A Short History of Russia is aptly named, covering nearly 1,000 years of history across the world’s biggest country in a little over a hundred pages. The entire soviet period is summarized in less than a dozen pages. Despite the book’s brevity, Galeotti does a good job of distilling the keys points form the era, giving important context on who leaders were and how their personalities, obsessions, and flaws shaped the nation under their tenure. Each chapter ends with a paragraph of recommendations for further reading, which is helpful.
The overall thesis of Galeotti’s book is that Russia is a country without a clear, unifying thread. Sprawling across two continents and eleven time zones, it lacked for much of its history a common geography, ethnicity, culture, or language. This forced a certain obsession with national identity among the ruling class, and made Russians especially eager to define themselves as a people. I don’t know enough to speak to the accuracy of this assessment, but Galleoti argues it convincingly.
I don’t have much else to say about it, other than those looking for a quick primer on Russian history should check it out.