the west gets the question of corruption so wrong. The idea of trying to put a number on Putin’s personal wealth is senseless, because he could make himself the richest person in the world if he wanted to, but the system doesn’t work like that. He owns the people who own the wealth. He can have a palace in Crimea, which [Alexei] Navalny exposed as massive corruption, but I don’t think that’s the right way of seeing it, because the palace is an extension of his state power. He stands for Russia. Until we grasp how the Russians see that history, and how Russian power has worked, then we don’t really know how to deal with it.
Have you ever met Putin?
I have, at the Valdai conference in 2015. We exchanged a few words, but the thing I noticed was, to my surprise, he had a very soft handshake. His hand was warm and podgy, and the handshake was soft. It reminds me of that bit in Solzhenitsyn’s The First Circle, where he presents Stalin as this rather small, old, yellow man with yellowing hair and a pockmarked face. Behind every dictator there is the little man.
Do you anticipate the war dragging on for years?
I do. I’m no military expert, but my sense from reading military experts is that the Russians don’t have the resources to go on indefinitely, so they’re likely to defend what they’ve taken so far. But then it becomes an economic war, and Putin will be banking on the west eventually caving in, because of political instability caused by the cost of living crisis. I think it’s absolutely critical that the Ukrainians, who are really fighting this war for us as much as for themselves, are given the munitions they require to get to a point where they can negotiate from a position of relative strength, because the only way to end the war is diplomacy. But I don’t think it’s possible for them to expel the Russians from the Donbas or Crimea.
Mikhail Gorbachev died last week. What are your thoughts on his place in history?
In Russia, the perception of him – for a long time now manipulated and shaped by the Putin ideologists – is that he was a terrible leader, because he brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union. I remember making a radio programme in Russia and a schoolkid told me that Stalin was a bad leader, but not nearly as bad as Gorbachev. The number of people in Russia who see him as a bringer of liberty is small, the intelligentsia, basically. I think the most important thing about Gorbachev, in terms of his legacy, is that he oversaw the peaceful dismantling of the communist system. It’s not that he brought it about – he accelerated it, but it would have happened anyway. But what’s important about him, it seems to me, is that he managed to navigate a way out of a potential civil war. I think that potential was real, and that was his main fear. Indeed he said as much to me once. I met him on two occasions. We had a little frisson of disagreement over one or two things, but he was a very sharp and likable person.
Where do you write and what is your routine?
Generally speaking, I write in Italy, where I have a house in the middle of nowhere and there are no distractions. I like to keep a nine-to-five day and write in the morning. I’ve now retired from academia, and one of the huge bonuses is that I have the rest of the day to reflect on what I’ve written. I think that freedom is enabling me to broaden my style of writing. I’ve written a play, for example, which is on next year at the Jermyn Street theatre [in London]. And I’m interested in historical writing that isn’t necessarily tied to the academy.
What have you been reading lately?
The last book I finished was M: Son of the Century by Antonio Scurati, which is a sort of historical novel-cum-biography of Mussolini. It’s multi-vocal, focusing not just on Mussolini but [socialist leader Giacomo] Matteotti and various other fascist leaders. I’ve always been interested in history writing that is able to communicate something of the experience and the chaos of history by relinquishing that narrator’s position of supremacy.
Do you read much fiction?
I do, though I don’t pick up the latest hyped first novel by X, so I’m a little slow off the mark. I’m a big Philip Roth fan, as most men of my age probably are. I’m 62 now, and when you get to my age you begin to think: I’ve only got so many years left; there are only so many books I can read again for pleasure. So I’m bit more selective, and I have no hesitation giving up a book if it doesn’t grab me in the first 20 pages.
Is there a Russian author who you return to most often?
Of all of them, probably Turgenev, because I just identify with and like the man so much, despite his vanity and his weaknesses. As a writer he is, I think, sublime. And his biography, his worldview, I find very sympathetic. He’s the most cosmopolitan of all the Russian writers, the most European in his syntax and style, and the least ideological, in a tradition that does tend to be quite ideological.
You write about Dostoevsky and Gogol as proselytisers of Slavophile myths. Does that make you enjoy their work less?
If we substituted “relate to” for “enjoy”, then yes. I’m afraid I’m not a huge Dostoevsky fan. Likewise, I’m not a huge Vasily Grossman fan. And the third volume of War and Peace is weighed down by ideology, although it is one of the greatest novels ever written. I find the ideological element in Russian literature fascinating as a cultural historian, but I don’t find it particularly attractive as a reader of literary fiction. I much prefer the Turgenev style.
What kind of reader were you as a child?
I was a big reader, mainly because I spent a lot of my childhood on my own. We had lots of bookshops and the Swiss Cottage library on our doorstep. I was a precocious reader, but I don’t say that in a way to praise myself. Quite the contrary; it’s to say what a fool I was reading these things before I was really old enough to appreciate them. So I did read a lot of Russian literature when I was 13-14. But the writer that really hooked me as a teenager was Émile Zola. L’Assommoir was the book that got me interested in history. It’s very rude in many ways – there are hundreds of swear words in it, and a lot of chamber pots, and unseemly behaviour. But that was all part of its historical fascination for me.
• The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes is published by Bloomsbury (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
