Really good. I knew plenty about 19th and early 20th century Russia, but learned a lot about the deeper history as well as the Soviet era after the 1930s.

The author, a former BBC correspondent, puts the approach Putin takes into perspective, and - while not endorsing or condoning it - shows how the country has been on a very different trajectory to the West over the last millennium.

I thought that this book would end up as an average read for me. I stated as much in my August wrap up video when I thought I would finish by the 31st. Whoops. Then I got further into the book. The more I read, the more frustrated I became. I added this book to my tbr because I wanted to learn more about Russia and its development. I have read a decent amount regarding Catherine the Great, the rest of the Romanovs and the Soviet era. I did not get this at all with this book. In the first 150 pages of the 530 page book, Sixsmith "chronicles" a period of history from around the 900s to just after the start of the 1800s. Yeah. I should have known by that point how much time he would take on everything else. In fact, Sixsmith completely omits anything from the time of the Mongol occupation. He briefly mentions Ivan the Terrible, skimming over his reign in a short chapter. He spends a little longer on Catherine the Great, long enough to draw out some points that he could use to connect with actions taken by the Soviet rulers later. Then he gets into the start of the Soviet era with the 1917 Revolution and does this by page 225, yeah. He spends over 60% of a book purporting to be a 1000 year chronicle on less than 100 years of history. I should have DNF'd but I'm too stubborn so I finished this one out which consumed several days of my September reading time. I do not recommend this one at all.