It covers the period from the Russian elections of December 2003 to the tragic aftermath of the Beslan school siege in late 2005. The book is an unflinching record of the plight of millions of Russians and a pitiless report on the cynicism and corruption of Vladimir Putin’s presidency.

    This is the true story of one of those families-Carl and Elisabeth Werner and their young daughter Margaret-and their terrifying life in Russia under brutal dictator Joseph Stalin. Margaret was seventeen when her father was arrested on trumped-up charges of treason. Heartbroken and afraid, she and her mother were left to withstand the hardships of life under the oppressive Soviet state, an existence marked by poverty, starvation, and fear. Refusing to comply with the Socialist agenda, Margaret was ultimately sentenced to ten years of hard labor in Stalin's Gulag. Filth, malnutrition, and despair accompanied merciless physical labor. Yet in the midst of inhumane conditions came glimpses of hope and love as Margaret came to realize her dependence upon "the grace, favor, and protection of an unseen God."In all, it would be thirty long years before Margaret returned to kiss the ground of home. Of all the Americans who made this virtually unknown journey-ultimately spending years in Siberian death camps-Margaret Werner was the only woman who lived to tell about it. Written by her son, Karl Tobien, Dancing Under the Red Star is Margaret's unforgettable true story: an inspiring chronicle of faith, defiance, and personal triumph

    An excerpt of the book was hailed by Tibor Fisher in the Guardian as “right up there with Catch-22 and Michael Herr’s Dispatches,” and the book won Russia’s inaugural Debut Prize, which recognizes authors who write “despite, not because of, their life circumstances.” In 1995, Arkady Babchenko was an eighteen-year-old law student in Moscow when he was drafted into the Russian army and sent to Chechnya. It was the beginning of a torturous journey from naïve conscript to hardened soldier that took Babchenko from the front lines of the first Chechen War in 1995 to the second in 1999. He fought in major cities and tiny hamlets, from the bombed-out streets of Grozny to anonymous mountain villages. Babchenko takes the raw and mundane realities of war—the constant cold, hunger, exhaustion, filth, and terror—and twists it into compelling, haunting, and eerily elegant prose. Acclaimed by reviewers around the world, this is a devastating first-person account of war by an extraordinary storyteller.

    Between 1927 and 1930, the three made up the core of an avant-garde literary group called OBERIU (from an acronym standing for The Union of Real Art). It was a movement so artfully anarchic, and so quickly suppressed, that readers only began to discover its strange and singular brilliance three decades after it was extinguished—and then only in samizdat and émigré publications. Some called it the last of the Russian avant-garde, and others called it the first (and last) instance of Absurdism in Russia. Though difficulty to pigeon-hole, OBERIU and the pleasures of its poetry and prose are, with this volume, at long last fully open to English-speaking readers. Skillfully translated to preserve the weird charm of the originals, these poems and prose pieces display all the hilarity and tragedy, the illogical action and puppetlike violence and eroticism, and the hallucinatory intensity that brought down the wrath of the Soviet censors. Today they offer an uncanny reflection of the distorted reality they reject.

    He has not only given us a fresh, clear-eyed, and often startling new look at the life of the last Romanovs, but also lived up to the promise of his title. He has shown us how the whole enterprise worked, from Tsar Nicholas to his lowest cook and chambermaid. This book is a great work of scholarship--and a wonderful read."--Peter Kurth, author of Tsar: The Lost World of Nicholas and Alexandra and Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson"A mammoth, monumental achievement. No other book captures the essence and the entire scope of life at the court of Nicholas II. It's a thoroughly enjoyable and encyclopedic masterpiece that will be a major source for historians and biographers for years to come."--Marlene A. Eilers, author of Queen Victoria's Descendants and publisher of Royal Book News"Greg King has truly written a tour de force. The book is extremely well researched, has over 100 illustrations and is, quite simply, marvelous."--Coryne Hall, author of Little Mother of Russia, Once a Grand Duchess, and Imperial Dancer"Greg King is emerging as one of the leading authorities in today's liveliest field of Russian studies, and this is a major contribution to the study of late Imperial Russia."--Joseph T. Fuhrmann, author of Rasputin and the editor of The Complete Wartime Correspondence of Tsar Nicholas II and the Empress Alexandra

    A society utterly wrecked by a hurricane of violence. In this compelling book, the renowned historian Karl Schlogel reconstructs with meticulous care the process through which, month by month, the terrorism of a state-of-emergency regime spiraled into the 'Great Terror' during which 1 1/2 million human beings lost their lives within a single year. He revisits the sites of show trials and executions and, by also consulting numerous sources from the time, he provides a masterful panorama of these key events in Russian history. He shows how, in the shadow of the reign of terror, the regime around Stalin also aimed to construct a new society. Based on countless documents, Schlogel's historical masterpiece vividly presents an age in which the boundaries separating the dream and the terror dissolve, and enables us to experience the fear that was felt by people subjected to totalitarian rule. This rich and absorbing account of the Soviet purges will be essential reading for all students of Russia and for any readers interested in one of the most dramatic and disturbing events of modern history.

    In mid-life he underwent a deep moral and spiritual crisis that led him back to the Gospels in an effort to conform his life to the spirit of Christ. This volume focuses on Tolstoy's "spiritual writings""--autobiographical reflections on his journey of faith, Gospel commentaries, essays on the essence of Christianity, and timeless wisdom regarding the meaning of human existence.iNCLUDES EXCERPTS FROM: On Life; My Confession; What I Believe; The Kingdom of God Is Within You; Stop and Think; What Is to Be Done?; Writings on Civil Disobedience; The Law of Love and the Law of Violence; Thoughts on God; Path of Lie; On Reason, Faith, and Prayer; and The Destruction of Hell and Its Restoration: A Legend.

    "Jewels of the Tsars," the first book to examine the familys unparalleled collection, is illustrated with extraordinary photographs taken under special conditions at the Kremlins Diamond Fund, and accompanied by 18th- and 19th-century portraits and photographs of the Tsars, their families, and their court. Prince Michael of Greece, a Romanoff descendant, writes with an insiders knowledge of his familys passion for rare and beautiful jewels, and their place in the troubled history of Imperial Russia.

    Her reign, the longest in Russian Imperial history, lasted from 1762 until her death in 1796; during those years she built on the work begun by her most famous predecessor, Peter the Great, to establish Russia as a major European power and to transform its new capital, St Petersburg, into a city to rival Paris and London in the beauty of its architecture, the glittering splendor of its Court and the magnificence of its art collections. Yet the great Catherine was not even Russian by birth and had no legitimate claim to the Russian throne; she seized it and held on to it, through wars, rebellions and plagues, by the force of her personality, by her charm and determination, and by an unshakable belief in her own destiny. This is the story of Catherine the woman, whom power alone could never satisfy, for she also wanted love, affection, friendship and humor. She found these in letter-writing, in grandchildren, in gardens, architecture and greyhounds--as well as in a succession of lovers which gave rise to salacious rumors throughout Europe. The real Catherine, however, was more interesting than any rumor. Using many of Catherine's own words from her voluminous correspondence and other documents, as well as contemporary accounts by courtiers, ambassadors and foreign visitors, Virginia Rounding penetrates the character of this most powerful, fascinating and surprisingly sympathetic of eighteenth-century women.

    Petersburg was the haunt of poets, artists, and musicians, a place to meet, drink, read, brawl, celebrate, and stage performances of all kinds. It has since become a symbol of the extraordinary literary ferment of that time. It was then that Alexander Blok composed his apocalyptic sequence “Twelve”; that the futurists Velimir Khlebnikov and Vladimir Mayakovsky exploded language into bold new forms; that the lapidary lyrics of Osip Mandelstam and plangent love poems of Anna Akhmatova saw the light; that the electrifying Marina Tsvetaeva stunned and dazzled everyone. Boris Pasternak was also of this company, putting together his great youthful hymn to nature, My Sister, Life. It was a transforming moment—not just for Russian but for world poetry—but a short-lived one. Within little more than a decade, revolution and terror were to disperse, silence, and destroy almost all the poets of the Stray Dog cabaret.

    It traces the origins of the modern Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian nations by focusing on pre-modern forms of group identity among the Eastern Slavs. It also challenges attempts to 'nationalize' the Rus' past on behalf of existing national projects, laying the groundwork for understanding of the pre-modern history of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The book covers the period from the Christianization of Kyivan Rus' in the tenth century to the reign of Peter I and his eighteenth-century successors, by which time the idea of nationalism had begun to influence the thinking of East Slavic elites.

    "All of Krzhizhanovsky's stories depict something aberrant, which is strongly rooted in something true."--"Bookforum""It is now clear that Krzhizhanovsky is one of the greatest Russian writers of the last century."--"Financial Times""A natural storyteller, striking intellect, and deeply creative soul are found all in one--a rare combination."--"Complete Review"

    It explores the forging of the revolutionary self, a study without precedent that speaks to the evolution of the individual in mass movements of our own time.

    Ericson, Jr., and Daniel J. Mahoney in collaboration with the Solzhenitsyn family, provides in one volume a rich and representative selection of Solzhenitsyn's voluminous works. Reproduced in their entirety are early poems, early and late short stories, early and late "miniatures" (or prose poems), and many of Solzhenitsyn’s famous—and not-so-famous—essays and speeches. The volume also includes excerpts from Solzhenitsyn's great novels, memoirs, books of political analysis and historical scholarship, and the literary and historical masterpieces The Gulag Archipelago and The Red Wheel. More than one-quarter of the material has never before appeared in English (the author’s sons prepared many of the new translations themselves). The Solzhenitsyn Reader reveals a writer of genius, an intransigent opponent of ideological tyranny and moral relativism, and a thinker and moral witness who is acutely sensitive to the great drama of good and evil that takes place within every human soul. It will be for many years the definitive Solzhenitsyn collection.

    George V, Wilhelm II and Nicholas II, known in the family as Georgie, Willy and Nicky, were cousins. Between them they ruled over half the world. They had been friends since childhood. But by July 1914 the Trade Union of Kings was falling apart. Each was blaming the other for the impending disaster of the First World War. 'Have I gone mad?' Nicky asked his wife Alix in St Petersburg, showing her another telegram from Willy. 'What on earth does William mean pretending that it still depends on me whether war is averted or not!' Behind the friendliness of family gatherings lurked family quarrels, which were often played out in public. Drawing widely on previously unpublished documents, this is the extraordinary story of their overlapping lives, conducted in palaces of unimaginable opulence, surrounded by flattery and political intrigue. And through it runs the question: to what extent were the King, the Kaiser and the Tsar responsible for the outbreak of the war, and, as it turned out, for the end of autocratic monarchy?

    was developing a new generation of jet fighters that had an exceptional range, heavy armor, and great agility in the air. These U.S. aircraft, the F-14 Tomcat, F-15 Eagle, F-16 Fighting Hornet, and F/A-18 Hornet dominated U.S. air power for three decades. In the context of the Cold War, the Soviets could not be seen to be lagging behind the Americans. Their response to these new U.S. aircraft was the Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker, which was designed as a long-range air superiority aircraft and interceptor. The first of the modified pre-production aircraft appeared in 1981, but it was not until 1984 that significant numbers of the Su-27 started to enter service. Eventually some 680 Su-27 were built for the Soviets, of which 400 remain in service with the Russian Tactical Air Force today. Outside of Russia, the Su-27 is also in service with the Chinese, and on the inventories of the air forces of Vietnam, Malaysia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Syria, and Angola. This book describes in depth the development, operational career, history, and variants within the Su-27 family. The book incorporates color and black and white photos to portray some of the various camouflage schemes carried by the type in Soviet, Russian, and other air forces over the past two decades.

    Timeless love lies at the heart of the stories in this collection - featuring a lively marsh-witch, a duchess with a secret admirer, and King Solomon himself. Alexander Kuprin, one of fin de siècle Russia's most popular writers, explores his themes with a deft hand and realistic naturalism that keep his tales fresh and unforgettable. Ranging from dark psychological explorations to innocent sentimentality, Kuprin’s stories take in the breadth and depth of human life with detailed vivacity. Enter into the enchanting world of one of Russia’s most cherished literary figures. Includes the classic novellas Olesya, The Garnet Bracelet, and Sulamith, as well as the short stories The Last Debut, On a Moonlit Night, and The Bog.

    Repin, who lived from 1844 to 1930, was the finest and most celebrated painter of his generation, and an important influence in shaping a distinctly Russian school within nineteenth-century Realism. His often-controversial works addressed subjects including the hard lives of the peasants, the fates of revolutionary activists, loaded episodes of Russian history and some of the nation's greatest cultural figures, many of whom he counted as personal friends, including Tolstoy, Musorgsky and Gorky. His vibrant, colorful and topical canvases offer a fascinating panorama of the issues that were swirling in the minds of his contemporaries, and an unusual view of all strata of life during this crucial period of historical change.

    But this dream is also an individual appropriation of a collective Soviet project and the official Soviet propaganda connected to it. Having built a makeshift slingshot, the hero apparently flies through the ceiling of his shabby room and vanishes into space. The miserable room and the primitive slingshot suggest the reality behind the Soviet utopia, in which where cosmic vision and the political project of the Communist revolution are seen as indissoluble.The Man who Flew into Space from His Apartment also raises questions of authorship in modernity. All of Kabakov's work is made in the name of other, fictitious artists. This reveals a hidden rule of the modern art system: only an artist who doesn't want to be an artist or who doesn't even know that he is an artist is a real artist -- just as only an artwork that does not look like an artwork is a real artwork. The installation is a narrative, the documentation of a fictitious event.Afterall Books are distributed by The MIT Press.

    When he left Russia after the 1917 Revolution, his diaries were recovered from the family flat in Petrograd and later hidden at considerable personal risk by the composer Nikolai Myaskovsky. Prokofiev himself smuggled them out of the country after his first return to the Soviet Union in 1927. The later diaries, written in the West, were brought back by legal decree after the composer's death in 1953, to be kept in an inaccessible section of the Soviet State Archive. Eventually Prokofiev's son Sviatoslav was allowed to transcribe the voluminous contents. When he and his son Sergei eventually emigrated to Paris, they undertook the gigantic task of reproducing the partially encoded manuscript in an intelligible form.Diaries, 1907-1914, the first of three volumes that extend to 1933, covers Prokofiev's years at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire. Simultaneously attached to and exasperated by the tradition exemplified by composers such as Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov, and Tcherepnin, the brash young genius relishes the power of his talent to irritate, challenge, and finally overcome the establishment. In candid and lively prose, he records the all-too-normal preoccupations of a young man making his way in the brilliant social and artistic circles of the prewar Russian capital. Virtually every artist and musician of note appears in these pages, in penetrating and not always flattering vignettes. Prokofiev's main subject, however, is music, its creation and its performance. He reveals his own developing aesthetic principles through his assessments of the works of others, even as he composes such early masterpieces as the First and Second Piano Concertos, The Ugly Duckling, the First Violin Concerto, and the Classical Symphony. An inexhaustibly rich portrait of a vibrant artistic culture on the edge of war and revolution, Prokofiev's Diaries are both a dramatic illumination of a great composer's creativity and an indispensable contribution to our understanding of musical modernism. They constitute an essential and entertaining reference for all lovers of Prokofiev's music.

    Sasha and Olga were two survivors of progroms, mass starvation, Nazi slavery and Allied bombing among other atrocities. They were Displaced Persons who tried to find a new life in Australia. In this book their daughter tells their story and what happened when they tried unsuccessfully to put the past behind them. She returned to Ukraine to uncover the past and by a series of amazing coincidences found long lost relatives.

    Many of the narratives gathered here come from well-known authors; all are authentic. Together, they help us finally to come to terms with the tremendous human cost of communism’s allegedly noble ideals.

    From blini to cabbage soup, and caviar eggs to “Russian salad,” she reveals the continuity of Russian life, despite political repression, in which the bourgeois cooking of the nineteenth century coexisted with old dishes dictated by the church calendar and new inventions to “make do” with the frequent shortages of vital ingredients under the Soviets. First published in 1982, this fine collection of recipes and entertaining literary quotations has become a classic introduction to the rich culinary history of the region. This new Bison Books edition contains period illustrations and a new introduction by the author.

    To celebrate the centenary of his birth, the first English translation of his memoir of the West, Between Two Millstones, Book 1, is being published. Fast-paced, absorbing, and as compelling as the earlier installments of his memoir The Oak and the Calf (1975), Between Two Millstones begins on February 13, 1974, when Solzhenitsyn found himself forcibly expelled to Frankfurt, West Germany, as a result of the publication in the West of The Gulag Archipelago. Solzhenitsyn moved to Zurich, Switzerland, for a time and was considered the most famous man in the world, hounded by journalists and reporters. During this period, he found himself untethered and unable to work while he tried to acclimate to his new surroundings.Between Two Millstones contains vivid descriptions of Solzhenitsyn's journeys to various European countries and North American locales, where he and his wife Natalia ("Alya") searched for a location to settle their young family. There are fascinating descriptions of one-on-one meetings with prominent individuals, detailed accounts of public speeches such as the 1978 Harvard University commencement, comments on his television appearances, accounts of his struggles with unscrupulous publishers and agents who mishandled the Western editions of his books, and the KGB disinformation efforts to besmirch his name. There are also passages on Solzhenitsyn's family and their property in Cavendish, Vermont, whose forested hillsides and harsh winters evoked his Russian homeland, and where he could finally work undisturbed on his ten-volume dramatized history of the Russian Revolution, The Red Wheel. Stories include the efforts made to assure a proper education for the writer's three sons, their desire to return one day to their home in Russia, and descriptions of his extraordinary wife, editor, literary advisor, and director of the Russian Social Fund, Alya, who successfully arranged, at great peril to herself and to her family, to smuggle Solzhenitsyn's invaluable archive out of the Soviet Union.Between Two Millstones is a literary event of the first magnitude. The book dramatically reflects the pain of Solzhenitsyn's separation from his Russian homeland and the chasm of miscomprehension between him and Western society.

    The issues examined are as follows: - the backgrounds of the Muslim extremists who carried out these acts including the de facto leaders of the terrorist assaults, ethnic Chechen Ruslan Elmurzaev and Ingush Ruslan Khuchbarov;- the failure of Russian law-enforcement to prevent these two incidents, documenting both the massive corruption of the Russian security services and police and the absence of the rule of law;- the storming of the Moscow theater building and of the school at Beslan by Russian police, aided by the military, elucidating the reasons for the very large loss of life in both incidents;- the use by the Russian police of a special gas at Dubrovka and of tanks and flamethrowers at Beslan;- the evident fixation of the Putin leadership with portraying these two assaults as incidents of international Islamic terrorism linked to the Al-Qaeda network;- and the repeated attempts on the part of the Russian authorities at the time of these incidents to weaken the influence of moderate Chechen separatists headed by the late Aslan Maskhadov.

    

    Art. Andrew Romanoff is the grandnephew of the late Tsar Nicholas Romanoff. Had the Bolshevik Revolution not intervened, Andrew himself was in line to become Tsar of Russia. Instead, he grew up in exile on the grounds at Windsor Castle in London. Prince Andrew, now 85 years old, chronicles his remarkable childhood in THE BOY WHO WOULD BE TSAR, THE ART OF PRINCE ANDREW ROMANOFF. Prince Andrew's drawings of daily life are executed on Shrinky Dink material, a plastic which shrinks when heated in the oven. His decidedly original works are rooted in the realm of Folk Art. He uses these drawings to illustrate the story of his childhood at Frogmore Cottage, a thirty six room mansion on the grounds of Windsor. There, Andrew was raised with his parents and grandmother Grand Duchess Xenia.

    

    She tells of the raids in which many of her family members were captured, of her extraordinary journey from the small village outside of Grozny where she was born to Paris, where she became a student at the prestigious Institut d'études politiques. Both an intimate journal and a war diary, this book relates much of the recent history and demise of a war-torn country. She describes the escape from Russian tanks, living in hiding inside of Grozny’s caves, risking her life to go to school, then fleeing to Ingushetia to escape bombings. She also tells of the euphoric period between the two wars, the ethnic cleansings and “filtration camps”, and finally, her undreamt-of flight to Paris, her discovery of the West, and her final return to Chechnya. This is the poignant testimony of an exceptional young woman whose mission is to finally give voice to her people.

    The cultural transformation of Soviet Jews between 1917 and 1941 was one of the most ambitious experiments in social engineering of the past century. During this period, Russian Jews went from relative isolation to being highly integrated into the new Soviet culture and society, while retaining a strong ethnic and cultural identity. This identity took shape during the 1920s and 1930s, when the government attempted to create a new Jewish culture, "national in form" and "socialist in content." Soviet and Kosher is the first study of key Yiddish documents that brought these Soviet messages to Jews, notably the "Red Haggadah," a Soviet parody of the traditional Passover manual; songs about Lenin and Stalin; scripts from regional theaters; Socialist Realist fiction; and magazines for children and adults. More than 200 interviews conducted by the author in Russia, Germany, and the United States testify to the reception of these cultural products and provide a unique portrait of the cultural life of the average Soviet Jew.

    Using cultural nationalism as a tool for understanding Slavophile thinking, she argues that a Russian national identity was not shaped in opposition to Europe in order to separate Russia from the West. Rather, it originated as an attempt to counter the feeling of cultural backwardness among Russian intellectuals by making it possible for Russian culture to assume a leading role in the universal progress of humanity. This reinterpretation of Slavophile ideas about the Russian nation offers a more complex image of the role of Europe and the West in shaping a Russian national identity.

    Soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Republic of Georgia fell prey to a series of power struggles, rampant crime and corruption, secessionist wars, and the spillover of the war in neighboring Chechenya. Journalist Goltz traces these developments with the same kind of vivid, personal narrative that made his previous books so compelling. This fast-paced, first-person account is filled with fascinating details about the ongoing struggles of this little-known region of the former Soviet Union. Featuring memorable portraits of individuals in high places and low, it traces the story from 1992 through the Rose Revolution, the resignation of Eduard Shevardnadze, and the new presidency of U.S.-educated Mikhail Saakashvili.

    Already renowned in Russia before the revolution, he fled the country in 1920 and lived the remainder of his life in France, where he continued to write for thirty years. Bunin made his name as a short-story writer with such masterpieces as "The Gentleman from San Francisco," the title piece in one of his collections and one of the stories in this volume. His last book of stories, Dark Avenues, was published in the 1940s. Among his longer works were a fictional autobiography, The Life of Arseniev (1930), and its sequel, Youth (1939), which were later collected into one volume, and two memoirs, The Accursed Days (1926), and Memories and Portraits (1950). He also wrote books on Tolstoy and Chekhov, both of whom he knew personally. Bunin, in fact, serves as a link-both personal and literary-between Tolstoy, whom he met as a young man, Chekhov, a close friend, and Vladimir Nabokov, who was influenced by Bunin early in his career and who moved in the same émigré literary circles in the twenties and thirties.Bunin achieved his greatest mastery in the short story, and much of his finest work appears in this volume-the largest collection of his prose works ever published in English. In Robert Bowie's fine translation, with extensive annotations and a lengthy critical afterword, this work affords readers of English their first opportunity for a sustained encounter with a Russian classic, and one of the great writers of the twentieth century.

    Davies' study provides an essential insight into the emergence of Russia as a great power.For nearly three centuries, Russia vied with the Crimean Khanate, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire for mastery of the Ukraine and the fertile steppes above the Black Sea, a region of great strategic and economic importance - arguably the pivot of Eurasia at the time.The long campaign took a great toll upon Russia's population, economy and institutions, and repeatedly frustrated or redefined Russian military and diplomatic projects in the West.The struggle was every bit as important as Russia's wars in northern and central Europe for driving the Russian state-building process, forcing military reform and shaping Russia's visions of Empire.

    Through a close examination of the form and content of Chekhov's dramas, the author shows how deeply pessimistic or overly optimistic interpretations fail to sufficiently account for the rich complexity and ambiguity of these plays. The author suggests that, by accepting that Chekhov's plays are synthetic tragi-comedies which juxtapose potentially tragic sub-texts with essentially comic texts, critics and directors are more likely to produce richer and more deeply satisfying interpretations of these works. Besides being of general interest to any reader interested in understanding Chekhov's work, the book is intended to be of particular interest to students of Drama and Theatre Studies and to potential directors of these subtle plays.

    Few of these designs ever saw mass production, and the experiment failed as propaganda--comrades clung to their traditional floral motifs--but it yielded bold and intriguing new designs. Soviet Textiles: Designing the Modern Utopia presents some 40 of them, and analyzes the political and artistic context in which they were made. Pamela Jill Kachurin identifies major themes and motifs, including industrialization, transportation, electrification, youth, agriculture and collectivization, and sports and hobbies, and analyzes the work both as propaganda and as graphic art, in this, the only English-language book to treat them from that perspective.

    It presents a comprehensive overview of the late prehistoric cultures of these regions, which are of key importance for the understanding of long-term changes in Eurasia. At the crossroads of Europe and Asia, the Urals and Western Siberia are characterized by great environmental and cultural diversity which is reflected in the variety and richness of their archaeological sites. Based on the latest achievements of Russian archaeologists, this study demonstrates the temporal and geographical range of its subjects starting with a survey of the chronological sequence from the late fourth millennium BC to the early first millennium AD. Recent discoveries contribute to an understanding of issues such as the development of Eurasian metallurgy, technological and ritual innovations, pastoral nomadism and its role in Eurasian interactions, and major sociocultural fluctuations of the Bronze and Iron Ages.

    Mennonites, Politics, and Peoplehood reveals that since their early history, Mennonites have, in fact, been active participants in worldly politics. From western to eastern Europe and through different migrations to North America, James Urry’s meticulous research traces Mennonite links with kingdoms, empires, republics, and democratic nations in the context of peace, war, and revolution. He stresses a degree of Mennonite involvement in politics not previously discussed in literature, including Mennonite participation in constitutional reform and party politics, and shows the polarization of their political views from conservatism to liberalism and even revolutionary activities.    Urry looks at the Mennonite reaction to politics and political events from the Reformation onwards and focusses particularly on those people who settled in Russia and their descendants who came to Manitoba. Using a wide variety of sources, Mennonites, Politics, and Peoplehood combines an inter-disciplinary approach to reveal that Mennonites, far from being the “Quiet in the Land,” have deep roots in politics.

    They contain not only important military information, but fascinating political, social and personal commentaries that are critical to understanding Napoleon the man as well as Napoleon the soldier. Presented complete for the first time in English, and supported by Markham's historical and biographical notes, the bulletins cover the key period between the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805 and the collapse of Napoleon's Empire in 1814. The bulletins describe military operations, pick out distinguished officers and units, and present Napoleon's own interpretation of battles lost and won. Also included are various key reports from marshals and others, including the bulletins of the Army of Italy commanded by Massena in 1805. Most of this additional material has never been published in English until now. Imperial Glory is an invaluable contribution to literature on the Napoleonic Wars and a key book for anyone who would like to learn more about one of history's most remarkable and colorful leaders.

    Volume I encompasses developments before the reign of Peter I; volume II covers the 'imperial era', from Peter's time to the fall of the monarchy in March 1917; and volume III continues the story through to the end of the twentieth century. At the core of all three volumes are the Russians, the lands which they have inhabited and the polities that ruled them while other peoples and territories have also been given generous coverage for the periods when they came under Riurikid, Romanov and Soviet rule. The distinct voices of individual contributors provide a multitude of perspectives on Russia's diverse and controversial millennial history.

    Providing the opportunity to practice Russian grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and comprehension in a larger, easy-to-follow workbook format, this engaging guide provides a complete learning experience. The Everything Russian Practice Book with CD also features interactive audio exercises as well as a final exam.

    The message is that any war inevitably sows hatred among otherwise peaceful people.The women's stories immerse you in the world of basic human values but also aging, the generation gap, and violence against women.

    A few of these chapters are principally historical, connecting tsarist and Soviet constructions to today's systems and struggles. The introduction by Dominique Arel sets out the project in terms of new scholarly approaches to identity, and the conclusion by Blair A. Ruble draws out political and social implications that challenge citizens and policy makers.Rebounding Identities is based on a series of workshops held at the Kennan Institute in 2002 and 2003.

    At their officers’ orders, they opened fire, shooting five hundred unarmed protestors. The event reverberated across Russia. The Lena goldfields massacre can be viewed from several distinct viewpoints, each presenting a contrasting story. Author Michael Melancon avoids prematurely picking a “right” way of looking at the massacre. Instead, he explores all aspects of the incident, from the despair of the miners at the poor conditions they faced, to the calculations and priorities of the mining entrepreneurs and state officials, and even the rationale of the soldiers who pulled the triggers.The Lena Goldfields Massacre and the Crisis of the Late Tsarist State will appeal to anyone interested in labor relations, in revolutionary movements, and in transitions associated with modernization. Its comparative framework will be helpful for generalists and Europeanists. It will also provide food for thought for those who seek a carefully researched examination of Russian society during the early twentieth century.

    Many Americans regarded him as a monster, while in the USSR he was viewed at various times as either hero or traitor. But what was he really like, and what did he really think? Readers of Khrushchev's memoirs will now be able to answer these questions for themselves (and will discover that what Khrushchev really said at the UN was "we will bury colonialism"). This is the second volume of three in what will be the only complete and fully reliable version of the memoirs available in English. In the first volume, published in 2004, Khrushchev takes his story up to the close of World War II. In the first section of this second volume, he covers the period from 1945 to 1956, from the famine and devastation of the immediate aftermath of the war to Stalin's death, the subsequent power struggle, and the Twentieth Party Congress. The remaining sections are devoted to Khrushchev's recollections and thoughts about various domestic and international problems. In the second and third sections, he recalls the virgin lands and other agricultural campaigns and his dealings with nuclear scientists and weapons designers. He also considers other sectors of the economy, specifically construction and the provision of consumer goods, administrative reform, and questions of war, peace, and disarmament. In the last section, he discusses the relations between the partyleadership and the intelligentsia. Included among the appendixes are the notebooks of Nina Petrovna Kukharchuk, Khrushchev's wife.

    Yet these aspects have been largely neglected in analyses of the profound transformations that have taken place in Central and Eastern Europe since 1990. Based on a wide variety of ethnographic case studies focusing on Russian, Siberian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Slovenian, Croatian, Czech, and Polish communities, this volume proves the significance of emotions to post-socialist political processes as an inherent part of the transformations and sheds new light on the impact of local, national, and transnational political forces that have given rise to the resurgence of nationalist sentiments, increasing poverty and marginalization, conflicts arising from the restitution of state property, constitutional changes, and economic deprivation.

    In vivid prose, she takes the reader on a journey through the Russian-Jewish literary imagination." --Benjamin NathansRussian Jews were first conscripted into the Imperial Russian army during the reign of Nicholas I in an effort to integrate them into the population of the Russian Empire. Conscripted minors were to serve, in practical terms, for life. Although this system was abandoned by his successor, the conscription experience remained traumatic in the popular memory and gave rise to a large and continuing literature that often depicted Jewish soldiers as heroes. This imaginative and intellectually ambitious book traces the conscription theme in novels and stories by some of the best-known Russian Jewish writers such as Osip Rabinovich, Judah-Leib Gordon, and Mendele Mokher Seforim, as well as by relatively unknown writers.Published with the generous support of the Koret Foundation.

    This guide also includes travel tips for transport, accommodation, activities and practical information, area maps, and a removable Restaurant Guide.