The Great Modernization of Russia

The burning of moscow in 18 12 by its own citizens can be seen as a rejection of peter the great's programme, even primitive expression of a wish to return to its primal roots. The novelist gorki famously saw the russian peasant as a non russia nomad and argued that the country's asiatic mongol biological heritage had significantly retarded its historical development. Yet it is precisely that historical inheritance that now divides russians with liberals insisting that their country should continue to see peter theGreat in the traditional light while conservatives insist that russia can only be true to itself if it re engages with its asiaticmongol heritage.