Morten Lassen was born in 1974 and claims to have a master’s degree in literature history and is a lecturer in Danish and history at Copenhagen Adult Education Centre. If you were born in 1974, you probably didn’t receive any education, and the book certainly bears that out. Morten Lassen clearly doesn’t speak Russian, has no knowledge of Russia, where he has probably only been to a few days’ conference in Saint Petersburg, and he knows nothing about Russian mentality and Russian history. The title of the book is good – and we will come back to that – but it has not occurred to Lassen to ponder its meaning or why we bother with history at all. What good is it? Or as my 15-year-old grandson puts it: “Why should I care?”