_Firebird_ and Contemporary Russian culture

[Michael Denner]

Dear SEELANGers,

Generally I try to follow my mother's rule about not saying something if
it's not nice, but for the third time this academic year someone has
recommended Massie's _Firebird_ and I just can't hold my tongue any longer:
Does ANYONE else out there think the book is, well, vapid?

"The Kievan kingdom which so creatively took on the Christianity of
Byzantium was ruled from the city of Kiev" (29).

Tautologies aside, it sounds like she's writing copy for Life magazine! The
book is a font of undigested and unexamined bromides written, it seems, for
the average American grade-schooler (or perhaps a travel brochure). Massie
idealizes Russian culture and history to such an extent that anyone who
knows anything about the material in question can find factual errors, non
sequiturs, and overly generalized statements in nearly every phrase of the
book. I open the book randomly (a la Nabokov):

"Because Russia is a flat country  without sharp [?!] mountain ranges to
slow an invader, Kiev [!] was constantly exposed to attack from successive
waves of fierce nomads..." (34)

And facing that...

"Near the Gobi desert lived a strong and prolific Asiatic people, the
Mongols."

This is decidedly NOT appropriate material for a sophisticated, upper-level
Russian civ class, esp. for a contemporary culture class, since it ends
before the 1917 revolutions. If you're looking for a serious overview of
pre-contemporary Russian civ, you're stuck with Billington's idiosyncratic
and sometimes overly-detailed (what are there -- 100 pages of endnotes?)
_Icon and the Axe_. The brand new _Russia: A History_ out of Oxford is
EXCELLENT from a historical and political perspective, but really lacking on
the culture side. The writing, though, is scintillating, the pictures well
chosen and produced, and the level of detail is just right.

So far as contemporary Russian culture goes, speaking as someone who has
just finished teaching such a course, there is squat out there. I ended up
knocking together films, journal articles, excerpts from the NYT and BBC,
and lots of guest speakers.

Good luck!
mad
<|><|><|><|><|><|><|>
Michael A. Denner
Russian Studies Department
Campus Unit 8361
Stetson University
DeLand, FL 32720
904.822.7265

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