A Toff's Guide to the Russian Empire

Empire: the Russian empire and its rivals by Dominic Lieven (John Murray, £27.50)

This is a strange, brave, opinionated and profoundly ambitious book. It swings between enlightening interpretations and assertions that some might dismiss as arrogant. Rarely, moreover, can the author of an academic work have burdened readers with so much personal detail. We are told that Dominic Lieven's grandfather's brother was Prince Anatol Lieven, "at the summit of tsarist Russia's aristocratic society"; that his mother's family were "Gaelic Catholics who provided two Chief Justices for Ireland" and that her father was "a judge in the [British] Indian Service".

This is a strange, brave, opinionated and profoundly ambitious book. It swings between enlightening interpretations and assertions that some might dismiss as arrogant. Rarely, moreover, can the author of an academic work have burdened readers with so much personal detail. We are told that Dominic Lieven's grandfather's brother was Prince Anatol Lieven, "at the summit of tsarist Russia's aristocratic society"; that his mother's family were "Gaelic Catholics who provided two Chief Justices for Ireland" and that her father was "a judge in the [British] Indian Service".

This may simply be an attempt to prove that Lieven comes from the élite of two great systems and is uniquely qualified to write a Toff's History of Russian and other imperialisms. Is this really necessary? I have never felt the need to claim that my own capacity to produce readable historical analysis had anything to do with the fact that my father drove buses or that my Aunty Flo lived in a terraced house in Kettering. When Lieven goes on to inform us that he can be "a frequently hysterical father", or to inform us that Norman Stone had "declared to the world on the BBC that I [Lieven] was the only academic he knew who had correctly predicted how the demise of the Soviet Union would happen", one begins to imagine that he sees writing as a form of therapy.

Confusion begins with the title; why choose Empire, when "Empires", or "Russian Empires", or "Imperialism", might be more accurate? Why the reference to Russia's "rivals" when there are no separate sections on the French, Japanese, Dutch, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese or US empires? One is increasingly convinced that the enterprise began modestly and sprouted extra limbs. The result is a hybrid, sometimes sleek, sometimes ungainly.

There is more muddle over methodology. Lieven grandly proclaims that "narrative is back in fashion with historians", then proceeds to flood his text with analysis. He announces that he has tried not to be sucked into "currently fashionable academic debates", but of course he's up to his neck in them.

Then there are matters of fact and interpretation. Just to take a few items from the section on the British Empire: the Morley-Minto reforms in India did not take place in 1911; his map of India between 1798 and 1818 takes no account of the princely states; Balfour was indeed an aristocrat, but not particularly "wealthy". Nor was he a Tory prime minister but, more accurately, a Unionist one. The bibliography for the British Empire is traditionalist and predictable, and omits a number of essential books.

The real strength of Empire lies in its assessment of the tsarist and Soviet empires, and their relation to imperial and nationalist polities at their peripheries. Here Lieven comes into his own, to considerable effect. He points out that the poverty of the Russian systems compared to Western rivals left them weaker and less able to sustain initiatives. In the ebb and flow of the "Great Game", Britain's fear of Russian influence on the frontiers of India led it to invade Afghanistan and Tibet; yet it found nothing there to alarm it. Russia was also left stranded by global economic developments: by the industrial revolution that empowered Britain and western Europe; and, more recently, by the microchip revolution.

Lieven is also interesting on the peaceful collapse of the Soviet system. He argues that, apart from the impact of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, the Russian people had suffered so much in the cause of empire and communism that they were unwilling to come to the rescue of either. Further, the lack of a tradition of democratic politics meant that different groups and nationalities were much less able to mobilise against each other - as was the case in Yugoslavia. About this, and much else in this densely packed and readable book, there will, I suspect, be a good deal of lively debate.

* The reviewer is the author of 'Empire: the British imperial experience from 1765 to the present' (Fontana)