Contemporary Russia as a Feudal Society

Contemporary Russia as a Feudal Society PDF Author: V. Shlapentokh
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230609694
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
The book offers a theoretical discussion of the feudal model and a preliminary application of the model to post-Soviet Russia. In addition to a review of the feudal model as an ideal type, the author explains the analytical benefits of drawing comparisons between countries and across historical contexts. Specifically, contemporary Russia is compared to Western European countries during the Middle Ages and to the Soviet period in Russian history. The book is devoted to illuminating the most important political, social and economic characteristics of contemporary Russian society.

Contemporary Russia as a Feudal Society

Contemporary Russia as a Feudal Society PDF Author: V. Shlapentokh
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230609694
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
The book offers a theoretical discussion of the feudal model and a preliminary application of the model to post-Soviet Russia. In addition to a review of the feudal model as an ideal type, the author explains the analytical benefits of drawing comparisons between countries and across historical contexts. Specifically, contemporary Russia is compared to Western European countries during the Middle Ages and to the Soviet period in Russian history. The book is devoted to illuminating the most important political, social and economic characteristics of contemporary Russian society.

Feudal America

Feudal America PDF Author: Vladimir Shlapentokh
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271037814
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
"Uses a feudal model to analyze contemporary American society, comparing its essential characteristics to those of medieval European societies"--Provided by publisher.

Kremlin Rising

Kremlin Rising PDF Author: Peter Baker
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743281799
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 475

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Book Description
In the tradition of Hedrick Smith's The Russians, Robert G. Kaiser's Russia: The People and the Power, and David Remnick's Lenin's Tomb comes an eloquent and eye-opening chronicle of Vladimir Putin's Russia, from this generation's leading Moscow correspondents. With the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia launched itself on a fitful transition to Western-style democracy. But a decade later, Boris Yeltsin's handpicked successor, Vladimir Putin, a childhood hooligan turned KGB officer who rose from nowhere determined to restore the order of the Soviet past, resolved to bring an end to the revolution. Kremlin Rising goes behind the scenes of contemporary Russia to reveal the culmination of Project Putin, the secret plot to reconsolidate power in the Kremlin. During their four years as Moscow bureau chiefs for The Washington Post, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser witnessed firsthand the methodical campaign to reverse the post-Soviet revolution and transform Russia back into an authoritarian state. Their gripping narrative moves from the unlikely rise of Putin through the key moments of his tenure that re-centralized power into his hands, from his decision to take over Russia's only independent television network to the Moscow theater siege of 2002 to the "managed democracy" elections of 2003 and 2004 to the horrific slaughter of Beslan's schoolchildren in 2004, recounting a four-year period that has changed the direction of modern Russia. But the authors also go beyond the politics to draw a moving and vivid portrait of the Russian people they encountered -- both those who have prospered and those barely surviving -- and show how the political flux has shaped individual lives. Opening a window to a country on the brink, where behind the gleaming new shopping malls all things Soviet are chic again and even high school students wonder if Lenin was right after all, Kremlin Rising features the personal stories of Russians at all levels of society, including frightened army deserters, an imprisoned oil billionaire, Chechen villagers, a trendy Moscow restaurant king, a reluctant underwear salesman, and anguished AIDS patients in Siberia. With shrewd reporting and unprecedented access to Putin's insiders, Kremlin Rising offers both unsettling new revelations about Russia's leader and a compelling inside look at life in the land that he is building. As the first major book on Russia in years, it is an extraordinary contribution to our understanding of the country and promises to shape the debate about Russia, its uncertain future, and its relationship with the United States.

Lost and Found in Russia

Lost and Found in Russia PDF Author: Susan Richards
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
ISBN: 159051369X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
After the fall of communism, Russia was in a state of shock. The sudden and dramatic change left many people adrift and uncertain—but also full of a tentative but tenacious hope. Returning again and again to the provincial hinterlands of this rapidly evolving country from 1992 to 2008, Susan Richards struck up some extraordinary friendships with people in the middle of this historical drama. Anna, a questing journalist, struggles to express her passionate spirituality within the rules of the new society. Natasha, a restless spirit, has relocated from Siberia in a bid to escape the demands of her upper-class family and her own mysterious demons. Tatiana and Misha, whose business empire has blossomed from the ashes of the Soviet Union, seem, despite their luxury, uneasy in this new world. Richards watches them grow and change, their fortunes rise and fall, their hopes soar and crash. Through their stories and her own experiences, Susan Richards demonstrates how in Russia, the past and the present cannot be separated. She meets scientists convinced of the existence of UFOs and mind-control warfare. She visits a cult based on working the land and a tiny civilization founded on the practices of traditional Russian Orthodoxy. Gangsters, dreamers, artists, healers, all are wondering in their own ways, “Who are we now if we’re not communist? What does it mean to be Russian?” This remarkable history of contemporary Russia holds a mirror up to a forgotten people. Lost and Found in Russia is a magical and unforgettable portrait of a society in transition.

Feudal America

Feudal America PDF Author: Vladimir Shlapentokh
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271075023
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
Do Americans live in a liberal capitalist society, where evenhanded competition rules the day, or a society in which big money, private security, and personal relations determine key social outcomes? Vladimir Shlapentokh and Joshua Woods argue that the answer to these questions cannot be found among the conventional models used to describe the nation. Offering a new analytical tool, the authors present a provocative explanation of the nature of contemporary society by comparing its essential characteristics to those of medieval European societies. Their feudal model emphasizes five elements: the weakness of the state and its inability to protect its territory, guarantee the security of its citizens, and enforce laws; conflicts and collusions between and within organizations that involve corruption and other forms of illegal or semilegal actions; the dominance of personal relations in political and economic life; the prevalence of an elitist ideology; and the use of private agents and organizations for the provision of safety and security. Feudal America urges readers to suspend their forward-thinking and futurist orientations, question linear notions of social and historical progression, and look for explanations of contemporary social problems in medieval European history.

Darkness at Dawn

Darkness at Dawn PDF Author: David Satter
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300129092
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
“The Russia that Satter depicts in this brave, engaging book cannot be ignored . . . Required reading for anyone interested in the post-Soviet state” (Newsweek). Anticipating a new dawn of freedom after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russians could hardly have foreseen the reality of their future a decade later: A country impoverished and controlled at every level by organized crime. This riveting book views the 1990s reform period through the experiences of individual citizens, revealing the changes that have swept Russia and their effect on Russia’s age-old ways of thinking. “With a reporter’s eye for vivid detail and a novelist’s ability to capture emotion, he conveys the drama of Russia’s rocky road for the average victimized Russian . . . This is only half the story of what is happening in Russia these days, but it is the shattering half, and Satter renders it all the more poignant by making it so human.” —Foreign Affairs “[Satter] tells engrossing tales of brazen chicanery, official greed and unbearable suffering . . . Satter manages to bring the events to life with excruciating accounts of real Russians whose lives were shattered.” —The Baltimore Sun “Satter must be commended for saying what a great many people only dare to think.” —The Globe and Mail (Toronto) “Humane and articulate.” —The Spectator “Vivid, impeccably researched and truly frightening . . . Western policy-makers would do well to study these pages.” —National Post

The Estate Origins of Democracy in Russia

The Estate Origins of Democracy in Russia PDF Author: Tomila V. Lankina
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316512673
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
Lankina traces the origins of Russia's inequalities over the past two centuries from the Tsarist institution of estates, through communism, to the present day.

Empire of the Periphery

Empire of the Periphery PDF Author: Boris Kagarlitsky
Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Leading writer Boris Kagarlitsky offers an ambitious account of 1000 years of Russian history. Encompassing all key periods in Russia's dramatic development, the book covers everything from early settlers, through medieval decline, Ivan the Terrible - the 'English Tsar', Peter the Great, the Crimean War and the rise of capitalism, the revolution, the Soviet period, finally ending with the return of capitalism after 1991.Setting Russia within the context of the 'World System', as outlined by Wallerstein, this is a major work of historical Marxist theory that is set to become a future classic.

The Politics of Security in Modern Russia

The Politics of Security in Modern Russia PDF Author: Mark Galeotti
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317020146
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
The Putin era saw a striking 'securitization' of politics, something that he has bequeathed to his chosen successor, Dmitry Medvedev. The omens from the early days of the Medvedev presidency have been mixed, marked both by less confrontational rhetoric towards the West and by war with Georgia and continued re-armament. Has the Medvedev generation learned the lessons not just from the Soviet era but also from the Yeltsin and Putin presidencies, or will security remain the foundation of Russian foreign and domestic policy? Fully up-to-date to reflect the evolving Medvedev presidency, the 2008 Georgian war and the impact of the economic downturn, this volume is a much needed objective and balanced examination of the ways in which security has played and continues to play a central role in contemporary Russian politics. The combination of original scholarship with extensive empirical research makes this volume an invaluable resource for all students and researchers of Russian politics and security affairs.

Freedom, Repression, and Private Property in Russia

Freedom, Repression, and Private Property in Russia PDF Author: Vladimir Shlapentokh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107042143
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Demonstrates how the emergence of private property and a market economy after the Soviet Union's collapse enabled a degree of freedom while simultaneously supporting authoritarianism.