Best of
Russia

1978

The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books V-VII


Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - 1978
    Various sections of the three volumes describe the arrest, interrogation, conviction, transportation, and imprisonment of the Gulag's victims by Soviet authorities over four decades. The work mingles historical exposition and Solzhenitsyn's own autobiographical accounts with the voluminous personal testimony of other inmates that he collected and committed to memory during his imprisonment.Upon publication of the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn was immediately attacked in the Soviet press. Despite the intense interest in his fate that was shown in the West, he was arrested and charged with treason on February 12, 1974, and was exiled from the Soviet Union the following day.

Heavy Sand


Anatoli Rybakov - 1978
    In contrast to Germany and its former allies, which went through an effective de-Nazification campaign, the Soviet Union experienced two aborted attempts to re-evaluate its totalitarian past and to dismantle Stalinist ideology and institutions: the Thaw and perestroika. However, as the filmmaker claims, in the Soviet Union the efforts of de-Stalinization and broader de-Sovietization were only half-hearted and never completed. The myth of the great Stalinist Empire and the heroic myth of the Great Patriotic War still obscure from Russians’ communal memory the uncomfortable narratives about Stalinist purges, the Holocaust, and Soviet-era anti-Semitism. Goldovskaia’s film cuts from footage of Stalin-era parades to present-day rallies in Moscow by fascists and nationalists, suggesting that the unfinished de-Sovietization breeds a new type of totalitarian mentality.The section about Rybakov’s Heavy Sand explores Soviet-style Holocaust denial. The communal myth of Soviet martyrdom and victory in World War II is used to replace memories of the Holocaust. Goldovskaia links this Soviet experience of purposeful and state-endorsed manipulation of the historical past with the revival of anti-Semitism in present-day Russia. Anatoly Rybakov is, indeed, “the Russian story,” since it explains graphically how Russia’s way of dealing with its totalitarian past is different from the Western treatment of a similar social disease. The filmmaker’s message is clearly articulated by her observational cinema style: the agenda of de-Sovietization, including the acknowledgment of the Holocaust, has to become part of Russians’ collective memory before the country can exorcise its totalitarian demons.

Russian Thinkers


Isaiah Berlin - 1978
    The Birth of the Russian IntelligentsiaII. German Romanticism in Petersburg and MoscowIII. Vissarion BelinskyIV. Alexander Herzen- Russian Populism- Tolstoy and Enlightenment- Fathers and ChildrenIndex

To Build a Castle


Vladimir Bukovsky - 1978
    Expelled Soviet political protester and activist recounts his dozen years imprisoned in jails, labor camps and psychiatric hospitals, his fight for change and freedom, and profiling modern daily Russian existence

Collected Stories


Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin - 1978
    But Bunin's other stories and novellas are not to be missed. Over the last several years a great many of them have been freshly and brilliantly translated by Graham Hettlinger. Together, along with four new pieces, they are now published in a one-volume paperback collection of Bunin's greatest writings. In Mr. Hettlinger's renderings readers will see why Bunin was regarded by many of his contemporaries as the rightful successor to Tolstoy and Chekhov as a master of Russian letters.

The Faculty of Useless Knowledge


Yury Dombrovsky - 1978
    It is also vivid and courageous fiction, bringing to life a host of stunning characters including a young archeologist, an ex-priest obsessed with Christ's betrayal in the Gospels, and an eccentric street artist with a penchant for outlandish attire and evocative, illogical paintings.

Faithful Ruslan


Georgi Vladimov - 1978
    “Every writer who writes anything in this country is made to feel he has committed a crime,” Georgi Vladimov said. Dissident, he said, is a word that “they force on you.” His mother, a victim of Stalin’s anti-Semitic policy, had been interred for two years in one of the camps from which Vladimov derived the wrenching detail of Faithful Ruslan. The novel circulated in samizdat for more than a decade, often attributed to Solzhenitsyn, before its publication in the West led to Vladimov’s harassment and exile. A starving stray, tortured and abandoned by the godlike “Master” whom he has unconditionally loved, Ruslan and his cadre of fellow guard dogs dutifully wait for the arrival of new prisoners—but the unexpected arrival of a work party provokes a climactic bloodletting. Fashioned from the perceptions of an uncomprehending animal, Vladimov’s insistently ironic indictment of the gulag spirals to encompass all of Man’s inexplicable cruelty.

The Russian Fascists: Tragedy and Farce in Exile, 1925-1945


John J. Stephan - 1978
    

The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860-1930


Richard Stites - 1978
    The central personalities, their vigorous exchange of ideas, the social and political events that marked the emerging ideal of emancipation--all come to life in this absorbing and dramatic account. The author's history begins with the feminist, nihilist, and populist impulses of the 1860s and 1870s, and leads to the social mobilization campaigns of the early Soviet period.

Arms and Uniforms: Lace Wars


Liliane Funcken - 1978
    

Kolyma: the Arctic Death Camps


Robert Conquest - 1978
    

Ilya Repin


Grigori Sternin - 1978
    This avant-garde movement rebelled against the formalism and tradition of the official Academy of Fine Arts and proclaimed the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. Repin’s most powerful works expressed great psychological depth (Ivan the Terrible and His Son) and exposed tensions within the social order (Barge Haulers on the Volga) of his time.This book invites you to discover the wonderful artworks of this progressive realist painter whose work would eventually define and influence social artistic movements in the future.

Holy Russia: An Historical Companion to European Russia


Fitzroy Maclean - 1978
    With the flair for which he is so admired, he plays the part of guide, philosopher and friend to the intelligent traveller, armchair or otherwise. Russia’s past has the strongest possible bearing on her present, and by extension, her future. This striking continuity together with its many and varied implications, forms the central theme of this intriguing and immensely readable book.

Decline of an Empire


Hélène Carrère d'Encausse - 1978
    

The Unknown War With Russia: Wilson's Siberian Intervention


Robert James Maddox - 1978
    The true story of President Wilson's Siberian intervention in 1918. American soldiers died on Russian soil while fighting to undermine the Bolshevik government.