What is history? What purpose is there in studying it? Over theyears, I have put such questions to many colleagues. I recall inparticular the answer given to the second of them by adistinguished professor at Yale, C.Vann Woodward: the eliminationof error. When I asked him if this was enough, he replied that hefound no shortage of error. Taking our subject at C.VannWoodward’s word, let us begin by making a couple of correc-tions.First, in a stimulating book by Daniel Yergin and Thane Gustafsonentitled Russia 2010 and What It Means for the World, the authorswrite:The fact is that the West has been the main source ofexample and competition for Russia for a long time, eversince the Russian élite turned decisively towards Europeat the beginning of the seventeenth century. French and(later) German were the languages spoken at the tsaristcourts.1The fact is otherwise. The Russian élite did not turn decisivelytowards Europe before the end of the seventeenth century, eventhe beginning of the eighteenth century. German was then the main(foreign) language spoken at the tsarist court. French achieved amore comprehensive predominance later in the eighteenth century.To be sure, German made something of a come-back towards theend of the nineteenth century.Let us take as a second, more extended example one of theimportant news items from December 1993, the Russian electionresults. As is well known, these marked the rise of the oppositionultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party led by VladimirZhirinovsky, and the comparatively disappointing performance
