The Drama Of Russian Political History

Author : Alexander V. Obolonsky
Publisher : Texas A&M University Press
ISBN 13 : 1585442240
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Drama of Russian Political History written by Alexander V. Obolonsky and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2003-01-08 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 13 : 9781585442249
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Drama of Russian Political History written by Alexander V. Obolonsky and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2003-01-08 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 : George Vernadsky
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 432 pages
Book Rating : 4.24/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A History of Russia: Kievan Russia written by George Vernadsky and published by . This book was released on 1966 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Nurit Schleifman
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135225265
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Russia at a Crossroads written by Nurit Schleifman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 : Yuri Slezkine
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400888174
Total Pages : 1128 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The House of Government written by Yuri Slezkine and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-07 with total page 1128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 : James C. Pearce
Publisher : Vernon Press
ISBN 13 : 1648890393
Total Pages : 233 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Use of History in Putin's Russia written by James C. Pearce and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 : David Brandenberger
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300155360
Total Pages : 759 pages
Book Rating : 4.65/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Stalin's Master Narrative written by David Brandenberger and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-01 with total page 759 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical edition of the text that defined communist party ideology in Stalin's Soviet Union The Short Course on the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) defined Stalinist ideology both at home and abroad. It was quite literally the the master narrative of the USSR--a hegemonic statement on history, politics, and Marxism-Leninism that scripted Soviet society for a generation. This study exposes the enormous role that Stalin played in the development of this all-important text, as well as the unparalleled influence that he wielded over the Soviet historical imagination.

Author : Peter Gatrell
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317881397
Total Pages : 340 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Russia's First World War written by Peter Gatrell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-07-10 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Russia’s First World War remains largely unknown, neglected by historians who have been more interested in the grand drama that unfolded in 1917. In Russia’s First World War: A Social and Economic History Peter Gatrell shows that war is itself ‘revolutionary’ – rupturing established social and economic ties, but also creating new social and economic relationships, affiliations, practices and opportunities. Russia’s First World War brings together the findings of Russian and non-Russian historians, and draws upon fresh research. It turns the spotlight on what Churchill called the ‘unknown war’, providing an authoritative account that finally does justice to the impact of war on Russia’s home front

Author : Sheila Fitzpatrick
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231556845
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.42/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Shortest History of the Soviet Union written by Sheila Fitzpatrick and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2022-09-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : Sonia E. Howe
Publisher : Forgotten Books
ISBN 13 : 9781330006092
Total Pages : 478 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Thousand Years of Russian History written by Sonia E. Howe and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2015-06-02 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.