I’ve been fairly interested in Russia for about a decade. Not enough to actually go there or study Russian or anything, but the history, yes. I know. I’m so devoted.

I thought this set of rentals were two audiobooks, but instead they were two 5 hour radio programs produced for BBC radio. I didn’t return them to the library for actual books though. I was already committed.

The first part of the series, From Rulers to Revolutions, covered Russia from the Middle Ages (maybe slightly earlier) up through the 1917 Revolution. The second part of the series, The Rise and Fall of the Soviets, covered the 20th and 21st centuries until, I think, 2014. Barack Obama was definitely still in office when this program was produced.

From Rulers to Revolutions took a look at Russian history and, particularly, how the Russian political system developed from a group of princes to one Czar and looked in depth at all the times Russia nearly became a democratic monarchy, but didn’t. In most cases, if not all, the Russian monarch simply could not bring themselves to give up their power to any kind of legislature or election process or anything of the sort. Peter the Great couldn’t do it, Catherine the Great couldn’t do it, etc…

The Rise and Fall of the Soviets, of course, looked at Lenin, Stalin, the Bolsheviks, etc… all the way through to Putin, who is an authoritarian in his own right.

I knew very little about Russian history so I thought this did an excellent job explaining at least the basics. One of the questions posed both early on and towards the end of the program was “Why does Russia always turn to despotism rather than to democracy as a solution to their problems?”

Martin Sixsmith, who wrote and presented these programs, was a journalist in Russia during the 1980s and 1990s, and tries his best to answer why Russia has never been able to truly reform itself and whether it will do so in the near future. Sixsmith painstakingly examines the country’s major events and influential rulers for clues to Russia’s pattern of behavior.

It was an interesting program and I highly recommend it if you’re interested in at least the basics of  Russian history and its politics.

Tagged: genre: history, radio programs: russia the wild east