Russia through Western-colored glasses

From: The Boston Globe | Date: April 26, 1999| Author: Lynnley Browning, Globe Staff | Copyright information

RUSSIA UNDER WESTERN EYES From the Bronze Horseman to the Lenin Mausoleum By Martin Malia Belknap/Harvard University Press, 514 pp., $35

For centuries, observers of Russia have fallen into two grand camps: those who view the vast country as "Eastern," the land of Scythians and Tatars, of obscurantism and despotism; and a minority that views it as part of the outer reaches of Europe, imbued with aspects of Western culture (though lacking liberal, democratic institutions), a backwater, t...

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