Russia and the Russians

Just bought a book (3 for 2 at Waterstone's but Blackwells is also doing the same in Oxford) and got three books Anna Politkovskaya's Putin's Russia, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag archipelago 1918-56 and the one I have started reading now Russia and the Russians by Geoffrey Hosking, it will help me understand the country a little bit more. Liked for example (p. 4-5) "The Russian Empire has been permanently situated between two or, arguably, three ecumenes. In its administrative structures it has been an Asian empire, building upon or adapting the practices of China and the ancient steppe empires. In its culture it has been European for at least three centuries, borrowing heavily from both Protestant and Catholic countries. In its religion it is Byzantine, derived from an East Roman or Greek Christian ecumene which no longer has a separate existence with its own heartland, but which has left enduring marks on the landscape of Europe. (...) for example Ivan IV was both Khan (Asiatic ruler) and Basileus (Christian emperor)"
I like also the "Mentalities (...) key concepts: Mir and Pravda" (p. 15) or should I say мир (peace) and правда (truth), and still of course, enjoying the French version of the Ruslan CD-ROM