Description

From "the truly amazing story-teller of modern Russian historians," (Financial Times) the specified account of the forgotten war that formed the modern ageThe Charge of the Light Brigade, Florence Nightingale—these would be the enduring symbols of the Crimean War. Less well-known is that this savage war (1853-1856) murdered nearly one million soldiers and many civilians; that it enmeshed four great empires—the Uk, French, Turkish, and Russian—in a fight over faith as well as place; that it repaired the problem lines between Russia and the West; that it put in place the issues that might master the millennium to come.In this masterly background, Orlando Figes reconstructs the very first complete conflagration of modernity, a worldwide developed challenge struggled with unusual vitality and mess. Sketching on untrained Russian and Ottoman in addition to Western resources, Figes strongly represents the world at war, from the palaces of St. Petersburg for the sacred sites of Jerusalem; from the small Tolstoy reporting in Sevastopol to Tsar Nicolas, haunted by dreams of spiritual answer; from the standard troops and nurses on the battlefields for the ladies and children in cities under siege.Original, magisterial, living with sounds of times, The Crimean War is just a historical tour-de force whose representation of racial cleansing and the West's relations with the Muslim world resonates with modern overtones.