Best of
Russia

1980

Peter the Great: His Life and World


Robert K. Massie - 1980
    A barbarous, volatile feudal tsar with a taste for torture; a progressive and enlightened reformer of government and science; a statesman of vision and colossal significance: Peter the Great embodied the greatest strengths and weaknesses of Russia while being at the very forefront of her development.Robert K. Massie delves deep into the life of this captivating historical figure, chronicling the pivotal events that shaped a boy into a legend - including his 'incognito' travels in Europe, his unquenchable curiosity about Western ways, his obsession with the sea and establishment of the stupendous Russian navy, his creation of an unbeatable army, and his relationships with those he loved most: Catherine, his loving mistress, wife, and successor; and Menshikov, the charming, unscrupulous prince who rose to power through Peter's friendship. Impetuous and stubborn, generous and cruel, a man of enormous energy and complexity, Peter the Great is brought fully to life.

Love and Honor


Leslie Arlen - 1980
    The dynasty that rode high to the crest of power-only to reach the brink of a rebel-torn New Age. Prince Peter: the unbending heir to the tempest of change. Ilona: the heartstrong Princess, slave to a renegade passion. George: the roving American journalist, tied to the great family's fortunes. Tatiana: the wildest young beauty in a restless hour. Bound by pride , the Borodins must stand against the fated forces that threaten their priceless birthright and the dark-eyed monk who holds their monarch in thrall. A story of the longings of a people stirred by the false promises of unscrupulous men, and struggle to uplift the silken banner of their fragile world.

Photographs For The Tsar: The Pioneering Color Photography Of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin Gorskii Comissioned By Tsar Nicholas Ii


Robert H. Allshouse - 1980
    

The Voronezh Notebooks


Osip Mandelstam - 1980
    It is a great gift to be able to read these ninety poems together and complete in English for the first time, with explanatory notes provided for each. They form a wrenching diary of 'iron tenderness' and doomed, penetrative brilliance". -- Publishers Weekly. Childish and wise, joyous and angry, at once complex and simple, he was sustained for twenty years by his wife and memoirist Nadezhda Mandelstam, who became, with Anna Akhmatova, the savior of his poetry. After his exile to Voronezh and his sentencing to hard labor for counter-revolutionary activities, he died of 'heart failure' in the winter of 1938 in Siberia.

Aivazovsky


Nikolai Novouspensky - 1980
    His pictures won wide recognition in their time both in Russia and abroad. He was elected a member of the St. Petersburg, Rome, Florence, Amsterdam and Stuttgart art academies. Selected for reproduction in this book out of Aivazovsky's enormous legacy (about 6,000 pieces) are his best-known works: The Wave, The Tenth Wave, The Black Sea and many others. They are housed in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, the Russian Museum, Leningrad, the Picture Gallery, Theodosia (the Crimea, and other Soviet museums. Also included are photographs connected with Aivazovsky's life and creative activities in Theodosia.

The Sky Above Hell and Other Stories


Yuriy Mamleev - 1980
    

Solzhenitsyn At Harvard: The Address, Twelve Early Responses, And Six Later Reflections


Ronald Berman - 1980
    Instead they heard some sharply critical views of their legal system, their press, their popular culture, and even their national will. The forthright and controversial speech makes up Part One of this book. A sampling of the avalanche of comment that followed it is included in Part Two. In Part Three, six thoughtful scholars reflect on the ideas and judgments expressed by the great Russian writer.

Russian Art and American Money, 1900-1940


Robert C. Williams - 1980
    

The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of the Russian Revolution


Harold Shukman - 1980
    Beginning with the radical movements of the mid-19th century, the encyclopaedia covers the development of the revolutionary movement created by the intelligentsia; the condition of the peasants, that of the working class, and of the army; the role of the Tsarist secret police; the agents provocateurs; and the revolutionaries' own underground. A substantial section is devoted to the emergence of liberation movements among the national minorities of the borderlands. The encyclopaedia also considers the formation of Soviet institutions, and examines, too, the emergence of revolutionary culture well before 1917, the avant-garde in art and theatre, and the relationship to the revolution of three major Russian writers, Blok, Gorky and Mayakovsky.

The Commander: A Life of Barclay de Tolly


Michael Josselson - 1980
    He distinguished himself in the Turkish War of 1787, the European campaigns of 1790 onwards and, most spectacularly, in the Finnish War of 1808. As Russian Minister of War he prepared the country for Napoleon’s invasion but it was his position as field commander of the main Russian army during the first part of the 1812 campaign that brought him his greatest fame, for his judicious strategy, and disgrace in Russian eyes, for allowing Napoleon to advance so deep into Russia. Ultimately restored to favour, named Field Marshal, Commander-in-Chief, and eventually Prince of the Russian Empire, Barclay accompanied the victorious advance of the Allies across Europe, from the Russian border to the triumphal entry into Paris in 1814 and again in 1815. This is the first full-length study of Michael Barclay de Tolly.

Young Russia


Abbott Gleason - 1980
    Partly this is because of the Russian Revolution of 1917 & the search for its origins, but mostly it is because of the intellectual vigor of the radicals themselves. Gleason (History, Brown) focuses on the transition period between radicals whose commitment was to revolutionizing--or being revolutionized by--the Russian masses & the emergence of the individual revolutionary (in Russia, often with smoking bomb in hand). He clarifies the various labels involved--noting, for example, that the Slavophiles, with their almost mystical faith in the traditions of the people, & the Populists, with their faith in progress & desire to catch up to Europe, came to overlap in the intelligentsia's desire to liberate the peasants. The importance the Russians themselves placed on the distinctions between generations of radicals finds its place too, as he depicts the rise & decline of central figures like Herzen & Chernyshevsky as well as the shifting intellectual climates that shaped them. Other, more specifically literary figures--Pushkin, Leskov, Tolstoy, Turgenev--also pass thru the narrative. All of this has, of course, been gone over before--on a massive scale by Franco Venturi in Roots of Revolution. This focused study is meant to be more intimate. He achieves that aim not only in the final chapter on Nechaev, the anarchist loner, but in a long portrait of the little-known Pavel Ivanovich Iakushkin, a populist archetype who "played no great role, influenced the course of events slightly, if at all, & left no important literary legacy." He follows the bohemian Iakushkin around as he wanders about from handout to handout spreading the gospel of peasant emancipation until his death in 1872. Readers of Venturi or Isaiah Berlin will be familiar with the story overall, but others will find this an accessible introduction.--Kirkus (edited)

On the Eve of 1917


Alexander Shlyapnikov - 1980
    

Tchaikovsky: The Crisis Years, 1874-1878


David Brown - 1980
    The marriage was a desperate gesture, a hopeless attempt to balance, or at least disguise, his strongly homosexual nature. But only five days after the wedding he wrote to his brother Anatoly, "Physically my wife has become totally repugnant to me." David Brown has had access to some of Tchaikovsky's most revealing letters; they were printed in Russia in 1940, but suppressed before publication, and in 1979, one of the few surviving copies was smuggled out of the country.Dr. Brown also provides a fascinating picture of the composer's long and strange relationship with his benefactress, Mrs. von Meck. By mutual agreement, they never met, yet their friendship produced a prodigious and often passionately expressed correspondence.This was the period of some of Tchaikovsky's masterpieces: the first piano concerto, Swan Lake, the fourth symphony, Eugene Onegin, Francesca de Rimini, and the violin concerto. The book is at least as important a contribution to musical scholarship as to biography.As biography, it is steadily absorbing in its portrayal of a man and an artist striving to keep the creative spark alive, often overcome by melancholy, fleeing from one part of Europe to another, but always breaking through to new triumphs. Unquestionably, this is going to be the definitive work on Tchaikovsky in English for many years to come.

Between Dog and Wolf


Sasha Sokolov - 1980
    Language rather than plot motivates the story--the novel is often compared to James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake"--and time, characters, and death all prove unstable. The one constant is the Russian landscape, where the Volga is a more-crossable River Styx, especially when it freezes in winter. Sokolov's fiction has hugely influenced contemporary Russian writers. Now, thanks to Alexander Boguslawski's bold and superb translation, English readers can access what many consider to be his best work.

The Russian Empire


Chloe Obolensky - 1980