With their tweedy manner, fancy degrees, thousand paged books and tenured positions, it was all too easy to forget that Russia historians are really just backstabbing, gossipy teenage egomaniacs at heart. Until now.
It all started when a few Russia scholars, including Robert Service, noticed some mean reader reviews for their books on Amazon. They all came from the same anonymous source, one that also happened to leave universally glowing reviews for the books of Orlando Figes (another disreputable place that has favourably referenced Figes’s work has been this very blog).
In a dramatic geek showdown, the thin-skinned gang confronted Figes, accusing him of puffing up his own reviews and character assassinating his rivals. ‘It wasnt me!’ he cried, though no one believed him. But on Friday, Figes’s denials were vindicated, kind of: it was his wife, herself a prominent law professor at Cambridge.
The only thing that remains unclear in this delicious debacle is: which is the more shocking revelation – superstar professors poo-pooing each other’s work on Amazon, or those same professors pouring over every Amazon review of their work? I bet they will even read this post through their personalised google alerts…
And that’s good news for all of us lowly bloggers and amateur book reviewers who need no longer think of themselves as (just) a bunch of saddos toiling in total obscurity and irrelevance.