A picture is also given of political conditions in Russia during the reign of the last Romanovs. The story is illustrated with the magnificent coronation costumes and regalia designed by Faberge, personal objects relating to the family lives of Nicholas and Alexandra, and icons and religious objects demonstrating the role of Church and State during this period.

    A Writer at War – based on the notebooks in which Grossman gathered raw material for his articles – depicts the crushing conditions on the Eastern Front, and the lives and deaths of soldiers and civilians alike. It also includes some of the earliest reportage on the Holocaust. In the three years he spent on assignment, Grossman witnessed some of the most savage fighting of the war: the appalling defeats of the Red Army, the brutal street fighting in Stalingrad, the Battle of Kursk (the largest tank engagement in history), the defense of Moscow, the battles in Ukraine, and much more.Historian Antony Beevor has taken Grossman’s raw notebooks, and fashioned them into a narrative providing one of the most even-handed descriptions – at once unflinching and sensitive – we have ever had of what he called “the ruthless truth of war.”From the Hardcover edition.

    Included are pieces from many of the acknowledged masters of Russian literature - including Pushkin, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Solzhenitsyn - alongside tales by long-suppressed figures such as the subversive Kryzhanowsky and the surrealist Shalamov. Whether written in reaction to the cruelty of the bourgeoisie, the bureaucracy of communism or the torture of the prison camps, they offer a wonderfully wide-ranging and exciting representation of one of the most vital and enduring forms of Russian literature.

    To the people who lived in that system the collapse seemed both completely unexpected and completely unsurprising. At the moment of collapse it suddenly became obvious that Soviet life had always seemed simultaneously eternal and stagnating, vigorous and ailing, bleak and full of promise. Although these characteristics may appear mutually exclusive, in fact they were mutually constitutive. This book explores the paradoxes of Soviet life during the period of “late socialism” (1960s-1980s) through the eyes of the last Soviet generation.Focusing on the major transformation of the 1950s at the level of discourse, ideology, language, and ritual, Alexei Yurchak traces the emergence of multiple unanticipated meanings, communities, relations, ideals, and pursuits that this transformation subsequently enabled. His historical, anthropological, and linguistic analysis draws on rich ethnographic material from Late Socialism and the post-Soviet period.The model of Soviet socialism that emerges provides an alternative to binary accounts that describe that system as a dichotomy of official culture and unofficial culture, the state and the people, public self and private self, truth and lie — and ignore the crucial fact that, for many Soviet citizens, the fundamental values, ideals, and realities of socialism were genuinely important, although they routinely transgressed and reinterpreted the norms and rules of the socialist state.

    They were the men and women of the Red Army, a ragtag mass of soldiers who confronted Europe's most lethal fighting force and by 1945 had defeated it. Sixty years have passed since their epic triumph, but the heart and mind of Ivan -- as the ordinary Russian soldier was called -- remain a mystery. We know something about hoe the soldiers died, but nearly nothing about how they lived, how they saw the world, or why they fought.Drawing on previously closed military and secret police archives, interviews with veterans, and private letters and diaries, Catherine Merridale presents the first comprehensive history of the Soviet Union Army rank and file. She follows the soldiers from the shock of the German invasion to their costly triumph in Stalingrad, where life expectancy was often a mere twenty-four hours. Through the soldiers' eyes, we witness their victorious arrival in Berlin, where their rage and suffering exact an awful toll, and accompany them as they return home full of hope, only to be denied the new life they had been fighting to secure.A tour de force of original research and a gripping history, Ivan's War reveals the singular mixture of courage, patriotism, anger, and fear that made it possible for these underfed, badly led troops to defeat the Nazi army. In the process Merridale restores to history the invisible millions who sacrificed the most to win the war.

    Alexander II was Russia's Lincoln -- he freed the serfs, promised a new, more liberal state for everyone, yet was brought down by a determined group of terrorist anarchists who tried to kill him six times before finally, fatefully, succeeding. His story proves the timeless lesson that in Russia, it is dangerous to start reforms, but even more dangerous to stop them. It also shows that the traps and dangers encountered in today's war on terrorists were there 150 years ago.

    After the 1917 revolution, this view was discredited by many leading scholars, politicians, and cultural figures, but none were more intimately involved in the dismantling of the old imperial identity and its historical narrative than the eminent Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky (1866-1934).Hrushevsky took an active part in the work of Ukrainian scholarly, cultural, and political organizations and became the first head of the independent Ukrainian state in 1918. Serhii Plokhy's "Unmaking Imperial Russia" examines Hrushevsky's construction of a new historical paradigm that brought about the nationalization of the Ukrainian past and established Ukrainian history as a separate field of study. By showing how the 'all-Russian' historical paradigm was challenged by the Ukrainian national project, Plokhy provides the indispensable background for understanding the current state of relations between Ukraine and Russia.

    Partners in all things, charismatic Nicholas (1874-1947) was an internationally acclaimed artist, author, daring explorer, conservationist, archeologist, humanitarian and peacemaker, while his wife, Helena (1879 - 1955), was a teacher and healer as well as the inspired co-author of the 'Agni Yoga' series. This is the first book in English to interweave the Agni Yoga writings and the Roerichs' relationship with their spiritual teacher in with their fascinating travels, disclosing the long-hidden story of the Roerichs' connection with Tibetan Buddhism. Though it may read like a tale, Drayer takes us on the real-life adventures of the Roerichs as they travel to the most remote and dangerous regions of India, China, Mongolia, the Gobi, Tibet and Siberia. We bear witness as the couple flees the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 Russia and as they arrive in New York City in the fall of 1920 where they later founded the first school that teaches all of the arts under one roof. We experience their trials and tribulations as the Roerichs trek through the following years.

    Images carved into rocks and tattooed on the skin of mummies hint at ancient ideas about the reindeer's magical ability to carry the human soul on flights to the sun. These images pose one of the great mysteries of prehistory: the "reindeer revolution," in which Siberian native peoples tamed and saddled a species they had previously hunted.Drawing on nearly twenty years of field work among the Eveny in northeast Siberia, Piers Vitebsky shows how Eveny social relations are formed through an intense partnership with these extraordinary animals as they migrate over the swamps, ice sheets, and mountain peaks of what in winter is the coldest inhabited region in the world. He reveals how indigenous ways of knowing involve a symbiotic ecology of mood between humans and reindeer, and he opens up an unprecedented understanding of nomadic movement, place, memory, habit, and innovation.The Soviets' attempts to settle the nomads in villages undermined their self-reliance and mutual support. In an account both harrowing and funny, Vitebsky shows the Eveny's ambivalence toward productivity plans and medals and their subversion of political meetings designed to control them. The narrative gives a detailed and tender picture of how reindeer can act out or transform a person's destiny and of how prophetic dreaming about reindeer fills a gap left by the failed assurances of the state.Vitebsky explores the Eveny experience of the cruelty of history through the unfolding and intertwining of their personal lives. The interplay of domestic life and power politics is both intimate and epic, as the reader follows the diverging fate of three charismatic but very different herding families through dangerous political and economic reforms. The book's gallery of unforgettable personalities includes shamans, psychics, wolves, bears, dogs, Communist Party bosses, daredevil aviators, fire and river spirits, and buried ancestors. The Reindeer People is a vivid and moving testimony to a Siberian native people's endurance and humor at the ecological limits of human existence.

    The Lone Wolf and the Bear examines the Russo-Chechen conflict, from early Russian expansion into the Caucasus in the sixteenth century to the current war between Russia and Chechnya.  Moshe Gammer offers a comprehensive study of modern Chechen history, its people and cultures, and the factors of Russo/Soviet influence and modernization that have molded Chechen self-perception and enflamed the passions of separatism.  Perhaps the most ethnically diverse region in the world, Chechnya claims over seventy native groups, yet it is unified in its opposition to Russian control and the quest for nationhood.Through difficult research (many historic documents on Chechnya have been destroyed by Russian authorities, and Chechen documentation is scarce), Gammer assembles the stories of a fiercely independent people and their three-hundred-year struggle against domination by the world power of Russia, a conflict that continues today.

    It is our prayer that this valuable historical record will inspire a new generation of Spiritfilled missionaries to go...and teach all nations the good news of the Gospel of Christ Jesus. From the back cover A compelling reallife drama of terror, mystery, and suspense behind the iron curtain I was staggered by the relationship these people had with God, because it raised a devastating question If this was Christianity, then what was the game we were playing in the West? From the Introduction "We should once and for all settle the thought that any of us could possibly outsmart those trained customs officers. I for one would not try to do it. Lets get back to the fundamentals God is so great! The world is so big! The need is so overwhelming! Revolution is so terribly threatening! Persecution of the church is so deplorable! Governments and many politicians are so corrupt! And all that is because people do not know and love Jesus! On the other side stand those who are willing to put their lives on the line because they do know and love Jesusnot because they are strong or smart. It will inded be by the foolishness of the preaching of the gospel that all devilinspired, manmade barriers will one day fall, to give way to the kingdom of God. You are right, Hans Kristian." Brother Andrew Table of ContentsWhat Law Forbids This?Give Us Bibles The Cost of Obedience A Blessing in Disguise Detente, Lawbreakers,and Love What Christianity Is This?War and Peace Refugees and Revival Finding the Life WitnessingEastern Style Shepherds, Wolves and Sheep$10,000and Other Mistakes Paralyzed for Life Disaster on a Fool's Mission Not My Will, but Thine Back to Russia Capitalism, Communism, and Christianity Revolution of Love

    

    Soviet secret projects now come under the spotlight. This first volume covers bomber concepts from the various design bureaus from the 1940s onwards. Many unusual and sophisticated aircraft are featured in these pages, allowing comparisons between what the Soviets were working on and what was being produced in the West during that period.

    It has also been sold to China, and it remains in service in significant numbers. Yefim Gordon, the doyen of Russian aviation writers, continues to amass an outstanding archive of previously unpublished materials. Though the MiG-31 was covered to some extent in the now out-of- print and sought-after Aerofax on the MiG-25 and -31, this new book will be close to a definitive work on this important aircraft and include an enormous amount of newly released and acquired information and a splendid array of unpublished photographs (including detailed walk-around shots) and drawings. The narrative of course includes detailed discussion of the background to the project, its development, versions, service, weaponry, and comparisons with its contemporaries such as the F-14 Tomcat. The aircraft is a favorite with enthusiasts and modelers, and the extensive coverage, both technical and operational, backed up by high-quality images and drawings, will have wide appeal.

    This book is a result of a series of conversations between these two men. Together they explore their experiences of life amidst the turmoil of the twentieth century and together they search for a common ethical basis for future development. They conclude that values are born of culture and that peace, progress and social justice can only be achieved through sincere communication and cultural exchange.

    Guggenheim Museum presents this blockbuster show, which demonstrates that Russia's contributions to world art history extends far beyond the early twentieth century. Like the exhibition, this catalogue explores the vast and complex phenomenon embodied by the word "Russia" through the lens of the masterworks of Russian art from the twelfth century to today, as well as art from the world-class collections amassed by Russian tsars and merchants from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. The remarkable and interconnected history of Russian art and Russia's most important collections over nine centuries includes icons, portraiture in both painting and sculpture, social realist works since the nineteenth century, landscapes from all periods, pioneering abstraction, and experimental contemporary art.Librarian of Congress and renowned historian of Russia James Billington contributes the introductory essay, providing a context for the more specialized selections by Robert Rosenblum, Evgenia Petrova, Lidia Iovleva, Mikhail Allenov, Alexander Borovsky, Alexander Kostenevich, Valerie Hillings and others. The book's design subtly evokes the six major periods covered—Medieval Russia (twelfth to seventeenth centuries), the epoch of Peter and Catherine (the eighteenth century), the nineteenth century, the early twentieth century, the 1930s–1960s, and the 1970s to present. This scope makes Russia! one of the most comprehensive sources on the history of Russian art ever to be published in English. The companion publication, Russia! Catalogue of the Exhibition, provides expanded and detailed, curatorial information for each work in the exhibition.

    Wherever he tries to settle down he seems always to cause chaos and despair in a hitherto peaceful community. When he leaves the inhabitants are changed and resentful, living with the consequences of the events that he has set in motion, questioning the nature and the basis of their former existence. No matter how rootless the boy may seem or wish to be, human contact and the bonds of love and family are inescapable and catch up with him in the end. The boy's unique abilities and alienation underscore the distinctive Caucasian culture and their strict code of honor.

    Elizabeth was a grand daughter of Queen Victoria of Great Britain and Ireland, and the sister of the last Czarina Alexandra. Following the assassination of her husband, the Grand Duke Serge, in 1905, she became a nun. This short work sets forth in the Grand Duchess's own words her vision for monastic life in inner city early twentieth century Moscow. The style is very different from that of better-known monastic rules, as for example of St. Benedict. Through it the reader is offered a glimpse into the daily life of this short-lived but fruitful outreach to the poor of pre-revolutionary Russian society. A short life of the new martyr, murdered by the Bolsheviks, is provided at the end of the work. Well illustrated with black and white photos.

    Just one 30-minute lesson a day gets you speaking and understanding like no other program. This course includes Lessons 1-16 from the Russian Level 1 program - 8 hours of audio-only effective language learning with real-life spoken practice sessions. Each lesson provides 30 minutes of spoken language practice, with an introductory conversation, and new vocabulary and structures. Detailed instructions enable you to understand and participate in the conversation. Practice for vocabulary introduced in previous lessons is included in each lesson. Topics include: greetings, numbers, meals, shopping, telling time, scheduling activities, and asking and giving directions. The emphasis is on pronunciation and comprehension, and on learning to speak Russian. The Russian Language Russian, one of the six official languages of the United Nations, is the official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Krygystan, with an estimated 150 million native speakers around the world. Pimsleur's Russian uses speakers from Moscow and St. Petersburg, which accounts for slight pronunciation differences between speakers, but accurately depicts contemporary spoken Russian. Tech Talk - CDs are formatted for playing in all CD players, including car players, and users can copy files for use in iTunes or Windows Media Player.

    Gigantic, prolonged, and bloody, they contrasted with the general nature of the fighting on other fronts. The Russians fought on their own in their theater of war and with an independent strategy. Stalinist Russia was acountry radically different from its liberal democratic allies. Hitler and the German high command, for their part, conceived and carried out the Russian campaign as a singular war of annihilation.This riveting new book is a penetrating, broad-ranging, yet concise overview of this vast conflict. It investigates the Wehrmacht and the Red Army and the command and production systems that organized and sustained them. It considers a range of further themes concerning this most political ofwars. Benefiting from a post-Communist, post-Cold War perspective, the book takes advantage of a wealth of new studies and source material that have become available over the last decade.Readers from history buffs to scholars will find something new in this exciting new book.

    Readers come to understand how and why these children, left orphans by death or by choice, form their own culture to find power and to survive. This pioneering work on child abandonment looks at Russian society from a new angle: from the perspectives of abandoned youngsters and their caretakers. Based on direct observation of and interviews with abandoned children, this work shows why any effort to rescue these children calls for a deep understanding of Russian culture, and why any effort to address abandonment in Russia calls for a joint effort between psychologists, social workers, and the children themselves.Researcher Fujimura takes us across history, into Russian society, its orphanages and shelters, and along the streets of the nation to see how abandoned children are stigmatized and shunned. We also come to understand how and why these children, left orphans by death or by choice, form their own culture to find power and to survive. This pioneering work on child abandonment looks at Russian society from a new angle: from the perspectives of abandoned youngsters and their caretakers. Based on direct observation of and interviews with abandoned children, this work shows why any effort to rescue these children calls for a deep understanding of Russian culture, and why any effort to affect abandonment in Russia calls for a joint effort between psychologists, social workers, and the children themselves.

    Valentina Polukhina surveys the entire scene, reading some 1000 collections and manuscripts, and thoroughly investigating what is accessible on the vibrant Russian literary internet. The anthology ranges from Moscow to Vladivostok. It includes writers from former Soviet Republics such as the Ukraine. Work by Russian women poets living abroad (in Britain, the United States, Italy, France, Israel, etc) is also represented. Focusing on the middle generation, with major figures like Svetlana Kekova, Vera Pavolova and Tatyana Shcherbina, the anthology includes work by the youngest generation, born after 1970 and virtually unknown outside Russia, as well as senior poets like Bella Akhmadulina and Natalya Gorbanevskaya. Consultants have included scholars, critics and editors, like Dmitry Kuzmin, who created the indispensable poetry website for younger poets, "Vavilon". Other consultants in Russia include Olga Sedakova (Moscow State University/MGU), Irina Kovaleva (MGU), and Lyudmila Zbuova (St. Petersburg University). Translators include such distinguished English poets as Elaine Feinstein, Ruth Fainlight, Maura Dooley and Carol Rumens, as well as Russianists and scholars in Britain and the United States such as Peter France (Edinburgh), Catriona Kelly (Oxford), Robert Reid (Keele) and Stephanie Sandler (Harvard). 'Russian poetry is in a healthy state as it leaves the glaciers of communism for the steamy jungle of western hedonism,' D.M. Thomas declared in Poetry London. The anthology provides a host of insights into post-Soviet reality, from the point of view of women writers who were less compromised by the Soviet system, offering more resistance to the pressures of political conformism.

    Anecdotes and jokes were a hidden form of discursive communication in the Soviet era, lampooning official practices and acting as a confidential form of self-affirmation. They were not necessarily anti-Soviet, by their very nature both criticising existing reality and acting as a form of acquiescence. Above all they provide invaluable insights into everyday life, and the attitudes and concerns of ordinary people. The book also includes anecdotes and jokes from the post-Soviet period, when ordinary people in Russia continued to have to cope with rather grim reality, and the compiler provides extensive introductory and explanatory matter to set the material in context.

    The Chechens are thought to be related to the Hurrians and Urartians, builders of seminal civilizations in the Near East, and they themselves established a civilization whose relics can still be come across, especially in the ancient Pantheon. This book provides a ready introduction, and practical guide to the Chechen people and some little-known and rarely-considered aspects of Chechen culture, including customs and traditions, folklore, arts and architecture, music, and literature. It also narrates Chechen history from ancient times and provides sketches of archaic religions and civilizations. Amjad Jaimoukha reveals the esoteric social structure and the peculiar brand of Chechen Sufism, as well as the present political situation in Chechnya. This handbook alsoincludes: · Analysis of Chechen media development since the early twentieth century · Images of the Chechens carried by Russian and Western medias · Sketches of the short-lived Chechen film industry · A proverbs and sayings section · Appendices detailing social structure, the native Pantheon, bibliographies and periodicals pertaining to the Chechens and Chechnya, and a lexicographic listing · A comprehensive bibliography, with many entries in English, for further reading Tyrannized and deliberately maligned by the Russians for so long, the freedom-loving Chechens have been paying dearly for upholding their national ethos and cherished ideals. It is hoped that this work would prove a corrective by changing some of the negative stereotypes that have come to be associated with the Chechens and to do them justice and put a human face back on one of the noblest yet least understood of nations. As the only comprehensive guide available in English, this bookis an indispensable and accessible resource for all those with an interest in Chechnya.

    Today, the new government under President Mikheil Saaskashvili faces complex security problems both within and outside Georgia's borders. Statehood and Security looks at the many different layers of these challenges and explores the complicated ways they intersect and influence one another. It argues that Georgia's problems need to be taken seriously by the rest of the world and considers what Georgia, its regional neighbors, and the West can do—within the realm of the politically feasible—to improve the situation in ways that enhance the security of all concerned.For Georgia, as for the other post-Soviet states, security begins at home. Internal conflicts, including the intractable issue of the reintegration of breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia, threaten Georgia's territorial integrity. Regional conflict—including the quasi-state of war between Armenia and Azerbaijan and the effect of the ongoing Chechen insurgency on Russia—defines Georgia's relations with its neighbors and distracts it from its internal problems. The chapters in Statehood and Security, written by both Georgian and non-Georgian authors, examine such topics as Georgian national identity; the inefficacy of state institutions because of corruption, criminal activity, and paramilitary groups; Georgia's troubled relationship with Russia, including Russia's role in Abkhazia; and the role of the West.

    Virtually every classic work takes parties to be inevitable and essential to electoral competition, but Russia remains highly nonpartisan more than fifteen years after Gorbachev first launched his democratizing reforms. The problem is that theories of party development lack a control case, almost always focusing on cases where parties have already developed and almost never examining countries where independent politicians are the norm. This book focuses on Russia as just such a control case. It mobilizes fresh public opinion surveys, interviews with leading Russian politicians, careful tracking of multiple campaigns, and analysis of national and regional voting patterns to show why Russia stands out. Russia's historically influenced combination of federalism and superpresidentialism, coupled with a postcommunist redistribution of resources to regional political machines and oligarchic financial-industrial groups, produced and sustained powerful party substitutes that have largely squeezed Russia's real parties out of the electoral market," damaging Russia's democratic development.

    That said, it is very difficult to locate a coherent set of religious beliefs within Dostoevsky’s works, and to argue that the writer embraced these beliefs. This book provides a trenchant reassessment of his religion by showing how Dostoevsky used his writings as the vehicle for an intense probing of the nature of Christianity, of the individual meaning of belief and doubt, and of the problems of ethical behavior that arise from these questions. The author argues that religion represented for Dostoevsky a welter of conflicting views and stances, from philosophical idealism to nationalist messianism. The strength of this study lies in its recognition of the absence of a single religious prescription in Dostoevsky's works, as well as in its success in tracing the background of the ideas animating Dostoevsky’s religious probing.

    While Lenin and his followers purportedly advocated the rise of the Russian peasantry, opposition to the Bolshevik Party erupted into a bloody civil war and was met with Lenin's ravaging "Red Terror" campaign. The revolution effected a severe change in all economic, political and social relationships in Russian society--a change that would endure until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. This historical memoir imparts distinctive social and cultural insights into the realities of the Russian Revolution and the later effect of World War II on the people who suffered under the Soviet Union. Narrated in sequential first person by a mother, Nadia Stakhanova, and her two daughters, Natasha and Vera Stakhanova, the book gives the factual account of a family whose privileged way of life was shattered by Communism and war. Ranging in setting from czarist Russia to present-day Melbourne and the campus of Vassar in New York, the story follows the family through a period of perpetual poverty and crisis, beginning with the sentencing of father Vladimir to death for loyalty to the White Russian faction. It continues with the family's subsequent evasion of the Russian secret police, the German occupation of their home city during World War II, their forced abandonment of five-year-old daughter Natasha, and their flight to the West through Russia, Romania, Hungary, Poland, Italy and Austria. The reunification of the family in Australia marks the story's climax.

    This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

    As one of Stalinism's more memorable slogans, this one suggests that the fairy tale figured in Soviet culture as far more than a category of children's literature. How much more-and how cannily Russian fairy tales reflect and interpret Soviet culture, especially in its utopian ambitions-becomes clear for the first time in Politicizing Magic, a compendium of folkloric, literary, and critical texts that demonstrate the degree to which ancient fairy-tale fantasies acquired political and historical meanings during the catastrophic twentieth century. Introducing Western readers to the most representative texts of Russian folkloric and literary tales, this book documents a rich exploration of this colorful genre through all periods of Soviet literary production (1920-1985) by authors with varied political and aesthetic allegiances. Here are traditional Russian folkloric tales and transformations of these tales that, adopting the didacticism of Soviet ideology, proved significant for the official discourse of Socialist Realism. Here, too, are narratives produced during the same era that use the fairy-tale paradigm as a deconstructive device aimed at the very underpinnings of the Soviet system. The editors' introductory essays acquaint readers with the fairy-tale paradigm and the permutations it underwent within the utopian dream of Soviet culture, deftly placing each-from traditional folklore to fairy tales of Socialist Realism, to real-life events recast as fairy tales for ironic effect-in its literary, historical, and political context.

    It became the first of a series of bloody landmarks that would come to define Stalinism. This revelatory book presents—with analysis and commentary—the most important primary Soviet documents dealing with the brutal economic and cultural subjugation of the Russian peasantry. Drawn from previously unavailable and in many cases unknown archives, these harrowing documents provide the first unimpeded view of the experience of the peasantry during the years 1927-1930.The book, the first of four in the series, covers the background of collectivization, its violent implementation, and the mass peasant revolt that ensued. For its insights into the horrific fate of the Russian peasantry and into Stalin’s dictatorship, The War Against the Peasantry takes its place an as unparalleled resource.

    Nicholas and Alexandra, the book, is not only a catalogue of the wonderful objects on display but also a history of the public and private lives of the ill-fated Russian Royal Family. Lavishly produced, with over 200 pictures and photographs, the book - an object of beauty in itself - does full justice to this unique exhibition.

    Drawing on original archival materials and theoretically informed, the essays in this volume examine ways in which Soviet citizens sought to align their private lives with the public nature of Soviet experience by taking the Revolution "inside." Topics discussed include the new sexuality, family loyalty during the Terror, the advertisement of Soviet commodities, the employment of domestic servants, children's toys and Pioneer camps, and narratives of self, ranging from diaries to secret police statements to monologues on the Soviet screen and stage. Bringing into dialogue essays by scholars in history, literature, sociology, art history, and film studies, this interdisciplinary volume contributes to the growing understanding of the Soviet Union as part of the history of modernity, rather than its totalitarian "other."

    Male and female workers in one of Russia's oldest, largest, and "reddest" manufacturing centers--the textile plants of the Ivanovo Industrial Region--actively resisted Stalinist policies that consigned them to poverty, illness, and hunger.In April 1932, 20,000 mill workers across the region participated in a wave of strikes. Seeing the event as a rebuke to his leadership, Stalin dispatched Lazar Kaganovich to quash the rebellion, resulting in bloodshed and repression. Moscow was forced to respond to the crisis on the nation's shop floors with a series of important reforms.Rossman uncovers a new dimension to the relationship between the Soviet leadership and working class and makes an important contribution to the debate about the nature of resistance to the Stalinist regime.

    What kind of political order corresponds to the challenges that Russia faces in the post-Soviet period? This analysis argues that geography matters a great deal and the state remains central in compensating for the austere implications of economic geography for Russia's economic prospects under market circumstances.

    Roosevelt knew that defeating the Axis powers would require major contributions by the Soviets and their Red Army, and so, despite his misgivings about Stalin's expansionist motives, he pushed for friendlier relations. Yet almost from the moment he was inaugurated, lower-level officials challenged FDR's ability to carry out this policy.Mary Glantz analyzes tensions shaping the policy stance of the United States toward the Soviet Union before, during, and immediately after World War II. Focusing on the conflicts between a president who sought close relations between the two nations and the diplomatic and military officers who opposed them, she shows how these career officers were able to resist and shape presidential policy-and how their critical views helped shape the parameters of the subsequent Cold War.Venturing into the largely uncharted waters of bureaucratic politics, Glantz examines overlooked aspects of wartime relations between Washington and Moscow to highlight the roles played by U.S. personnel in the U.S.S.R. in formulating and implementing policies governing the American-Soviet relationship. She takes readers into the American embassy in Moscow to show how individuals like Ambassadors Joseph Davies, Lawrence Steinhadt, and Averell Harriman and U.S. military attachs like Joseph Michela influenced policy, and reveals how private resistance sometimes turned into public dispute. She also presents new material on the controversial military attach/lend-lease director Phillip Faymonville, a largely neglected officer who understood the Soviet system and supported Roosevelt's policy.Deftly combining military with diplomatic history, Glantz traces these philosophical and policy battles to show how difficult it was for even a highly popular president like Roosevelt to overcome such entrenched and determined opposition. Although he reorganized federal offices and appointed ambassadors who shared his views, in the end he was unable to outlast his bureaucratic opponents or change their minds. With his death, anti-Soviet factions rushed into the policymaking vacuum to become the primary architects of Truman's Cold War containment policy.A case study in foreign relations, high-level policymaking, and civil-military relations, FDR and the Soviet Union enlarges our understanding of the ideologies and events that set the stage for the Cold War. It adds a new dimension to our understanding of Soviet-American relations as it sheds new light on the surprising power of those in low places.

    The truth about the massacres was long suppressed, both by the Soviet Union, and also by the United States and Britain who wished to hold together their wartime alliance with the Soviet Union. This informative book examines the details of this often overlooked event, shedding light on what took place especially in relation to the massacres at locations other than Katyn itself. It discusses how the truth about the killings was hidden, how it gradually came to light and why the memory of the massacres has long affected Polish-Russian relations.

    Russia in a Box follows the development of Palekh art over two centuries as it adapted to dramatic changes in the Russian nation. As early as the sixteenth century, the peasant "masters" of Palekh painted religious icons. It was not until Russia's victory over Napoleon in 1814, however, that the village gained widespread recognition for its artistic contributions. That same year, the poet Goethe's discovery of the works of Palekh artists and craftsmen spurred interest in preserving the sacred art. The religious icons produced by Palekh masters in the nineteenth century became a source of Russian national pride. By the 1880s, some artists began to foresee their future as secular artists-a trend that was ensured by the Bolshevik Revolution. Tolerated and sometimes even encouraged by the new regime, the Palekh artists began to create finely decorated lacquered boxes that portray themes from fairy tales and idealized Russian history in exquisite miniatures. A new medium with new subject matter, these lacquered boxes became a new symbol of Russian identity during the 1920s. Palekh art endured varying levels of acceptance, denial, state control, and reliance on market-driven forces. What began as the art form of religious iconic painting, enduring for more than two centuries, was abruptly changed by the revolutionaries. Throughout the twentieth century the fate of Palekh art remained in question as Russia's political and cultural entities struggled for dominance. Ultimately capitalism and the Palekhian masters were victorious, and the famed lacquer boxes continue to be a source of Russian identity and pride.