Russia

On 5 April 1242, a twenty-year-old Prince of Novgorod halted a crusader advance on the ice of Lake Peipus. Russia never forgot. Most of Western history never noticed.

On 5 March 1953, Joseph Stalin died on the floor of his dacha, where he had lain unattended for the better part of a day. Nobody had dared go in to check.

In the centre of Moscow, just east of the Kremlin, there is a district whose name translates as China City. It has never had anything to do with China.

On 3 March 1861, Alexander II freed twenty-three million Russian serfs. For his troubles, he was blown apart by a bomb twenty years later. The country he tried to modernise would soon tear itself to pieces.

On 24 February 2022, Russian forces invaded Ukraine. Four years on, the war grinds on — hundreds of thousands dead, a continent reshaped, and a causal chain that traces back to a suitcase in Taiwan.

A boy tsar in 1613, a revolutionary pamphlet in 1848, a president's flight in 2014 — all on 21 February, all part of the same unfinished argument about Russia.

In 1954, the Soviet Presidium voted to transfer Crimea from Russia to Ukraine. The session lasted minutes. The consequences are still running.

In 1652, Russia's new Patriarch decided the liturgy was wrong. The schism that followed still hasn't healed — and it was never just about religion.

Before it was about roses and chocolate, February 14th marked a stranger event: the day Bolshevik Russia skipped thirteen days to join the modern calendar.

On 16 January 1547, a sixteen-year-old was crowned the first Tsar of all Russia. He reformed the law, conquered the Volga, and built Saint Basil's Cathedral. He also destroyed his dynasty and left his country on the brink of ruin.