L'Orlando smascherato. Figes e il suo doppio: lo storico come hooligan mediatico

Abstract

The strange case of Professor Figes and Historian Orlando has inaugurated a new kind of historiography: the rubbish review. Orlando Figes is a very trendy British scholar of Russian History, while historian Orlando Birbeck is some sort of a media hooligan. Under the pseudonym Historian Orlando, Figes has torn apart, on Amazon.co.uk, Comrades by Robert Service defined awful and unreadable and Molotov’s Magic Lantern by Rachel Polonsky, considered a book that should have not been written. This «dreary little story» has implications of public interest and requires an open discussion on the devious use of electronic media by «poisonous pens».