I am attending a talk by a UK diplomat on #Russia 'Friend of the Family, of Barbarian at the Gate? Russia and the West'....read that title back to yourself and then look at the first slide.
Intro: "Russia is pulled between East and West".... oh boy
#twitterstorians

Oh good, we're starting with medieval history & did you know that the choice of Eastern Christianity was the first "cultural barrier" between #Russia & "the West"... already making bad choices in the 10thc., so sad.
#medievaltwitter

Perfect - now we're onto the "Mongol yoke", who were despotic (totally unlike "the West" in the Middle Ages, which was a centre of liberal democracy and totally not Eastern Christian).
Love a whistle-stop tour of racism & oreintalist ideas abt Russian history.
#medievaltwitter

Now we've reached the Bolsheviks via Catherine the Great A dig @ Beatrice & Sidney Webb for daring to imagine that the Russian Revolution could possibly have been in any way emancipatory (the fools) & hope has been expressed that #Russia will become a "normal European country"

Oh, great, a pseudo-deep thought: Russia has often produced messianic characters (which is bad?) like Philotheos of Pskov who declared #Russia the "third Rome" (in a document that was totally marginal when it was written, but, hey ho, we're building a narrative here!)
Onwards!

Intermediate analysis: Russia in this talk is only "Western Russia". Russia doesn't exist past the Urals (and if it does, there is nothing there worth discussing)

Ok and we're on to the usual analysis: Russia has never been conquered or defeated. And this is because "the Russian people will always back the people who rule", hence Putin.
Metanarrative: the Russian people are servile (except for that pesky af Revolution!)
#twitterstorians

And now we move to the monuments of Russian literature (basically whatever exists in translation via Penguin Classics) and these books tell us everything we need to know about Russia and Russian-ness.... a bunch of aristocratic white dudes from western #Russia

Oh no! We are moving East "the area of Russian epics, conquered by Yermak...a vast, empty area"

Wait - if there was no one there, then what/who was Yermak conquering?

Oh, lol, the East is the source of "communalism" (which is NOT a thing that has ever existed in "the West")

And now we're onto some platitudes about communism or communalism (what do words mean anyway?) as a threat to the "Western way of life" & a whistlestop tour of recent history, explained via Dostoevsky.

Ooooooooo a contrarian view: maybe recent Russian politics is a result of NATO encircling Russia?

Woah.... that's such a wild take, so profound, so nuanced.

In case anyone out there thinks I'm being facetious here.... I'm not.

Our speaker doesn't know a single Russian who doesn't have a dacha (a summer home) in Ukraine.... and that's pretty much all you need to know.

I am now going to drink and check on #Pennsylvannia

Oh! In case anyone out there needs a 'Russia expert', I am here & cheap