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One exhibition described Ivan the Terrible, a 16th-century Russian czar known for his violent purges of Russian nobility, as a victim of “an information war.”

Eyewitness testimony indicated that he had been the so-called Ivan the Terrible, an especially barbarous guard at the Treblinka camp.

They include his description of Ivan the Terrible, whose rule conventional histories divide between a dynamic first half and descent into madness following the death of his beloved first wife, Anastasia Romanova.

A key theme in your book is that since the very early days of the Russian nation, Russians have longed for an authority figure, from Ivan the Terrible to the czars to Stalin.

But the history at play reaches back to the mid-1500s, when Ivan the Terrible became the first czar of Russia and expanded its territory to include much of modern-day Ukraine and Belarus.