Russian Rulers History Podcast Mark Schauss

Thank you for your podcast. Very useful for my preparations for an exam.

A collection of biased western myths about Russia. The author is just repeating thoughts of other ‘historians’. Some of them are quite offensive and bordering on pure racism. Can’t be qualified as a reliable source of information about Russian history.

Unfortunately, I can not call this a good historical podcast, and here is why:
- mostly just repeating myths from very few popular sources, instead of cross referencing different points of view of serious Historiographers.
- murdering names and geographic locations beyond recognition, very often for no particular reason (good half of it has nothing to do with pronunciation difficulties, plain and simple sloppiness).
- catering to western concept with no slightest attempt to take unbiased stance as a Historian should at least try to do.
- labelling things and people “schizophrenic” and “backwards” at will without understanding them fully.
- unnecessary savoring juicy torture details, again mostly drawn from sources far from serious science.
- author just isn’t as good a story-teller as some of the colleague podcasters are.

Example 1 - comparing Stalin to Nero, means completely overlooking the very different aims, circumstances and achievements of the reign of sed rulers.
Example 2 - admitting that Solzhenisyn’s numbers never found any substantial proof, yet continuing to heavily rely on his so called “data” that was meant to be sold to westerners, rather than to reflect historical realities.

As a Russian and a History enthusiast I find this approach at times borderline offensive. That being said, I couldn’t have done a better job myself, all I have is hope that someone up for the task will once take on the subject, so I apologize for the harsh and critical review, but this is my opinion.