How Russia Shaped the Modern World
Anne Gorsuch reviews two titles on Russia.
- How Russia Shaped the Modern World: From Art to Anti-Semitism, Ballet to Bolshevism
by Steven G. Marks
Princeton University Press, 393 pp. £19.95
ISBN 0-691-09684-8
HISTORY TODAY BOOKSHOP PRICE £17.95
The questions animating this book could not be more topical. How Russia Shaped the Modern World explores Russia’s contributions to anti-Westernism beginning with Russian anarchists’ influences on modern terrorist movements and concluding with the influence of communist dictatorship on Third World authoritarian regimes. According to Steven Marks, Saddam Hussein can be portrayed as an ‘Oriental despot’, but more accurately ‘can be seen as [one of] the closest heirs of Stalinism’ (p.325). How Russia Shaped the Modern World is a valuable, accessible, and comprehensive guide for people struggling to understand the hostility of many on the ‘periphery’ to the secular, capitalist ‘West’.
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