Best of
Russia

2011

CCCP: Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed


Frédéric Chaubin - 2011
    They reveal an unexpected rebirth of imagination, an unknown burgeoning that took place from 1970 until 1990. Contrary to the twenties and thirties, no “school” or main trend emerges here. These buildings represent a chaotic impulse brought about by a decaying system. Their diversity announces the end of Soviet Union. Taking advantage of the collapsing monolithic structure, the holes of the widening net, architects revisited all the chronological periods and styles, going back to the roots or freely innovating. Some of the daring ones completed projects that the Constructivists would have dreamt of (Druzhba sanatorium), others expressed their imagination in an expressionist way (Tbilisi wedding palace). A summer camp, inspired by sketches of a prototype lunar base, lays claim to its suprematist influence (Promethee). Then comes the speaking architecture widespread in the last years of the USSR: a crematorium adorned with concrete flames (Kiev crematorium), a technological institute with a flying saucer crashed on the roof (Kiev institute), a political center watching you like a Big Brother (Kaliningrad House of Soviet). This puzzle of styles testifies to all the ideological dreams of the period, from the obsession with the cosmos to the rebirth of privacy and it also outlines the geography of the USSR, showing how local influences made their exotic twists before bringing the country to its end.

Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II, 1941-1944


Anna Reid - 2011
    The siege was not lifted for two and a half years, by which time some three quarters of a million Leningraders had died of starvation.Anna Reid's Leningrad is a gripping, authoritative narrative history of this dramatic moment in the twentieth century, interwoven with indelible personal accounts of daily siege life drawn from diarists on both sides. They reveal the Nazis' deliberate decision to starve Leningrad into surrender and Hitler's messianic miscalculation, the incompetence and cruelty of the Soviet war leadership, the horrors experienced by soldiers on the front lines, and, above all, the terrible details of life in the blockaded city: the relentless search for food and water; the withering of emotions and family ties; looting, murder, and cannibalism- and at the same time, extraordinary bravery and self-sacrifice.Stripping away decades of Soviet propaganda, and drawing on newly available diaries and government records, Leningrad also tackles a raft of unanswered questions: Was the size of the death toll as much the fault of Stalin as of Hitler? Why didn't the Germans capture the city? Why didn't it collapse into anarchy? What decided who lived and who died? Impressive in its originality and literary style, Leningrad gives voice to the dead and will rival Anthony Beevor's classic Stalingrad in its impact.

Russia: A 1000-Year Chronicle of the Wild East


Martin Sixsmith - 2011
    Covering politics, music, literature and art, he explores the myths Russians have created from their history.Marking the twentieth anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the complex political landscape of Russia and its unique place in the modern world.

Vasilisa the Beautiful and Baba Yaga


Alexander Afanasyev - 2011
    A famous Russian fairy tale about a brave girl sent by her jealous stepsisters to fetch fire from old frightful witch Baba Yaga.

Moscow, December 25th, 1991


Conor O'Clery - 2011
    Mikhail Gorbachev, a sophisticated and urbane reformer, sought to modernize and preserve the USSR; Boris Yeltsin, a coarse and a hard drinking “bulldozer,” wished to destroy the union and create a capitalist Russia. The defeat of the August 1991 coup attempt, carried out by hardline communists, shook Gorbachev’s authority and was a triumph for Yeltsin. But it took four months of intrigue and double-dealing before the Soviet Union finally collapsed, and the day arrived when Yeltsin could hustle Gorbachev out of the Kremlin, and move in as ruler of Russia.Conor O’Clery has written a unique and truly suspenseful thriller of the day the Soviet Union died. The internal power plays, the shifting alliances, the betrayals, the mysterious three colonels carrying the briefcase with the nuclear codes, and the jockeying to exploit the future are worthy of John Le Carré or Alan Furst. The Cold War’s last act was a magnificent dark drama played out in the shadows of the Kremlin.

Kiev 1941


David Stahel - 2011
    This was the Battle of Kiev one of the largest and most decisive battles of World War II and, for Hitler and Stalin, a battle of crucial importance. For the first time, David Stahel charts the battle's dramatic course and aftermath, uncovering the irreplaceable losses suffered by Germany's 'panzer groups' despite their battlefield gains, and the implications of these losses for the German war effort. He illuminates the inner workings of the German army as well as the experiences of ordinary soldiers, showing that with the Russian winter looming and Soviet resistance still unbroken, victory came at huge cost and confirmed the turning point in Germany's war in the East.354 pages of narrative, 468 pages in total

The Big Green Tent


Lyudmila Ulitskaya - 2011
    A sweeping saga, it tells the story of three school friends who meet in Moscow in the 1950s and go on to embody the heroism, folly, compromise, and hope of the Soviet dissident experience. These three boys—an orphaned poet; a gifted, fragile pianist; and a budding photographer with a talent for collecting secrets—struggle to reach adulthood in a society where their heroes have been censored and exiled. Rich with love stories, intrigue, and a cast of dissenters and spies, The Big Green Tent offers a panoramic survey of life after Stalin and a dramatic investigation into the prospects for integrity in a society defined by the KGB. Each of the central characters seeks to transcend an oppressive regime through art, a love of Russian literature, and activism. And each of them ends up face-to-face with a secret police that is highly skilled at fomenting paranoia, division, and self-betrayal. An artist is chased into the woods, where he remains in hiding for four years; a researcher is forced to deem a patient insane, damning him to torture in a psychiatric ward; a man and his wife each become collaborators, without the other knowing. Ludmila Ulitskaya’s big yet intimate novel belongs to the tradition of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Pasternak: a work of politics, love, and belief that is a revelation of life in dark times.

Out of the Far Corners


Peter Illyn - 2011
    An 'against all odds' style of plot.

Gulag Voices: An Anthology


Anne Applebaum - 2011
    Although the opening of the Soviet archives to scholars has made it possible to write the history of this notorious concentration camp system, documents tell only one side of the story. Gulag Voices now fills in the other half.The backgrounds of the writers reflect the extraordinary diversity of the Gulag itself. Here are the personal stories of such figures as Dmitri Likhachev, a renowned literary scholar; Anatoly Marchenko, the son of illiterate laborers; and Alexander Dolgun, an American citizen. These remembrances—many of them appearing in English for the first time, each chosen for both literary and historical value—collectively spotlight the strange moral universe of the camps, as well as the relationships that prisoners had with one another, with their guards, and with professional criminals who lived beside them.A vital addition to the literature of this era,annotated for a generation that no longer remembers the Soviet Union, Gulag Voices will inform, interest, and inspire, offering a source for reflection on human nature itself.

Made in Russia: Unsung Icons of Soviet Design


Michael Idov - 2011
    Made in Russia presents fifty such masterpieces, from pioneers of Soviet technology such as the Sputnik, the Buran snowmobile, and the LOMO camera to icons of quotidian culture such as the fishnet shopping bag, the beveled glass, a Cold War-inspired arcade game, and Misha the Olympic bear. Edited by the journalist and author Michael Idov - a Soviet product himself - and including essays from Boris Kachka, Vitaly Komar, Gary Shteyngart, and Lara Vapnyar, the collection explores the provenance of these objects in the forgotten Soviet culture and the unique climate for design from which they could only have emerged.

Afgantsy: The Russians In Afghanistan, 1979-1989


Rodric Braithwaite - 2011
    Largely basing his account on Russian sources and interviews he shows the war through the eyes of the Russians themselves - politicians, officers, soldiers, advisers, journalist, women. As former ambassador to Moscow, Rodric Braithwaite brings his unique insights to the Soviet war in Afghanistan. The story has been distorted not only by Cold War propaganda but also by the myths of the nineteenth century Great Game. It moves from the high politics of the Kremlin to the lonely Russian conscripts in isolated mountain outposts. The parallels with Afghanistan today speak for themselves. 'A superb achievement of narrative history, sensitive writing and exciting fresh research': so wrote Simon Sebag Montefiore about Rodric Braithwaite's bestseller Moscow 1941. But those words, and many others of praise that were given it, could equally apply to his new book.

Internal Colonization: Russia's Imperial Experience


Alexander Etkind - 2011
    Alexander Etkind traces how the Russian Empire conquered foreign territories and domesticated its own heartlands, thereby colonizing many peoples, Russians included. This vision of colonization as simultaneously internal and external, colonizing one's own people as well as others, is crucial for scholars of empire, colonialism and globalization. Starting with the fur trade, which shaped its enormous territory, and ending with Russia's collapse in 1917, Etkind explores serfdom, the peasant commune, and other institutions of internal colonization. His account brings out the formative role of foreign colonies in Russia, the self-colonizing discourse of Russian classical historiography, and the revolutionary leaders' illusory hopes for an alliance with the exotic, pacifist sectarians. Transcending the boundaries between history and literature, Etkind examines striking writings about Russia's imperial experience, from Defoe to Tolstoy and from Gogol to Conrad. This path-breaking book blends together historical, theoretical and literary analysis in a highly original way. It will be essential reading for students of Russian history and literature and for anyone interested in the literary and cultural aspects of colonization and its aftermath.

Into the Snow: Selected Poems


Gennady Aygi - 2011
    Relatively unpublished until the 1980s in the Soviet Union, he has been celebrated abroad, nominated for the Nobel Prize on multiple occasions, and translated into more than twenty languages.Sarah Valentine is a poet and scholar who teaches at the University of California Riverside. This is her first book of translations.

The Last Tsar Emperor Michael II


Donald Crawford - 2011
    Michael, married to a double divorcee, Natasha, the daughter of a Moscow lawyer, was the first Romanov murdered by the Bolsheviks, five weeks before the other mass killings, and because he was the Romanov who posed the greatest threat to them. However, they never admitted responsibility for his murder, pretending instead that he had escaped. This book, based chiefly on original contemporary sources in Russia, tells you what the Soviet Union intended that you should never know. Does that matter now? Very much so, for unlike his brother Nicholas, Michael can serve as the bridge between today's Russia and Tsarist Russia, a gap which has yet to be closed. As Viktor Yevtukhov, appointed deputy Russian Minister of Justice in February 2011, has said: 'We should know more about this man and remember him, because this memory can give our society the ethical foundation we need'. This book will tell you why, after almost a century, that should be so. From the tragedy of the past, a hope for the future...

The Russian Origins of the First World War


Sean McMeekin - 2011
    The key to the outbreak of violence, he argues, lies in St. Petersburg. Russian statesmen unleashed the war through policy decisions based on imperial ambitions in the Near East.

Haymarket Square: The Story of Alex Bobrov


John Kolchak - 2011
    Purchase at http://www.haymarketsquarebook.com

Russia: The Wild East, Part Two: The Rise and Fall of the Soviets


Martin Sixsmith - 2011
    After the whirlwind of the revolution, the Bolsheviks struggled to consolidate their victory. To rescue the economy and save the regime, Lenin made concessions to the people. But after his death, Stalin introduced forced collectivisation and industrialisation, condemning the Soviet people to conditions worse than those experienced under the Tsars. Nikita Khrushchev reversed the worst excesses of Stalinism, and in 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev embarked on radical reforms of the communist system – unleashing unforeseen consequences that swept him from power and destroyed the USSR. Martin Sixsmith brings his firsthand experience of reporting from Russia in the 1980s and ‘90s to his narrative, witnessing the critical moment when the Soviet Union lost its grip on power. He asks if the recurring patterns of Russian history can help us understand what has happened since 1991, when the promise of Western-style democracy aroused so many hopes for change. Eyewitness accounts, archive recordings and personal testimony enrich his narrative, as well as readings from Russian authors and historians such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Vasily Grossman, plus music by Stravinsky, Prokofiev and others. The final 25 episodes from the landmark BBC Radio series.

Faberge Revealed: At the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts


Geza von Habsburg - 2011
    The essays by Géza von Habsburg and other scholars present new findings on Fabergé, his workshops, and the creation of these extraordinary objects. For the first time all items by or attributed to Fabergé in VMFA's collection are documented along with the museum's significant holdings of other Russian decorative arts. Also included is a section on forgeries that bravely confronts this vexing question. Every object has been splendidly re-photographed for this book - and the detailed photography alone should provide inestimable value for future Fabergé scholarship.Richly illustrated with some 600 photographs, the volume documents an important collection bequeathed in 1947 to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts by Lillian Thomas Pratt, of Fredericksburg, Va., the wife of General Motors executive John Lee Pratt. Her collection, assembled between 1933 and 1946, comprised several hundred creations by the Faberge workshops and by other Russian imperial jewelers. These exquisite, marvelously crafted objects, range from the majestic jeweled imperial eggs to delicate jeweled flowers in vases to diamond-encrusted icons and tiaras, to animal figures nimbly carved from precious stone.Contents: Introduction by Géza von Habsburg Chapter 1: The House of Fabergé/by Géza von HabsburgChapter 2: Behind the Scenes at Fabergé: The St. Petersburg Workshops/  by Ulla Tillander-GodenhieimChapter 3: Fabergé and His Russian Competitors/ by Géza von HabsburgChapter 4: Fabergé and His Foreign Competitors Chapter 5: Mrs. Pratt's Imperial Easter Eggs / by Carol AikenChapter 6: The Zarnitza Sailor and His Place in History / by Christel Ludewig McCaniessChapter 7: Fabergé and Grand Duchess Vladimir / by Alexander von SolodkoffChapter 8: Lillian Thomas Pratt and A La Vieille Russie: A Personal Relationship/ by Mark SchafferChapter 9: Fauxbergé / by Géza von HabsburgCatalogue: Fabergé/Other Makers/Forgeries

Out of the Far Corners: An Epic Tale of Rejection, Grace, and Deliverance


Peter Iliyn - 2011
    We stood for a long time like that, clinging to each other, weeping and watching Mama's grave fill up with dirt. We were four orphaned children with a future as uncertain as the swirling desert winds of this strange new country."Vanya Iliyn's formative years were spent on the move, traveling the far corners of the world -- Russia, Central China, and the Americas -- amid seemingly impossible hardships. His journey crossed the landscape of the heart as well. Orphaned and alone, Vanya could look only to God for protection, guidance, and grace. His remarkable story, written in his own words by his eldest son, Peter Iliyn, speaks to the power and majesty of God.

Dearest Missy


Diana Mandache - 2011
    The letters of Marie Alexandrovna, Grand Duchess of Russia and of Saxe Coburg and Gotha to her daughter Marie, crownprincess of Romania

Cultivating the Masses


David L. Hoffmann - 2011
    Paradoxically, at the very moment that Soviet authorities were killing thousands of individuals, they were also engaged in an enormous pronatalist campaign to boost the population. Even as the number of repressions grew exponentially, Communist Party leaders enacted sweeping social welfare and public health measures to safeguard people's well-being. Extensive state surveillance of the population went hand in hand with literacy campaigns, political education, and efforts to instill in people an appreciation of high culture.In Cultivating the Masses, David L. Hoffmann examines the Party leadership's pursuit of these seemingly contradictory policies in order to grasp fully the character of the Stalinist regime, a regime intent on transforming the socioeconomic order and the very nature of its citizens. To analyze Soviet social policies, Hoffmann places them in an international comparative context. He explains Soviet technologies of social intervention as one particular constellation of modern state practices. These practices developed in conjunction with the ambitions of nineteenth-century European reformers to refashion society, and they subsequently prompted welfare programs, public health initiatives, and reproductive regulations in countries around the world.The mobilizational demands of World War I impelled political leaders to expand even further their efforts at population management, via economic controls, surveillance, propaganda, and state violence. Born at this moment of total war, the Soviet system institutionalized these wartime methods as permanent features of governance. Party leaders, whose dictatorship included no checks on state power, in turn attached interventionist practices to their ideological goal of building socialism.

From Splendor to Revolution: The Romanov Women, 1847--1928


Julia P. Gelardi - 2011
    During that time the country underwent a massive transformation, taking it from days of grandeur under the tsars to the chaos of revolution and the beginnings of the Soviet Union.At the center of all this tumult were four women of the Romanov dynasty. Marie Alexandrovna and Olga Constantinovna were born into the family, Russian Grand Duchesses at birth. Marie Feodorovna and Marie Pavlovna married into the dynasty, the former born a Princess of Denmark, the latter a Duchess of the German duchy of Mecklendburg-Schwerin.In From Splendor to Revolution, we watch these pampered aristocratic women fight for their lives as the cataclysm of war engulfs them. In a matter of a few short years, they fell from the pinnacle of wealth and power to the depths of danger, poverty, and exile. It is an unforgettable epic story.

The Complete novels of Leo Tolstoy


Leo Tolstoy - 2011
    The wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with a French girl, who had been a governess in their family, and she had announced to her husband that she could not go on living in the same house with him. This position of affairs had now lasted three days, and not only the husband and wife themselves, but all the members of their family and household, were painfully conscious of it." - Anna KareninaWHY BUY BOOKS FROM THE COMPLETE WORKS COLLECTION FOR KINDLE EDITION?1. All COMPLETE WORKS COLLECTION Kindle Books are priced as low as possible in order to offer unbelievable value and hours of reading pleasure for Kindle readers. All COMPLETE WORKS COLLECTION Kindle Books bring together ALL the complete works of a classic literary author, character or series in a single, extremely low priced volume in a single download, thereby freeing up valuable space and visual clutter on your Kindle device.2. All COMPLETE WORKS COLLECTION Kindle Books are painstakingly formatted especially for Kindle and come with a FULLY INTERACTIVE table of contents DIRECTLY ACCESSIBLE FROM THE KINDLE MENU, Kindle MasterLink (tm) technology, Kindle text-to-speech Audiobook technology, and Kindle Free Lending Technology.2. All COMPLETE WORKS COLLECTION Kindle Books come with additional material including photo(s) of the author, and/or critical commentary, and/or biographical or historical background.

Portrait Jewels: Opulence and Intimacy from the Medici to the Romanovs


Diana Scarisbrick - 2011
    Dynasties represented here include the Valois and Bourbon in France; Bavarian, Habsburg, and Hanoverian in Germany, Central Europe, and Spain; Tudor, Stuart, and Hanoverian in Britain; and the House of Orange-Nassau in the Netherlands. Men and women famous in politics, religion, history, literature, and the arts, including Queen Elizabeth I, Louis XIV, Catherine the Great, Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet, Popes Clement XII and Pius VII, and Lord Byron are featured in this exquisite miniature gallery.The author draws upon her knowledge of jewelry, painting, history, and literature to set the portrait jewels in the context of people’s lives, and shows how they were worn and what they meant to donors and recipients—tokens of allegiance to a ruler, of commitment between lovers, of affection within families.

The Russian Ornament Sourcebook: 10th-16th Centuries


Vivays Publishing - 2011
    The book starts with a brief history of Russian ornament by Maria Orlova, a member of the Russian Academy of Arts. The main body is divided in two parts; the first half containing hundreds of decorative motifs in full color arranged in chronological groups. The second half provides templates, which can be used for tracing or scanning details of the decorative elements. The Russian Ornament Sourcebook is a valuable resource for art historians, graphic designers, calligraphy and typography lovers, manuscripts scholars and fans of Russian cultural heritage. Text in English, Spanish, French and German.

Russia's Own Orient: The Politics of Identity and Oriental Studies in the Late Imperial and Early Soviet Periods


Vera Tolz - 2011
    Out of the ferment of revolution and war, a group of scholars in St. Petersburg articulated fresh ideas about the relationship between power and knowledge, and about Europe and Asia as mere political and cultural constructs. Their ideas anticipated the work of Edward Said and post-colonial scholarship by half a century. The similarities between the two groups were, in fact, genealogical. Said was indebted, via Arab intellectuals of the 1960s who studied in the Soviet Union, to the revisionist ideas of Russian Orientologists of the fin de siecle.But why did this body of Russian scholarship of the early twentieth century turn out to be so innovative? Should we agree with a popular claim of the Russian elites about their country's particular affinity with the 'Orient'? There is no single answer to this question. The early twentieth century was a period when all over Europe a fascination with things 'Oriental' engendered the questioning of many nineteenth-century assumptions and prejudices. In that sense, the revisionism of Russian Orientologists was part of a pan-European trend. And yet, Tolz also argues that a set of political, social, and cultural factors, which were specific to Russia, allowed its imperial scholars to engage in an unusual dialogue with representatives of the empire's non-European minorities. It is together that they were able to articulate a powerful long-lasting critique of modern imperialism and colonialism, and to shape ethnic politics in Russia across the divide of the 1917 revolutions.

Vladimir's Mustache: And Other Stories


Stephan Eirik Clark - 2011
    The nine stories in Vladimir's Mustache - familiar to readers of Ninth Letter, Cincinnati Review, Witness and Salt Hill - represent a rare feat of ventriloquism and range. From an Italian castrato who longs to sing for the tsar, to a method actor who learns the danger of losing himself in a role after he is cast as Hitler, to the men and women who meet through "mail order bride agencies, all of Stephan Eirik Clark's stories are told with a humor that's never far removed from an underlying sadness. Regardless of his where he situates his attention, Clark writes with a voice that never falters, telling with great emotional honesty the story of men and women who are trapped by circumstances, alienated by history, or irrevocably estranged from the culture at large.

Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921-1941


Michael David-Fox - 2011
    Showcasing the Great Experiment explores the reception of these intellectuals andfellow-travelers and their cross-cultural and trans-ideological encounters in order to analyze Soviet attitudes towards the West.Many of the twentieth century's greatest writers and thinkers, including Theodore Dreiser, Andr� Gide, Paul Robeson, and George Bernard Shaw, notoriously defended Stalin's USSR despite the unprecedented violence of its prewar decade. While many visitors were profoundly affected by their Soviettours, so too was the Soviet system. The early experiences of building showcases and teaching outsiders to perceive the future-in-the-making constitute a neglected international part of the emergence of Stalinism at home. Michael David-Fox contends that each side critically examined the other, negotiating feelings of inferiority and superiority, admiration and enmity, emulation and rejection. By the time of the Great Purges, these tensions gave way to the dramatic triumph of xenophobia and isolationism; whereas in the twenties the new regime assumed it had much to learn from Westernmodernity, by the Stalinist thirties the Soviet order was declared superior in all respects.Drawing on the declassified archival records of the agencies charged with crafting the international image of communism, David-Fox shows how Soviet efforts to sell the Bolshevik experiment abroad through cultural diplomacy shaped and were, in turn, shaped by the ongoing project of defining theSoviet Union from within. These interwar Soviet methods of mobilizing the intelligentsia for the international ideological contest, he argues, directly paved the way for the cultural Cold War.

Surviving in Post-Soviet Russia: Magical Realism in the Works of Viktor Pelevin, Ludmila Petrushevskaya, and Ludmila Ulitskaya.


Tatiana V. Keeling - 2011
    Covering a wide range of academic topics, we are happy to increase overall global access to these works and make them available outside of traditional academic databases. These works are packaged and produced by BiblioLabs under license by ProQuest UMI. The description for these dissertations was produced by BiblioLabs and is in no way affiliated with, in connection with, or representative of the abstract meta-data associated with the dissertations published by ProQuest UMI. If you have any questions relating to this particular dissertation, you may contact BiblioLabs directly.

Russia Under Tsarism and Communism, 1881-1953. Terry Fiehn, Chris Corin


Terry Fiehn - 2011
    This is a comprehensive, advanced level, core text on Russian history from 1881-1953, from Tsar Nicholas to the death of Stalin.

50 Writers: An Anthology of 20th Century Russian Short Stories


Mark Lipovetsky - 2011
    It includes the prose of officially recognized writers and dissidents, both well-known and neglected or forgotten, plus new authors from the end of the 20th century.ContentsOnce upon a time / Leonid Andreyev -- The invoker of the beast / Fyodor Sologub -- Gambrinus / Aleksandr Kuprin -- The little devil / Aleksei Remizov -- Thus life passes / Elena Guro -- Four people ; Scenes from the life of the worker Pantelei Grymzin / Arkady Averchenko -- Black iris / Nadezhda Teffi -- The red crown / Mikhail Bulgakov -- Black magic ; The female fish / Mikhail Zoschenko -- Gedali ; The rabbi ; The rabbi's son / Isaac Babel -- Family man / Mikhail Sholokhov -- Outgoing paper no. 27 / Lev Lunts -- The gardener of the Emir of Bukhara / Vsevolod Ivanov -- The viper / Aleksei Tolstoy -- The flood / Evgeny Zamyatin -- Doubting Makar / Andrei Platonov -- Blue notebook number 10 ; Old women tumbling out ; Kushakov the carpenter ; A dream ; The start of a very nice summer day ; The lynching / Daniil Kharms -- Lake, cloud, tower / Vladimir Nabokov -- The smoky glass goblet / Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky -- Tanya / Ivan Bunin -- The tenants / Andrei Sinyavsky -- Eulogy / Varlam Shalamov -- The house with a turret / Fridrikh Gorenshtein -- "Victory" / Vasily Aksyonov -- Hands / Yuli Daniel -- A German in felt boots / Konstantin Vorobyov -- My uncle of the highest principles / Fazil Iskander -- Chudik ; I believe! / Vasily Shkshin -- Bread for a dog / Vladimir Tendryakov -- You cried bitterly in your sleep / Yury Kazakov -- Little arm, leg, cucumber... / Yury Dombrovsky -- My older cousin / Sergei Dovlatov -- Girl of my dreams / Bulat Okudzhava -- The fakir / Tatiana Tolstaya -- Galoshes / Viktor Erofeyev -- Surrealism in a proletarian district / Vladimir Makanin -- Passing through / Vladimir Sorokin -- The young / Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn -- Butterfly. 1987 / Leonid Yuzefovich -- The last war story / Oleg Ermakov -- A short history of paint-ball in Moscow / Viktor Pelevin -- The queen of spades / Lyudmila Ulitskaya -- More and more angels ; The Samurai's dream / Yury Buida -- Currency / Yury Mamleyev / Snow falls ever so quietly / Irina Polyanskaya -- Teachers without pupils, or from under the rubble into the mausoleum of thine / Lev Rubinshtein -- The lord of the Steppes / Vladimir Tuchkov -- Never / Lyudmila Petrushevskaya -- Experience in demonstrating mourning / Marina Vishnevetskaya -- The dump / Andrei Levkin.

The Ukrainian Revolution, July-December 1918


Nestor Makhno - 2011
    Driven into exile at the end of the war, he produced several volumes of memoirs. Each of these works is self-contained as each deals with a separate phase of his life story. "The Ukrainian Revolution" is the third volume of his memoirs, first published in 1937; this is the first appearance of the work in English. In early July 1918 Nestor Makhno, penniless and starving, returned to his Ukrainian homeland from which he had fled a few weeks earlier to seek political refuge in Soviet Russia. As a peasant anarchist revolutionary he was forced to live a perilous underground existence, for Ukraine was occupied by the powerful Austro-German army, supported by the large landowners. With a tiny band of comrades he embarked on a guerilla campaign against the occupying forces and the rural gentry, concentrating on night raids and roadside ambushes. Once the movement got rolling, the Makhnovists engaged in a total of 117 armed clashes in the fall of 1918.By the end of the year the insurgent movement headed by Makhno controlled up to 70 raions (counties) in southeast Ukraine and had fielded an army capable of defending the liberated zone from its formidable enemies and launching attacks on major cities. Volume 3 of his memoirs tells the amazing story of the birth of this peasant revolutionary army, a force which aimed not only to drive out the unwelcome invaders but to create a new, anarcho-communist society.

The Lingering Conflict: Israel, the Arabs, and the Middle East, 1948–2011


Itamar Rabinovich - 2011
    His presentation includes a detailed insider account of the peace processes of 1992–96 and a frank dissection of the more dispiriting record since then.Rabinovich's firsthand experiences as a negotiator and as Israel's ambassador to the United States provide a valuable perspective from which to view the major players involved. Fresh analysis of ongoing situations in the region and the author's authoritative take on key figures such as Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu shed new light on the long and tumultuous history of Arab-Israeli relations. His book is a shrewd assessment of the past and current state of affairs in the Middle East, as well as a sober look at the prospects for a peaceful future.While Rabinovich explains the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians—a classic dispute between two national movements claiming the same land— The Lingering Conflict also considers the broader political, cultural, and increasingly religious conflict between the Jewish state and Arab nationalism. He approaches the troubled region in an international context, offering provocative analysis of America's evolving role and evaluation of its diplomatic performance.This book builds on the author's previous seminal work on geopolitics in the Middle East, particularly Waging Peace. As Rabinovich brings the Arab-Israeli conflict up to date, he widens the scope of his earlier insights into efforts to achieve normal, peaceful relations. And, of course, he takes full account of recent social and political tumult in the Middle East, discussing the Arab Spring uprisings—and the subsequent retaliation by dictators such as Syria's al-Asad and Libya's Qaddafi—in the context of Arab-Israeli relations.

Captives of Revolution: The Socialist Revolutionaries and the Bolshevik Dictatorship, 1918-1923


Scott B. Smith - 2011
    They offered a compelling, but still socialist, alternative to the Bolsheviks, yet by the early 1920s their party was shattered and its members were branded as enemies of the revolution.  In 1922, the SR leaders became the first fellow socialists to be condemned by the Bolsheviks as “counter-revolutionaries” in the prototypical Soviet show trial.      In Captives of the Revolution, Scott B. Smith presents both a convincing account of the defeat of the SRs and a deeper analysis of the significance of the political dynamics of the Civil War for subsequent Soviet history.  Once the SRs decided to openly fight the Bolsheviks in 1918, they faced a series of nearly impossible political dilemmas.  At the same time, the Bolsheviks fatally undermined the revolutionary credentials of the SRs by successfully appropriating the rhetoric of class struggle, painting a simplistic picture of Reds versus Whites in the Civil War, a rhetorical dominance that they converted into victory over the SRs and any left-wing alternative to Bolshevik dictatorship.  In this narrative, the SRs became a bona fide threat to national security and enemies of the people—a characterization that proved so successful that it became an archetype to be used repeatedly by the Soviet leadership against any political opponents, even those from within the Bolshevik party itself.        In this groundbreaking study, Smith reveals a more complex and nuanced picture of the postrevolutionary struggle for power in Russia than we have ever seen before and demonstrates that the Civil War—and in particular the struggle with the SRs—was the formative experience of the Bolshevik party and the Soviet state.

Prelude to the Revolution: The Murder of Rasputin


Ronald C. Moe - 2011
    The reader will be fascinated with all the amazing elements in this saga of political dissolution; occultism, police conspiracies, high-stakes diplomacy, duels, romance, court intrigue, war, and ultimately murder and national tragedy. And it is all true and documented. This is not a novel. The murder of Rasputin and the dissolution of the Romanov monarchy were events of extraordinary significance during the early Twentieth Century with consequences continuing to the present day nearly a century later. The author, Ronald C. Moe, describes Russia under Nicholas II (1894-1917) with its fascination for mysticism, commitment to the fine arts, especially ballet, rapid industrial growth, and the political struggles and progress toward achieving a working constitutional monarchy. All this was placed at risk by Russia's involvement in World War I and especially by the presence of a staretz ("holy man") near the throne bringing it into disrepute. When all the efforts to remove Rasputin from the Imperial presence failed, the rich, handsome, Prince Felix Yusupov, married to the Tsar's niece, determined to organize a conspiracy to murder Rasputin. While the tale of Rasputin's murder has been told many times in books and movies, much of what is written and screened is the stuff of half-truths and legends. The reader will be introduced here to the true story of what happened that dark night in December 1916; who was involved in the conspiracy, the role of British agents that night, who fired the fatal shots, why the main conspirators kept the secrets of what actually happened until their deaths, and why the murder was much more important to world history than generally believed. The reader is invited to join the author in reliving one of the crucial events in world history.

Architecture of Oblivion: Ruins and Historical Consciousness in Modern Russia


Andreas Schönle - 2011
    While the Soviet Union was notorious for leveling churches, post-Soviet Russia has only intensified the practice of massive destruction and reconstruction. Architecture of Oblivion examines the role of ruins in the development of Russia’s historical consciousness from the 18th century to the present. Investigating the meaning and functions ruins have acquired in Russian culture, Schönle looks at ideological reasons for the current disregard for the value of ruins and historical buildings, in particular by political authorities, and reveals how ruins have often become a site of resistance to official ideology and an invitation to map out alternative visions of history and of statehood.An interdisciplinary study of Russia’s response to ruins has never been attempted, although the topic of ruins has garnered considerable interest in Western Europe and in the U.S. This original work from a leading authority on the subject will appeal to historians of Russian culture and thought, literature and art scholars, and general readers interested in ruins.

Silence


Filter - 2011
    In London, Michael listens carefully to a conversation recorded twenty years ago. Can he hear a third silent person on the tape? In a small Russian town, Irina searches desperately for her missing friend, piecing together fragments from his life.From urban noise to rural emptiness, through rationalism to spirituality, from Russia to the UK, Silence is the latest collaboration between the celebrated theatre company Filter and RSC Associate Director David Farr.Filter create rich stories that awaken the imaginative senses of an audience and they are renowned for a distinctive theatrical style that exposes the workings of a production: video is mixed onstage, sound is produced live by a musician and the performers to create a unique, 'live chemistry' experience for audiences. Silence is a work which combines narrative impetus with astounding, original ideas and theatrical presentation.

Selling to the Masses: Retailing in Russia, 1880–1930


Marjorie L. Hilton - 2011
    Hilton presents a captivating history of consumer culture in Russia from the 1880s to the early 1930s. She highlights the critical role of consumerism as a vehicle for shaping class and gender identities, modernity, urbanism, and as a mechanism of state power in the transition from tsarist autocracy to Soviet socialism.      Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Russia witnessed a rise in mass production, consumer goods, advertising, and new retail venues such as arcades and department stores. These mirrored similar developments in other European countries and reflected a growing quest for leisure activities, luxuries, and a modern lifestyle. As Hilton reveals, retail commerce played a major role in developing Russian public culture—it affected celebrations of religious holidays, engaged diverse groups of individuals, defined behaviors and rituals of city life, inspired new interpretations of masculinity and femininity, and became a visible symbol of state influence and provision.       Through monarchies, revolution, civil war, and monumental changes in the political sphere, Russia’s distinctive culture of consumption was contested and recreated. Leaders of all stripes continued to look to the “commerce of exchange” as a key element in appealing to the masses, garnering political support, and promoting a modern nation.       Hilton follows the evolution of retailing and retailers alike, from crude outdoor stalls to elite establishments; through the competition of private versus state-run stores during the NEP; and finally to a system of total state control, indifferent workers, rationing, and shortages under a consolidating Stalinist state.

The Orthodox Church and Russian Politics


Irina Papkova - 2011
    By far more comprehensive than competing works, The Orthodox Church and Russian Politics is based on interviews, close readings ofdocuments--including official state and ecclesiastical publications--and survey work conducted by the author. The analysis balances the Church as an institutional political actor with the government's response to Church demands. Papkova ultimately concludes that the reciprocal relationship betweenthe Church and state is far weaker and less politically important than Western analysts usually believe.Papkova traces the Church's relative failure in mobilizing parishioners, influencing political parties, and lobbying the state, citing the 1997 law limiting religious freedoms as its only significant political win. She attributes much of this weakness to the informal division of the Church intoliberal, traditionalist, and fundamentalist factions, which prevents it from presenting a unified front. Providing a fresh insight into the role of the Church in Post-Soviet Russia, the book speaks across disciplines to political science, sociology, anthropology, history, and religious studies.

A Decade of Debt


Carmen M. Reinhart - 2011
    At the same time, private debt levels, particularly those of financial institutions and households, are in uncharted territory and are (in varying degrees) a contingent liability of the public sector in many countries. Historically, high leverage episodes have been associated with slower economic growth and a higher incidence of default or, more generally, restructuring of public and private debts.A more subtle form of debt restructuring in the guise of "financial repression" (which had its heyday during the tightly regulated Bretton Woods system) also importantly facilitated sharper and more rapid debt reduction than would have otherwise been the case from the late 1940s to the 1970s. It is conjectured here that the pressing needs of governments to reduce debt rollover risks and curb rising interest expenditures in light of the substantial debt overhang (combined with the widespread "official aversion" to explicit restructuring) are leading to a revival of financial repression--including more directed lending to government by captive domestic audiences (such as pension funds), explicit or implicit caps on interest rates, and tighter regulation on cross-border capital movements.

Tankograd: The Formation of a Soviet Company Town: Cheliabinsk, 1900s-1950s


Lennart Samuelson - 2011
    It combines social, economic, and cultural history with military analyses of the Urals’ importance for the Soviet war efforts.

Royal Fabergé


Caroline de Guitaut - 2011
    Taking the forms of imperial Easter eggs, dazzling jewel-encrusted boxes, and diamond- and ruby-adorned hardstone carvings of pets, these outstanding examples of Fabergé’s unrivaled craftsmanship were exchanged between members of the royal family for anniversaries and birthdays, as well as at Christmas. Together they bear witness to both the discerning tastes of their collectors and the close ties among the British, Russian, and Danish royal families. Lavishly illustrated with more than 150 stunning, full-color photographs, Royal Fabergé is the first publication exploring Fabergé’s works from the standpoint of royal patronage and gift-giving. This volume makes extensive use of materials from both the Royal Archives and Fabergé’s own accounts to detail one of the finest collections of Fabergé’s work in existence.

Militarizing Men: Gender, Conscription, and War in Post-Soviet Russia


Maya Eichler - 2011
    Yet masculinity has no inherent ties to militarism. The link between men and the military, argues Maya Eichler, must be produced and reproduced in order to fill the ranks, engage in combat, and mobilize the population behind war.In the context of Russia's post-communist transition and the Chechen wars, men's militarization has been challenged and reinforced. Eichler uncovers the challenges by exploring widespread draft evasion and desertion, anti-draft and anti-war activism led by soldiers' mothers, and the general lack of popular support for the Chechen wars. However, the book also identifies channels through which militarized gender identities have been reproduced. Eichler's empirical and theoretical study of masculinities in international relations applies for the first time the concept of "militarized masculinity," developed by feminist IR scholars, to the case of Russia.

The Butcher of Leningrad


Tom Hunter - 2011
    The Russian Mafia uses these homeless kids for organ transplants. An American reporter in St. Petersburg discovers what the Russian Mafia is doing but he only succeeds in bringing their fury down on his own head. In this fast-paced thriller, you will enter the raw underbelly of modern Russia. You will see depravity and vicious cruelty--things you cannot believe one human could do to another. You will see things that will shake you to the core of your being. By the time you come out on the other side of this thrilling odyssey into the dark heart of Russia, you will be changed forever. "The Butcher of Leningrad"

The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom


Tracy Dennison - 2011
    In this book, Tracy Dennison shows how Russian society looked from below, and finds nothing like the collective, redistributive and market-averse behaviour often attributed to Russian peasants. On the contrary, the Russian rural population was as integrated into regional and even national markets as many of its west European counterparts. Serfdom was a loose garment that enabled different landlords to shape economic institutions, especially property rights, in widely diverse ways. Highly coercive and backward regimes on some landlords' estates existed side-by-side with surprisingly liberal approximations to a rule of law. This book paints a vivid and colourful picture of the everyday reality of rural Russia before the 1861 abolition of serfdom.

Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920


Oleg V. Budnitskii - 2011
    The major anti-Bolshevik force was the White Army, whose leadership consisted of former officers of the Russian imperial army. In the received--and simplified--version of this history, those Jews who were drawn into the political and military conflict were overwhelmingly affiliated with the Reds, while from the start, the Whites orchestrated campaigns of anti-Jewish violence, leading to the deaths of thousands of Jews in pogroms in the Ukraine and elsewhere.In Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920, Oleg Budnitskii provides the first comprehensive historical account of the role of Jews in the Russian Civil War. According to Budnitskii, Jews were both victims and executioners, and while they were among the founders of the Soviet state, they also played an important role in the establishment of the anti-Bolshevik factions. He offers a far more nuanced picture of the policies of the White leadership toward the Jews than has been previously available, exploring such issues as the role of prominent Jewish politicians in the establishment of the White movement of southern Russia, the Jewish Question in the White ideology and its international aspects, and the attempts of the Russian Orthodox Church and White diplomacy to forestall the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.The relationship between the Jews and the Reds was no less complicated. Nearly all of the Jewish political parties severely disapproved of the Bolshevik coup, and the Red Army was hardly without sin when it came to pogroms against the Jews. Budnitskii offers a fresh assessment of the part played by Jews in the establishment of the Soviet state, of the turn in the policies of Jewish socialist parties after the first wave of mass pogroms and their efforts to attract Jews to the Red Army, of Bolshevik policies concerning the Jewish population, and of how these stances changed radically over the course of the Civil War.

The Constitution of the Russian Federation: A Contextual Analysis


Jane Henderson - 2011
    It comprises seven chapters: an introduction followed by substantive chapters covering specific aspects of Russia's constitutional history, structure and practice: the history and nature of the constitution; an overview of the current 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation and the background to its adoption by plebiscite; executive power, the role and accountability of the President as Head of State, and the formation and powers of the federal government; the legislature and its formation, elections and the methods for forming the two chambers (State Duma and Federation Council) of the legislature (Federal Assembly); the constitutional role of the courts, the way in which rights are defined in constitutional terms and methods for their enforcement; and finally a concluding chapter that focuses on characteristic features of Russian polity and constitutionality in the context of constitutional stability, reform and change. This is an essential work of reference for anyone who wishes to embark on studying Russian law and politics, and a reflective assessment of progress in the modern era.

Romanov Relations Volume One


Paul Gilbert - 2011
    Many of them dating back to the golden years of Imperial Russia have sat around collecting dust, mostly forgotten by time and neglected by researchers. Many of the authors, whom have long since passed from this world, personally knew their subjects and present them objectively to their reader in this volume. They offer both interesting anecdotes and insight into the private world of the Russian Imperial Court. Further, each volume is richly illustrated throughout, offering a selection of vintage photographs, many of which are drawn from Russian sources, and some of which may be new to readers.Volume One contains six articles, some of which are divided into numerous sub-chapters:(1) The Imperial Family of Russia by the Countess Marguerite Cunliffe-Owen(2) The Last Days of The Grand Duke Michael by the Princess Poutiatine(3) H.I.H. The Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna of Russia by the Countess Alexandra Olsoufieff(4) The Controversial Grand Duchess: An Intimate Biography of the Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna, Senior by Christopher Heu(5) The Russian Imperial Family in Olden Times by Princess Catherine Radziwill(6) Flight from Russia by Louise Mountbatten, Queen of Sweden and includes Letters from the *Russian Imperial Family * The letters written by the Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana to their cousin, LouiseRomanov Relations will be enjoyed by readers who have an interest in the Romanovs and their legacy, as well as providing a useful reference to writers and historians as they continue to unravel the mysteries and dispel many of the popular held myths surrounding the Romanov dynasty.Paul Gilbert, is the Founder and Web-Site Administrator for Royal Russia: A Celebration of the Romanov Dynasty & Imperial Russia in Words and Photographs.

Constructing Grievance


Elise Giuliano - 2011
    Contemporary nationalist movements can quickly attract fervent followings, but they can just as rapidly lose support. In Constructing Grievance, Elise Giuliano asks why people with ethnic identities throw their support behind nationalism in some cases but remain quiescent in others. Popular support for nationalism, Giuliano contends, is often fleeting. It develops as part of the process of political mobilization--a process that itself transforms the meaning of ethnic identity. She compares sixteen ethnic republics of the Russian Federation, where nationalist mobilization varied widely during the early 1990s despite a common Soviet inheritance. Drawing on field research in the republic of Tatarstan, socioeconomic statistical data, and a comparative discourse analysis of local newspapers, Giuliano argues that people respond to nationalist leaders after developing a group grievance. Ethnic grievances, however, are not simply present or absent among a given population based on societal conditions. Instead, they develop out of the interaction between people's lived experiences and the specific messages that nationalist entrepreneurs put forward concerning ethnic group disadvantage.In Russia, Giuliano shows, ethnic grievances developed rapidly in certain republics in the late Soviet era when messages articulated by nationalist leaders about ethnic inequality in local labor markets resonated with people's experience of growing job insecurity in a contracting economy. In other republics, however, where nationalist leaders focused on articulating other issues, such as cultural and language problems facing the ethnic group, group grievances failed to develop, and popular support for nationalism stalled. People with ethnic identities, Giuliano concludes, do not form political interest groups primed to support ethnic politicians and movements for national secession.

Russia: The Challenges of Transformation


Piotr Dutkiewicz - 2011
    This timely and important book of orginal essays makes clear that neither politics nor economics alone holds the key to Russia's future, presenting critical perspectives on challenges facing Russia, both in its domestic policies and in its international relations. It also explores how global order--or disorder--may develop over the coming decades.Contributors include: Oleg Atkov, Timothy J. Colton, Georgi Derluguian, Mikhail K. Gorshkov, Leonid Grigoriev, Nur Kirabaev, Andrew C. Kuchins, Bobo Lo, Roderic Lyne, Vladimir Popov, Alexander Rahr, Richard Sakwa, Guzel Ulumbekova, Vladimir I. Yakunin, Rustem Zhangozha.

Cause and Effect: Understanding Chernobyl


Marianne Barisonek - 2011
    Lenin Nuclear Power Plant near Chernobyl reactor number four exploded. Just about anything else you can say about the disaster is still controversial today. Cause and Effect: Understanding Chernobyl tells the story of the disaster and its consequences by describing its impact on a personal level. People from all walks of life illustrate the emotional, physical and technical challenges of living with radiation on a day-to-day basis. They present stories of heroism, idealism and extreme self-delusion.

The Zoo in Winter: Selected Poems


Polina Barskova - 2011
    While steeped in Russian and classical culture, Barskova's work remains unmistakably contemporary, at once classic and edgy--always fresh, new and even startling. A major English-language event, The Zoo in Winter collects poems from seven earlier books as well as from her more recent work. It is a remarkable menagerie of poems, of a strange and intoxicating beauty.

Treason of the Heart: From Thomas Paine to Kim Philby


David Pryce-Jones - 2011
    Not mercenaries, then, but ideologues. Almost all were what today we would call radicals or activists, who thought they knew better than whichever bunch of backward or oppressed people it was that they had come to save. Usually they were applying to others what they saw as the benefits of their culture, and so obviously meritorious was their culture that they were prepared to be violent in imposing it. Some genuinely hated their own country, however, and saw themselves promoting abroad the values their own retrograde government was blocking.The book deals with those like Thomas Paine who saw American independence as the surest means to hurt England; the many who hoped to spread the French revolution and then have Napoleon conquer England; historic characters like Lord Byron and Lawrence of Arabia who fought for the causes that brought them glory; finally those who took up Communism or Nazism. Treason of the Heart is nothing less than the tale of intellectuals deluded about the effect of what they are doing – and therefore with immediate reference to today’s world.

Stalinist Society: 1928-1953


Mark Edele - 2011
    Breaking radically with current scholarly consensus, Mark Edele shows that it wasnot ideology, terror, or state control which held this society together, but the harsh realities of making a living in a chaotic economy which the rulers claimed to plan and control, but which in fact they could only manage haphazardly.

State Building in Putin's Russia: Policing and Coercion after Communism


Brian D. Taylor - 2011
    This book argues that Putin's strategy for rebuilding the state was fundamentally flawed. Taylor demonstrates that a disregard for the way state officials behave toward citizens state quality had a negative impact on what the state could do state capacity. Focusing on those organizations that control state coercion, what Russians call the power ministries, Taylor shows that many of the weaknesses of the Russian state that existed under Boris Yeltsin persisted under Putin. Drawing on extensive field research and interviews, as well as a wide range of comparative data, the book reveals the practices and norms that guide the behavior of Russian power ministry officials (the so-called siloviki), especially law enforcement personnel. By examining siloviki behavior from the Kremlin down to the street level, State Building in Putin's Russia uncovers the who, where, and how of Russian state building after communism.

Russians, Jews, and the Pogroms of 1881-1882


John Doyle Klier - 2011
    Focusing on a wide range of responses to the pogroms, this book offers the most comprehensive, balanced, and complex study of the crisis to date. It presents a nuanced account of the diversity of Jewish political reactions and introduces a wealth of new sources covering Russian and other non-Jewish reactions to these events. Seeking to answer the question of what caused the pogroms' outbreak and spread, the book provides a fuller picture of how officials at every level responded to the national emergency and irrevocably lays to rest the myth that the authorities instigated or tolerated the pogroms. This is essential reading not only for Russian and Jewish historians but also for those interested in the study of ethnic violence more generally.

Mapping Europe's Borderlands: Russian Cartography in the Age of Empire


Steven Seegel - 2011
    Maps shape and communicate information, for the sake of improved orientation. But maps exist for states as well as individuals, and they need to be interpreted as expressions of power and knowledge, as Steven Seegel makes clear in his impressive and important new book.Mapping Europe’s Borderlands takes the familiar problems of state and nation building in eastern Europe and presents them through an entirely new prism, that of cartography and cartographers. Drawing from sources in eleven languages, including military, historical-pedagogical, and ethnographic maps, as well as geographic texts and related cartographic literature, Seegel explores the role of maps and mapmakers in the East Central European borderlands from the Enlightenment to the Treaty of Versailles. For example, Seegel explains how Russia used cartography in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars and, later, formed its geography society as a cover for gathering intelligence. He also explains the importance of maps to the formation of identities and institutions in Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania, as well as in Russia. Seegel concludes with a consideration of the impact of cartographers’ regional and socioeconomic backgrounds, educations, families, career options, and available language choices.

Secularism Soviet Style: Teaching Atheism and Religion in a Volga Republic


Sonja Luehrmann - 2011
    Combining archival research on atheist propaganda of the 1960s and 1970s with ethnographic fieldwork in the autonomous republic of Marij El in Russia's Volga region, Luehrmann examines how secularist culture-building reshaped religious practice and interreligious relations. One of the most palpable legacies of atheist propaganda is a widespread didactic orientation among the population and a faith in standardized programs of personal transformation as solutions to wider social problems. This didactic trend has parallels in globalized forms of Protestantism and Islam but differs from older uses of religious knowledge in rural Russia. At a time when the secularist modernization projects of the 20th century are widely perceived to have failed, Secularism Soviet Style emphasizes the affinities and shared histories of religious and atheist mobilizations.

Invisible Hands, Russian Experience, and Social Science: Approaches to Understanding Systemic Failure


Stefan Hedlund - 2011
    Illustrations range from the global financial crisis to the failure to achieve speedy systemic change in the Former Soviet Union and the failure to achieve development in the Third World. The analysis uses as a backdrop long-term Russian history and short-term Russian encounters with unrestrained capitalism to develop a framework that is based in the so-called new institutionalism. Understanding the causes of systemic failure is shown to require an approach that spans across the increasingly specialized subdisciplines of modern social science. Demonstrating that increasing theoretical sophistication has been bought at the price of a loss of perspective and the need for sensitivity to the role of cultural and historical specificity, the book pleads the case for a new departure in seeking to model the motives for human action.