Best of
Russian-History

1988

Black on Red: My 44 Years Inside the Soviet Union: An Autobiography


Robert Robinson - 1988
    An Autobiography Robert Robinson

Ukraine: A History


Orest Subtelny - 1988
    In the years since we have seen the dismantling of the Soviet bloc and the restoration of Ukraine's independence - a time of celebration for Ukrainians throughout the world, and of tumultuous change for those in the homeland.With this new edition of "Ukraine: A History," Subtelny revises the story up to the spring of 2000. A new chapter focuses on the achievements and failures of the new state and society in international affairs, internal politics, and economic and social development.Third edition: ISBN 0-8020-4871-4 / 9780802048714 (cloth)Third edition: ISBN 0-8020-8390-0 / 9780802083906 (paper)Third edition: ISBN 1282033956 / 9781282033955 / 9786612033957 (mass market hardcover)Third edition: ISBN 6612033959 / 1442682825 / 9781442682825 (mass market paperback)

March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 1


Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - 1988
    Solzhenitsyn tells this story in the form of a meticulously researched historical novel, supplemented by newspaper headlines of the day, fragments of street action, cinematic screenplay, and historical overview. The first two nodes—August 1914 and November 1916—focus on Russia’s crises and recovery, on revolutionary terrorism and its suppression, on the missed opportunity of Pyotr Stolypin’s reforms, and how the surge of patriotism in August 1914 soured as Russia bled in World War I.March 1917—the third node—tells the story of the Russian Revolution itself, during which not only does the Imperial government melt in the face of the mob, but the leaders of the opposition prove utterly incapable of controlling the course of events. The action of book 1 (of four) of March 1917 is set during March 8–12. The absorbing narrative tells the stories of more than fifty characters during the days when the Russian Empire begins to crumble. Bread riots in the capital, Petrograd, go unchecked at first, and the police are beaten and killed by mobs. Efforts to put down the violence using the army trigger a mutiny in the numerous reserve regiments housed in the city, who kill their officers and rampage. The anti-Tsarist bourgeois opposition, horrified by the violence, scrambles to declare that it is provisionally taking power, while socialists immediately create a Soviet alternative to undermine it. Meanwhile, Emperor Nikolai II is away at military headquarters and his wife Aleksandra is isolated outside Petrograd, caring for their sick children. Suddenly, the viability of the Russian state itself is called into question.The Red Wheel has been compared to Tolstoy’s War and Peace, for each work aims to narrate the story of an era in a way that elevates its universal significance. In much the same way as Homer’s Iliad became the representative account of the Greek world and therefore the basis for Greek civilization, these historical epics perform a parallel role for our modern world.

Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution


Richard Stites - 1988
    In this study, historian Richard Stites offers a vivid portrayal of revolutionary life and the cultural factors--myth, ritual, cult, and symbol--that sustained it, and describes the principal forms of utopian thinking and experimental impulse. Analyzing the inevitable clash between the authoritarian elements in the Bolshevik's vision and the libertarian behavior and aspirations of large segments of the population, Stites interprets the pathos of utopian fantasy as the key to the emotional force of the Bolshevik revolution which gave way in the early 1930s to bureaucratic state centralism and a theology of Stalinism.

The Battle that Shook Europe: Poltava and the Birth of the Russian Empire


Peter Englund - 1988
    In 1700, the Tsar combined with Denmark, Saxony, and Poland to attack Swedish hegemony in the North. When the forces finally defeated King Charles XII of Sweden in 1708 at Poltava, in the Ukraine, it proved the turning-point of the Great Northern War, heralding the collapse of the Swedish Empire and the rise of Russia, the effects of which would be felt for almost three hundred years. Swedish historian Peter Englund’s vivid account of the three violent days of battle is an internationally acclaimed classic of military history.

1914-1918 Voices and Images of the Great War: First Edition


Lyn Macdonald - 1988
    It runs through the battles of the Somme and Passchendaele to the coming of the Americans, fighting in the closing months of the war, joyous celebrations of Armistice Day and burial of the unknown warrior in the aftermath. The authors have drawn on the experiences of the men who fought, touching on subjects as diverse as propaganda, fear, morale, bravery, bawdiness, filth, and frivolity and the stark contrast between attitudes of civilians at home and the men at the front. Newspapers, magazines, letters, diaries, songs, poems, as well as a wealth of first-hand anecdotes and personal accounts by the soldiers themselves are included in this book.

The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents 1896-1939


Richard Taylor - 1988
    Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Chernyshevsky and the Age of Realism: A Study in the Semiotics of Behavior


Irina Paperno - 1988
    An influential journalist and literary critic, a theoretician of the aesthetic relations of art to reality, and a prominent political activist, Chernyshevsky is the author of What Is to Be Done? (1863), the novel that has had the greatest impact on human lives in the history of Russian literature. This book approaches culture from a semiotic perspective, seeing it as a language that organizes human behaviour. But the author takes a direction quite different from that of semiotic work: rather than solely emphasize how the code shapes individuals, she also explores how individuals can influence the cultural code. Through an examination of Chernyshevsky's life and works, the author traces the transformation of personal experience into literary structure, then, in reverse, the work's ensuing influence in structuring the experience and behaviour of others. Exploring Chernyshevsky's role in the crucial cultural developments of the 1860s, the author discusses such issues as the disintegration of the Romantic tradition and the rise of realism, the emergence of the non-noble intelligentsia, the rise of positivism and atheism, and the women's liberation movement. She shows how Chernyshevsky achieved a unique integration of diverse traditions that stood as a compelling model for others in this time.<

The Revolution of 1905: Russia in Disarray


Abraham Ascher - 1988
    The first of two volumes, this is the most comprehensive account of the Revolution of 1905—a decisive turning point in modern Russian history—to appear in any Western language in a generation.

When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861-1917


Jeffrey Brooks - 1988
    Within a few decades, a ragtag assembly of semi-educated authors, publishers, and distributors supplanted an oral tradition of songs and folktales with a language of popular imagination suitable for millions of new readers of common origins eager for entertainment and information. When Russia Learned to Read tells the story of this profound transformation of culture, custom, and belief.With a new introduction that underscores its relevance to a post-Soviet Russia, When Russia Learned to Read addresses the question of Russia's common heritage with the liberal democratic market societies of Western Europe and the United States. This prize-winning book also exposes the unsuspected complexities of a mass culture little known and less understood in the West. Jeffrey Brooks brings out the characteristically Russian aspect of the nation's popular writing as he ranges through chapbooks, detective stories, newspaper serials, and women's fiction, tracing the emergence of secular, rational, and cosmopolitan values along with newly minted notions of individual initiative and talent. He shows how crude popular tales and serials of the era find their echoes in the literary themes of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and other great Russian writers, as well as in the current renaissance of Russian detective stories and thrillers.

Time of Troubles: The Diary of Iurii Vladimirovich Got'e


Iurii Vladimirovich Got'e - 1988
    Got'e's in sustained length of coverage & depth of vivid detail. Got'e was a member of the Moscow intellectual elite--a complex & unusually observant man, who was a Moscow University professor & one of the most prominent historians of Russia at the time the revolution began. Beginning his 1st entry with the words Finis Russiae, he describes his life in revolution-torn Moscow from 7/8/17 thru 7/23/22--nearly the entire period of the Russian Revolution & Civil War up to the advent of the New Economic Policy. This chronicle, published here for the 1st time, describes the hardships undergone by Got'e's family & friends & the gradual takeover of the academic & professional sectors by the new regime. Got'e was in his mid-40s when he wrote. At 1st he felt that Bolshevism meant doom for Russia, but eventually his ardent patriotism led him to accept the Bolsheviks' role in preserving the integrity of the state. The diary was discovered in 1982 in the Hoover Institution Archives, in the papers of Frank Golder, to whom Got'e himself had entrusted it in 1922. It's translated literally & unabridged, with annotations by Terence Emmons. The introduction by Professor Emmons places the diary clearly in the context of Got'e's life & scholarly career.