@Nemets What made you pick up this book in particular? I'm trying to dig into European history on the whole but it's hard to know what's worth reading and what's not.

if it's 600+ pages and the 1 star reviews on amazon aren't about formatting errors or freudianism it's usually at least half decent @Mick

@Nemets Yikes. Guess so. What do you think of the book so far?

How is it written? Is it tough to read, meaning, maybe a little dry?

I'm enjoying it, but it is pretty academic

Ok with academic, that can be written in a way to keep you reading imo.

I'm very inexperienced with Russia, does it get into what it means to be Russian wrt ethnicity?

I'm only 7% into it so far - but a lot of it is past the arrival of ryurik

I don't know if ethnic conflict was later, obviously soviet era

was a big deal

oh, ok.

I've always been curious about the history of the various groups that fell under Russian influence

how those groups formed, how they interacted with Russian influence and power, etc.

Ryurik?

Viking?

he was a viking of finnish background that united a lot of slavs and founded Rus'

his descendants would rule russia until the death of Ivan IV "The Terrible"

Ok. Ivan was the first Czar, so he was of Viking decent? I though Ivan was the beginning of a new era in Russian rule and culture...?

I've got some learning to do.

russians are a mixture of a lot of different peoples, just like americans

slavs are the main group, but they have a lot of finnic and ugrian ancestry, with a sprinkling of tatar and german

That's my very elementary understanding. I was just under the impression Ivan was the beginning and not the end of an era

in a lot of ways he was

he was both...?

yeah

can you calrify?

oh

probably a lot to clarify, haha

don't mean to ask for a history lesson haha

no problem

after mongols destroyed kiev and a lot of principalities, base of russian civilization shifted north of the forest line to places where nomadic hordes were less capable of attacking

moscow was a very loyal servant of the mongols, and gained a lot in power and wealth relatively during that time

by the 15th century, the mongols were destroying themselves through fighting between descendants of genghis khan and new warlords

so moscow was able to retake a lot of territory that had been lost

a lot of the various principalities had their own identities at that time, and regularly rebelled against moscow

Ivan IV is pretty famous for sacking novgorod, a major city that had its own identity, and he played an even larger role in his grandfather Ivan III in promoting russian identity in the territories he controlled

as time went on, the various principalities gradually lost their identities and became russians

however certain places like galicia and volhynia remained outside of russian control until 1945, and never adopted a russian identity, and instead kept their old identities as part of the old principalities. These identities became the modern ukrainian identity

so Ivan IV was part of a broader trend of centralization and russification that continued until 1917, but was exceptionally good at it

but he was still part of the old system in a lot of ways

hope that makes sense