'Figes's book is an absorbing and enlightening read, a triumph of concision, analysis and insight'
- Daily Mail
'A deeply impressive and deeply immersive book . . . The author sets out to reveal Russia's history, its people's perception of their past and the manifold ways in which those in power manipulate both events and legend to shape the present. It is a saga of multi-millennial identity politics'
- Spectator
'To understand Putin's paranoia, read this book on Russia's history'
- Telegraph
'A lucid chronological journey that ably illustrates how narratives from the nation's past have been used to shape its autocratic present'
- Observer
'If you really want to understand Putin's Russia today, anchored in its past of myths, then you simply have to read Figes's superb account in The Story of Russia'
- Antony Beevor
'Figes's book is an absorbing and enlightening read, a triumph of concision, analysis and insight'
- Daily Mail
'An indispensable survey of more than 1,000 years of history shows how myth and fact mix dangerously in the tales this crucial country tells about itself'
- Guardian
'A magnificent, magisterial thousand year history of Russia . . . its tsars and tyrants, wars and massacres, ideas and dreams vividly drawn, its analysis of Russian power and empire essential reading today'
- Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of The Romanovs and Stalin: The Court of the red Tsar
'An expert on Russia delivers a crucially relevant study . . . A lucid, astute text that unpacks the myths of Russian history to help explain present-day motivations and actions'
- Kirkus
'Urgent and revelatory and brilliantly told, it's all the things you pray a book will be when you first pick it up'
- Peter Morgan