Except they are facts . If you want to go about ignoring them , that ' s on you <| sep |> I guess history of any country is a big set of information . I would like to have set of books , one for each country , maybe 100 pages long , with facts etc , but I personally would need some interpretations of those facts , just because I ' m not competent enough to see it myself , for all those facts , just because there a lot of happening behind the scene , and to understand that , it needs really have a passion for the history and know a lot from it . That is why we have historians , and why they do the work , and we get some kind of the product , so choose a brand you like the most and take everything easy . In best case scenario I would like to have an AI which would tell me stories about different countries in a interpretation which I would form myself , if I would know all the facts . This AI should also be able to tell those stories as other people may see them , to improve or extend my interpretation . But we live in a imperfect worldWe have some documents , letters , evidences but what is really behind them reasoncauses personal decisions no one will know for sure , and that is another reason for differentflexible interpretations and they may be not a lies , just guesses with some certainty . So there always will be some interpretation , and only thing you may do is to find sourceif such exists which you prefer because you think their interpretation fits you the most . I ' m not sure if objective history is possible at all , for me history is just stories with moralpoint of the storymessage . Thus story with BS or with another BS are pretty equal for me . One is true , people were people for long time , and they had motives good and bad , and such people where in all countries . Not countries do the things , people do . And it is possible to find common language with most of the people . If some one depicts any country as good or evil , avoid them or be cautious , they do not understand sources of history , why history is happening , they do not see reasons or try to convince the reader . I would probably like to read overview of history from 3 time epoch , prior 1900 , something late mid 196070 for critique Tzar Russia something from 19301955 , something post 1990 specially for critique of Soviet Union , 20002010 for maybe more balanced mixed interpretations . For fun read about old russia maybe Nikolay Mikhailovich Karamzin expect for Tzar Russian views and interpretations , but they pretty old to be harmless . Both and History of the Russian State and Letters of a Russian travelernot a history of russia , but to get impression of perception of western civilization as it seen with a Russian traveler , those things may be interesting to understand some aspects of historyBut really history is big , just Decembrist revolt alone have left lot of ripples in the history . Btw lot of them where send in to Siberia to live there , and some of them were good writers and they wrote about that . One of interpretation is that Napoleon invasion have led to it , or in fact War of the Sixth Coalition as it kinda was eye opener for lot of people who saw Europe culture . This is wide cited one of the reasons , but I bet there are other theories about that , and I ' m not sure they aren ' t true in some way at some extend . History is such a big thing consisting of different connections between events , it is literary bigger then anyone ' s live and is harder to understand then Quantum mechanics , Quantum mechanics compared to history is easy , just like 22 . There at least 45 totally different epochs in Russian history , and they are very much different . Maybe I would recommend to read Lev Gumilyov Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere of Earth , it maybe less about the history but more about , which he illustrates a lot with history of russia old history . I guess it is not what you may look for , but probably it is all I can recommend , Karamzin because it sort of classics , Lev Gumilyov because of interesting ideawhich have critiques , but as story I find it interesting , have not read it but heard narration as a kid on the radiokinda old style audiobook .