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The Crimean War: A History, by Orlando Figes; pp. xxii + 576. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010, $35.00, $22.00 paper.
Over the past two decades the Crimean War has struggled to escape the image imposed on it by historians of the Cold War era, when the existential ideological struggle between East and West shaped readings of the past. While some historians focused on international relations, determined to use the Crimea as a case study of how not to conduct diplomacy, others examined the development of strategy and the many failings of contemporary armies. The collapse of the Soviet Union provided opportunities to ask new questions, not least because the Yeltsin regime provided greater access to Russian archives. Noted British historian of Russia and Russian culture Orlando Figes has exploited the growing body of secondary literature to re-examine Russia's war in another vast book. The analysis of Russia, supported by Candan Badem's excellent work on Ottoman Turkey, provides a strong narrative drive through successive iterations of the Eastern Question, the descent into war, the chaotic nature of the conflict, and its impact on politics and culture.
The most important critique to make of this text is that it allows events to dictate the analysis of the war. Figes assumes that because the war happened, and since the main army campaign was in the Crimean Peninsula, the questions that matter concern Russo-Turkish relations and their impact on other powers. In reality Russia's policy toward Ottoman Turkey was little different from that pursued against other border states, notably Poland, Sweden, and China, all of which were reduced to near impotence and stripped of substantial territories to become buffer states. The same concerns led the deeply irreligious Soviet Union to Finlandize another neighbour and construct the Warsaw...