PIPED:

Orlando's dance: The perils of popular history (Alex Beam, 11/24/2002, Boston Globe)

BRITISH SCHOLAR Orlando Figes has published two massive popular histories of Russia - but never quietly.

When ''A People's Tragedy,'' Figes's 923-page account of the Russian revolution, appeared in 1997, it hit the British best-seller lists, won prestigious awards - and was the target of a bitter attack from Harvard historian Richard Pipes, one of the deans of Soviet scholarship. Figes, Pipes wrote, ''attempted too much too early, failing to think things through and borrowing ideas from too many sources at once.'' When the Sunday Times wrote that Pipes had accused the young scholar of plagiarism - he had actually chosen his words more carefully - Figes sued them and won.

Now Figes has written ''Natasha's Dance,'' a 729-page cultural history of Russia, and it's deja vu all over again. Britain's leading book review, the Times Literary Supplement, launched a furious frontal assault on ''Natasha.'' Reviewer Rachel Polonsky accused Figes of what the Brits are calling ''near plagiarism'' and shoddy scholarship. The book, she wrote, ''is largely made up of biographical material jumbled around a set of themes and historical periods which will be familiar to anyone who has taken an informed interest in Russia.''

What did Figes - a slight, intense library mouse who teaches at the University of London - do to deserve this? Perhaps there is, as Jason Cowley suggested in The Guardian, ''something about Figes's approach to writing history that inspires professional rancor.''

That something, one suspects, is Schama-ite deviationism. Columbia's Simon Schama, whose ''History of Britain'' television series has been hailed on both sides of the Atlantic, has made the transition from English don to full-blown Kenneth Clark-dom. Ditto Figes, a young Oxbridge-trained academic who has sold a ton of books and found his way onto the airwaves; during the recent Moscow theater hostage drama, he offered frequent commentary on the unfolding events. ''Schama definitely led the way,'' Figes said in an interview during his US book tour. ''In Britain, we have a real crop of younger historians - people like Niall Ferguson and Mark Mazower - who emerged from within the academy, but can write for a mass audience.''

I've not yet read A People's Tragedy, but, from reading the reviews, I wonder if Mr. Pipes wasn't less upset about it being a popular success than about it being derivative of his own outstanding Russian Revolution. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 1, 2002 9:23 AM