The Story of Russia

Начало книги

On a cold and grey November morning, in 2016, a small crowd gathered on a snow-cleared square in front of the Kremlin in Moscow. They were there to witness the unveiling of a monument to Grand Prince Vladimir, the ruler of Kievan Rus, ‘the first Russian state’, between 980 and 1015. According to legend, Vladimir was baptised in the Crimea, then part of the Byzantine Empire, in 988, thus beginning the conversion of his people to the Eastern Orthodox Church. Russia’s main religious leaders – the patriarch of Moscow and All-Russia, the Catholic ordinariate, the grand mufti, the chief rabbi and the head of the Buddhist Sangha – were all in attendance in their multicoloured robes.

The bronze figure, bearing cross and sword, stood at over twenty metres tall. It was the latest in a long series of elephantine shrines to Vladimir, all erected since the fall of Communism in the same kitsch ‘Russian’ national style developed in the nineteenth century. Other Russian towns – Belgorod, Vladimir, Astrakhan, Bataisk and Smolensk – had built monuments to the grand prince with funding from the state and public subscriptions. The Moscow statue was financed by the Ministry of Culture, a military history society and a motorcycle club.1

Читать дальше →