How do the myths that shaped modern Russia, and their reinvention by those in power, rule the country today? Here, Orlando Figes breathes life into the narratives that make sense of the uncertain world we now find ourselves in. ‘The Story of Russia’ begins in the first millennium, when Russia’s lands were initially settled by the Slavs, and ends with Putin in the present day. From Boris and Gleb, the first saints of the Russian Church, to the crowning of sixteen-year-old Ivan the Terrible in a candlelit cathedral; and from Catherine the Great, riding out in a green uniform to arrest her husband at his palace, to the bitter last days of the Romanovs; Orlando Figes takes us on an enthralling journey through the collective mind of Mother Russia.