Usually people who have found great interest in history often love the story telling part of it. They are able to visualize the battles, the bloodshed that these battles might have caused, and the governments that rose or fell. That could be because they are totally impressed with the way their history lecturers or teachers taught them those lessons. The characters of the great history of the world came alive and this is what made the lessons very enjoyable too.
Talking of all of this, there are also historians like the British historian, Orlando Figes, whose books and writings have inspired many. His specialization has been Russian history. Every great country today, was once struggling to get its ground and was once also a developing nation, which had many internal conflicts and troubles, bothering it too.
The same one can say about the country of Russia and while today, one knows the powerful nation that it has become, but one has to remember the phase in history, which it had crossed. The country had its share of revolutions, tsars, and the communist rule and much more before it could finally become a nuclear superpower and one of the strong nations that it is today.
But while one can go talking a lot about the country Russia, writing about a distant land’s history and specially researching on it is a task that very few would dare. Language barriers, and cultural barriers would form the big hurdles, but when one has the task in mind all set and when one learns about the country thoroughly, and wishes to represent the truth, then the world listens.
Students in schools might often refer to online resources to do their homework assignments, all the time, but they do not know if the information is really reliable or not. Researchers cannot afford to go for reading anything that they get anywhere. This is why one has to get in touch with people who have seen or have closely experienced a part of the history of a country personally and find out from them. This is a tedious task but the end result would be remarkable.
It is not just the history of a country, but the social uprising or uprisings that it might have gone through, to fight for equality or for human rights and amenities, all hold immense value. Today, a social reformer would need to know of the society that existed in the past in his country, or in any other country, just so that he can take a few leaves out of that chapter in history. Lawmakers and politicians do this all the time and they also find plenty of sources from the history to enrich them to take right decisions for the present and the future too. Orlando Figes came in touch with the right people at Cambridge, this helped him in getting to know the history of Russia, and which also helped him to pen down a few books on Russia and the Russian revolution too.
Daryl Green 
Paul Petersen