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Author: Alexander V. Obolonsky
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1585442240
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297
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Book Description
In his introduction, Alexander Obolonsky notes that Russian history and life are full of paradoxes, most of them rather sad. Why, he asks, have the Russians, who have not only been endowed by nature with enormous natural, human, and intellectual resources, but who have also developed a great literary and scientific heritage and made significant contributions to world civilization, proved unable to arrange the conditions of their own existence to realize their great potential? “What fundamental deficiency,” he wonders, “made this great anomaly possible?”Alexander Obolonsky has undertaken the formidable task of reinterpreting Russian history from the Time of Troubles and the reign of Ivan the Terrible to perestroika, glasnost, and the dismantling of the Soviet system under Gorbachev and Yeltsin. He seeks to understand the present and assess the social trends that will shape the future through a careful reconsideration of Russia’s past.In his sweeping analyses of historical trends, Obolonsky structures his analytic narrative around two opposed concepts–a system-centered understanding of social existence in which individuals are viewed as “cogs” functioning for the sake of the whole, and a liberal person-centered paradigm in which society seeks to promote the development of the individual.Obolonsky distrusts all monistic explanations, from Marxism and geopolitics to scientific and technological models. He prefers to utilize a variety of variables—ethical, economic, sociopsychological, cultural—to explain Russian history, presenting its course as a long-term and ongoing struggle between two competing models of life. Oblolonsky is neither a determinist nor a romantic. In his thought-provoking and historically grounded analysis, he challenges standard interpretations regarding Russia, the USSR, the role of political leaders, and the Russian people. Far from satisfied with Russia’s past, Obolonsky worries that Russia’s future will be tainted by the persistence of an anti-individualist mentality and attitudes shaped by centuries of autocratic rule and by a conservative mass consciousness rooted in Russian experience.Students of Russian history, politics, and culture, and also those interested in the broader issues of twentieth-century society will find this informative magnum opus of a senior Russian scholar insightful and thought-provoking.
Author: Alexander V. Obolonsky
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1585442240
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297
Get Book
Book Description
In his introduction, Alexander Obolonsky notes that Russian history and life are full of paradoxes, most of them rather sad. Why, he asks, have the Russians, who have not only been endowed by nature with enormous natural, human, and intellectual resources, but who have also developed a great literary and scientific heritage and made significant contributions to world civilization, proved unable to arrange the conditions of their own existence to realize their great potential? “What fundamental deficiency,” he wonders, “made this great anomaly possible?”Alexander Obolonsky has undertaken the formidable task of reinterpreting Russian history from the Time of Troubles and the reign of Ivan the Terrible to perestroika, glasnost, and the dismantling of the Soviet system under Gorbachev and Yeltsin. He seeks to understand the present and assess the social trends that will shape the future through a careful reconsideration of Russia’s past.In his sweeping analyses of historical trends, Obolonsky structures his analytic narrative around two opposed concepts–a system-centered understanding of social existence in which individuals are viewed as “cogs” functioning for the sake of the whole, and a liberal person-centered paradigm in which society seeks to promote the development of the individual.Obolonsky distrusts all monistic explanations, from Marxism and geopolitics to scientific and technological models. He prefers to utilize a variety of variables—ethical, economic, sociopsychological, cultural—to explain Russian history, presenting its course as a long-term and ongoing struggle between two competing models of life. Oblolonsky is neither a determinist nor a romantic. In his thought-provoking and historically grounded analysis, he challenges standard interpretations regarding Russia, the USSR, the role of political leaders, and the Russian people. Far from satisfied with Russia’s past, Obolonsky worries that Russia’s future will be tainted by the persistence of an anti-individualist mentality and attitudes shaped by centuries of autocratic rule and by a conservative mass consciousness rooted in Russian experience.Students of Russian history, politics, and culture, and also those interested in the broader issues of twentieth-century society will find this informative magnum opus of a senior Russian scholar insightful and thought-provoking.
Author: Alexander V. Obolonsky
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 9781585442249
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
In his introduction, Alexander Obolonsky notes that Russian history and life are full of paradoxes, most of them rather sad. Why, he asks, have the Russians, who have not only been endowed by nature with enormous natural, human, and intellectual resources, but who have also developed a great literary and scientific heritage and made significant contributions to world civilization, proved unable to arrange the conditions of their own existence to realize their great potential? “What fundamental deficiency,” he wonders, “made this great anomaly possible?”Alexander Obolonsky has undertaken the formidable task of reinterpreting Russian history from the Time of Troubles and the reign of Ivan the Terrible to perestroika, glasnost, and the dismantling of the Soviet system under Gorbachev and Yeltsin. He seeks to understand the present and assess the social trends that will shape the future through a careful reconsideration of Russia’s past.In his sweeping analyses of historical trends, Obolonsky structures his analytic narrative around two opposed concepts–a system-centered understanding of social existence in which individuals are viewed as “cogs” functioning for the sake of the whole, and a liberal person-centered paradigm in which society seeks to promote the development of the individual.Obolonsky distrusts all monistic explanations, from Marxism and geopolitics to scientific and technological models. He prefers to utilize a variety of variables—ethical, economic, sociopsychological, cultural—to explain Russian history, presenting its course as a long-term and ongoing struggle between two competing models of life. Oblolonsky is neither a determinist nor a romantic. In his thought-provoking and historically grounded analysis, he challenges standard interpretations regarding Russia, the USSR, the role of political leaders, and the Russian people. Far from satisfied with Russia’s past, Obolonsky worries that Russia’s future will be tainted by the persistence of an anti-individualist mentality and attitudes shaped by centuries of autocratic rule and by a conservative mass consciousness rooted in Russian experience.Students of Russian history, politics, and culture, and also those interested in the broader issues of twentieth-century society will find this informative magnum opus of a senior Russian scholar insightful and thought-provoking.
Author: Nurit Schleifman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135225265
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
The meaning of Russia's past is in a process of continuous deconstruction, reshaping and negotiation by various social and political groupings. Of the deluge of group memories which have broken loose, this collection focuses on several new voices which have never been heard in Russia in this way before: women, Tatars, Cossacks, as well as the voices of religious and provincial populations. In addition, the volume sheds light on the creation of a multi-party system which paved the way for the expression of particular views and interests and generated much of memory's concepts and language.
Author: Anton Weiss-Wendt
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253057612
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 271
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Book Description
In post-Soviet Russia, there is a persistent trend to repress, control, or even co-opt national history. By reshaping memory to suit a politically convenient narrative, Russia has fashioned a good future out of a "bad past." While Putin's regime has acquired nearly complete control over interpretations of the past, The Future of the Soviet Past reveals that Russia's inability to fully rewrite its Soviet history plays an essential part in its current political agenda. Diverse contributors consider the many ways in which public narrative shapes Russian culture—from cinema, television, and music to museums, legislature, and education—as well as how patriotism reflected in these forms of culture implies a casual acceptance of the valorization of Stalin and his role in World War II. The Future of the Soviet Past provides effective and nuanced examples of how Russia has reimagined its Soviet history as well as how that past still influences Russia's policymaking.
Author: China Miéville
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1784782785
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
Multi-award-winning author China Miéville captures the drama of the Russian Revolution in this “engaging retelling of the events that rocked the foundations of the twentieth century” (Village Voice) In February of 1917 Russia was a backwards, autocratic monarchy, mired in an unpopular war; by October, after not one but two revolutions, it had become the world’s first workers’ state, straining to be at the vanguard of global revolution. How did this unimaginable transformation take place? In a panoramic sweep, stretching from St. Petersburg and Moscow to the remotest villages of a sprawling empire, Miéville uncovers the catastrophes, intrigues and inspirations of 1917, in all their passion, drama and strangeness. Intervening in long-standing historical debates, but told with the reader new to the topic especially in mind, here is a breathtaking story of humanity at its greatest and most desperate; of a turning point for civilization that still resonates loudly today.
Author: George Vernadsky
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Russia-History
Languages : en
Pages : 432
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Book Description
Author: James C. Pearce
Publisher: Vernon Press
ISBN: 1648890393
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233
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Book Description
History is not just a study of past events, but a product and an idea for the modernisation and consolidation of the nation. ‘The Use of History in Putin’s Russia’ examines how the past is perceived in contemporary Russia and analyses the ways in which the Russian state uses history to create a broad coalition of consensus and forge a new national identity. Central to issues of governance and national identity, the Russian state utilises history for the purpose of state-building and reviving Russia’s national consciousness in the twenty-first century. Assessing how history mediates the complex relationship between state and population, this book analyses the selection process of constructing and recycling a preferred historical narrative to create loyal, patriotic citizens, ultimately aiding its modernisation. Different historical spheres of Russian life are analysed in-depth including areas of culture, politics, education, and anniversaries. The past is not just a state matter, a socio-political issue linked to the modernisation process, containing many paradoxes. This book has wide-ranging appeal, not only for professors and students specialising in Russia and the former Soviet Space in the fields of History and Memory, International Relations, Educational Studies, and Intercultural Communication but also for policymakers and think-tanks.
Author: Yuri Slezkine
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400888174
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1128
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Book Description
On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the epic story of an enormous apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destruction The House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment. Written in the tradition of Tolstoy's War and Peace, Grossman’s Life and Fate, and Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, Yuri Slezkine’s gripping narrative tells the true story of the residents of an enormous Moscow apartment building where top Communist officials and their families lived before they were destroyed in Stalin’s purges. A vivid account of the personal and public lives of Bolshevik true believers, the book begins with their conversion to Communism and ends with their children’s loss of faith and the fall of the Soviet Union. Completed in 1931, the House of Government, later known as the House on the Embankment, was located across the Moscow River from the Kremlin. The largest residential building in Europe, it combined 505 furnished apartments with public spaces that included everything from a movie theater and a library to a tennis court and a shooting range. Slezkine tells the chilling story of how the building’s residents lived in their apartments and ruled the Soviet state until some eight hundred of them were evicted from the House and led, one by one, to prison or their deaths. Drawing on letters, diaries, and interviews, and featuring hundreds of rare photographs, The House of Government weaves together biography, literary criticism, architectural history, and fascinating new theories of revolutions, millennial prophecies, and reigns of terror. The result is an unforgettable human saga of a building that, like the Soviet Union itself, became a haunted house, forever disturbed by the ghosts of the disappeared.
Author: Sonia E. Howe
Publisher: Forgotten Books
ISBN: 9781330006092
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 478
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Book Description
Excerpt from A Thousand Years of Russian History There are few people in England, probably, who have not read some book or article on Russia, and some aspects of the life of that country are well known to English people; yet it is not too much to say that great ignorance prevails about Russia as a whole. The thing lacking is a knowledge of history, for history alone explains the present by the past, and offers the right vantage ground from which to view the great drama in action at this time. History alone will explain, for example, why Russia is so irresistibly drawn towards Constantinople, and why so much blood has been shed in vain attempts to gain possession of the "latchkey" to her own front door which the Western Powers have prevented her again and again from getting into her hands. The ancient story of Oleg the Wise hanging his shield on the gate of Byzantium in 911 is a symbol of Russia's policy. A knowledge of history will also enable the reader to understand the living bond which exists between Russians and Balkan Slavs, who are all members of the same race and of the same Church, and how this bond has always reasserted itself when the weaker brothers had reason to call upon the stronger for help against Turkish Moslems. There are also other vital points which have to be explained before Russia's political position can be rightly understood; for the mighty Russian Empire has not been built in a day - from a small beginning and by a number of different processes it has grown to its present dimensions. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Author: Sheila Fitzpatrick
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231556845
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
In 1917, Bolshevik revolutionaries came to power in the war-torn Russian Empire in a way that defied all predictions, including their own. Scarcely a lifespan later, in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed as accidentally as it arose. The decades between witnessed drama on an epic scale—the chaos and hope of revolution, famines and purges, hard-won victory in history’s most destructive war, and worldwide geopolitical conflict, all entwined around the dream of building a better society. This book is a lively and authoritative distillation of this complex history, told with vivid details, a grand sweep, and wry wit. The acclaimed historian Sheila Fitzpatrick chronicles the Soviet Age—its rise, reign, and unexpected fall, as well as its afterlife in today’s Russia. She underscores the many ironies of the Soviet experience: An ideology that claimed to offer humanity the reins of history wrangled with contingency. An avowedly internationalist and anti-imperialist state birthed an array of nationalisms. And a vision of transcending economic and social inequality and injustice gave rise to a country that was, in its way, surprisingly normal. Moving seamlessly from Lenin to Stalin to Gorbachev to Putin, The Shortest History of the Soviet Union provides an indispensable guide to one of the twentieth century’s great powers and the enduring fascination it still exerts.
