Best of
Russian-Revolution

2000

Prodigal Saint: Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People


Nadieszda Kizenko - 2000
    So popular was Father John during his years of ministry that Kronstadt became a pilgrimage site replete with peddlers selling souvenir photographs, postcards, and commemorative mugs. A Prodigal Saint follows Father John's development from activist priest to venerated spiritual leader and, after his death, to his elevation to sainthood in 1990. We see both the inner life of an aspiring saint and the symbiotic relationship between a living icon and his followers. Father John represented a fundamentally new type of religious behavior and a new standard of sanctity in Late Imperial Russia. He ministered to the poor of Kronstadt, creating shelters and employment programs and participating in the temperance movement. In the process he acquired a reputation for prayerful intercession that soon spread beyond Kronstadt. When he was asked to minister to the dying Alexander III in 1894, his fame became international as he attracted correspondents from the United States and Europe. In his later years he allied himself increasingly with the radical right, which has had momentous implications for the Russian Orthodox Church in the twentieth century.

In the Shadow of Revolution: Life Stories of Russian Women from 1917 to the Second World War


Sheila Fitzpatrick - 2000
    A collection of life stories of Russian women in the first half of the twentieth century, In the Shadow of Revolution brings together the testimony of Soviet citizens and �migr�s, intellectuals of aristocratic birth and Soviet milkmaids, housewives and engineers, Bolshevik activists and dedicated opponents of the Soviet regime. In literary memoirs, oral interviews, personal dossiers, public speeches, and letters to the editor, these women document their diverse experience of the upheavals that reshaped Russia in the first half of this century.As is characteristic of twentieth-century Russian women's autobiographies, these life stories take their structure not so much from private events like childbirth or marriage as from great public events. Accordingly the collection is structured around the events these women see as touchstones: the Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War of 1918-20; the switch to the New Economic Policy in the 1920s and collectivization; and the Stalinist society of the 1930s, including the Great Terror. Edited by two preeminent historians of Russia and the Soviet Union, the volume includes introductions that investigate the social historical context of these women's lives as well as the structure of their autobiographical narratives.

The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution, 1919-1927


Alexander Pantsov - 2000
    The aim of this work is to incorporate these new documents into a scholarly study and on that basis to explore the essence of the Russian Bolsheviks' main concepts concerning the Chinese revolution. The work was designed to determine the influence of these concepts exerted on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) through an analysis of the way various adherents of the Chinese Communist movement perceived them.The primary sources used in this book include: previously unpublished archival material on the Comintern, the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik), and the CCP, reflecting the theories and political practice of Leninism, Trotskyism, and Stalinism, and of the Russian and Chinese Left Oppositions; works by Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, and other leaders of the Executive Committee of the Communist International and the CCP published in East Asia, Europe, and the U.S.; Comintern journals and bulletins; private interviews carried out by the author with participants and eyewitnesses of the events treated in the book; and memoirs of various Chinese revolutionaries.

Revolutionary Women in Russia, 1870-1917: A Study in Collective Biography


Anna Hillyar - 2000
    It is only in the past twenty five years that scholars have begun to investigate the women who dedicated themselves to the cause of revolution. What then of the women who joined the revolutionary movement, and particularly the Bolshevik party, in their thousands? Revolutionary women in Russia is the first sustained analysis of female involvement in the revolutionary era of Russian history. By placing women centre stage, without exaggerating their involvement, this study enriches our understanding of women and revolutionary politics, and also provides a revealing insight in to this momentous period of Russian history. Revolutionary women in Russia is a powerful study of working women and Russian Marxism, which aims to engage readers with descriptions of 'real' revolutionary women. Based on a variety of sources that have not been previously translated into English, this book will appeal to all those with an interest in the Russian Revolution, twentieth-century history and gender studies.