My Russia: War or Peace?

• War or Peace?
• Mikhail Shishkin

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In his timely new book, Mikhail Shishkin, argues that Russia is not a 'riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma': we just don't know enough about it. So what is the real story behind Putin's autocratic regime and its invasion of Ukraine? In My Russia: War or Peace? Shishkin traces the roots of Russia's problems, from the 'Kievan Rus' via the Grand Duchy of Moscow, empire, revolution and Cold War, to the now thirty-year-old Russian Federation. He explores the uneasy relationship between state and citizens, explains Russian attitudes to people's rights and democracy, and proposes that there are really two Russian peoples: the disillusioned and disaffected, who suffer from 'slave mentality', and those who embrace 'European' values and try to stand up to oppression. Both deeply personal and taking a broader historical view, My Russia is a passionate, eye-opening account of a state entangled in a complex and bloody past, as well as a love letter to a conflicted country. Will Russia continue its vicious circle of upheaval and autocracy, or will its people find a way out of history?

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Two previous attempts to introduce democracy in Russia have both failed. The first Russian democracy of 1917 lasted only a few months; the one of the 1990s just managed to cling on for a few years. Each time my country tries to build a democratic society and to institute elections, a parliament and a republic, it finds itself back in a totalitarian empire. Again and again, Russian history bites its own tail. Do dictatorships and dictators give birth to an enslaved population, or does an enslaved population give birth to dictatorships and dictators? It’s the old chicken-and-egg conundrum. How can the vicious circle be broken? Where can Russia make a fresh start?

* * * 

After war comes anti-war literature. Just like Ernest Hemingway and Erich Maria Remarque once, I have no doubt that there will be young authors writing about their experiences in this war. Both Russians and Ukrainians will write books, and they’ll be very different books. Both will write about the pain that loss brings, about death, about grief; but while Ukrainian literature will see books on the birth of a free country, the heroic resistance against evil and the fight for human dignity, Russian authors will be preoccupied with the acknowledgement of national guilt for the crimes that have been committed. Hate is a disease. Culture is the cure.

Mikhail Shishkin

• ISBN: 978-953-369-045-2
• Dimensions: 128x200 mm
• Number of pages: 232
• Cover: paperback
• Year of the edition: 2024
• Original title: Frieden oder Krieg: Russland und der Westen – eine Annäherung
• Original language: German
• Translation: Višeslav Raos