What do I know?

Been thinking about where I have got my knowledge of, and assumptions about, Russia over the years. It is an embarrassing mixture of John le Carre novels (Although A most wanted man is great for showing how British bankers, who think they are being clever on the edge of legality, are in fact completely out-manoeuvred by their most more dangerous Russian counterparts) and news broadcasts; leavened (perhaps) by reading historians of the Russian Revolution such as E.H. Carr and Richard Pipes.

Currently reading Jonathan Dimbleby's Russia: a journey to the heart of a land and its people which you can tell by its title is embedded in riddle-mystery-enigma thing; and having to work very hard not just to throw the book across the room. It is so self-centred, and so certain of the perspectival accuracy of a western european viewpoint.