Encyclopaedia of Soviet Life

Encyclopaedia of Soviet Life PDF Author: Ilya Zemtsov
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781138509566
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
A by-product of the amazing changes now taking place within the Soviet Union is a change in rhetoric no less than reality. Under Gorbachev, the Russian language has been changing parallel with novoe politichaskoe myshenie - new political thinking - with the effect that such new expressions as have flooded the Russian language clash with the less yielding realities of Soviet economy and society. The purpose of this volume is to clarify this dynamic in Soviet life, in which stagnation and decay confront hopes and expectations for liberalization. Zemtsov argues that the Soviet political language is self-contradictory, fractured into polarities of good and evil and thus depriving the Russian language of its basic subtlety, coherence, and inner logic. This work brings to life the Orwellian world of double-speak in a post-totalitarian environment. The Soviet language has two basic components: fictions which Communist ideology proclaims as reality, and realities that are portrayed in the guise of fictions. In this sense, Zemtsov undertakes to do for the Soviet language what the great H. L. Mencken achieved for the American language -show the reality of Soviet life by making plain the fictive qualities of Soviet ideology. This is a basic library reference work, a volume of indispensable utility for political scientists, area experts, and policy analysts. It offers a taxonomy enriched by a deep, personal knowledge of the Russian language by its author. Encyclopedia of Soviet Life is at one and the same time a basic primer of Soviet contemporary politics, a deep portrait of the psychology of totalitarian manipulation, and a sensitive appreciation of the nobler aspirations of the Russian people that is part and parcel of their great language.

Encyclopaedia of Soviet Life

Encyclopaedia of Soviet Life PDF Author: Ilya Zemtsov
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781138509566
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 387

Get Book Here

Book Description
A by-product of the amazing changes now taking place within the Soviet Union is a change in rhetoric no less than reality. Under Gorbachev, the Russian language has been changing parallel with novoe politichaskoe myshenie - new political thinking - with the effect that such new expressions as have flooded the Russian language clash with the less yielding realities of Soviet economy and society. The purpose of this volume is to clarify this dynamic in Soviet life, in which stagnation and decay confront hopes and expectations for liberalization. Zemtsov argues that the Soviet political language is self-contradictory, fractured into polarities of good and evil and thus depriving the Russian language of its basic subtlety, coherence, and inner logic. This work brings to life the Orwellian world of double-speak in a post-totalitarian environment. The Soviet language has two basic components: fictions which Communist ideology proclaims as reality, and realities that are portrayed in the guise of fictions. In this sense, Zemtsov undertakes to do for the Soviet language what the great H. L. Mencken achieved for the American language -show the reality of Soviet life by making plain the fictive qualities of Soviet ideology. This is a basic library reference work, a volume of indispensable utility for political scientists, area experts, and policy analysts. It offers a taxonomy enriched by a deep, personal knowledge of the Russian language by its author. Encyclopedia of Soviet Life is at one and the same time a basic primer of Soviet contemporary politics, a deep portrait of the psychology of totalitarian manipulation, and a sensitive appreciation of the nobler aspirations of the Russian people that is part and parcel of their great language.

Encyclopedia of Soviet Life

Encyclopedia of Soviet Life PDF Author: Ilya Zemtsov
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 1412822564
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
A by-product of the amazing changes now taking place within the Soviet Union is a change in rhetoric no less than reality. Under Gorbachev, the Russian language has been changing parallel with "novoe politichaskoe myshenie - "new political thinking - with the effect that such new expressions as have flooded the Russian language clash with the less yielding realities of Soviet economy and society. The purpose of this volume is to clarify this dynamic in Soviet life, in which stagnation and decay confront hopes and expectations for liberalization. Zemtsov argues that the Soviet political language is self-contradictory, fractured into polarities of good and evil and thus depriving the Russian language of its basic subtlety, coherence, and inner logic. This work brings to life the Orwellian world of double-speak in a post-totalitarian environment. The Soviet language has two basic components: fictions which Communist ideology proclaims as reality, and realities that are portrayed in the guise of fictions. In this sense, Zemtsov undertakes to do for the Soviet language what the great H. L. Mencken achieved for the American language -show the reality of Soviet life by making plain the fictive qualities of Soviet ideology. This is a basic library reference work, a volume of indispensable utility for political scientists, area experts, and policy analysts. It offers a taxonomy enriched by a deep, personal knowledge of the Russian language by its author. "Encyclopedia of Soviet Life "is at one and the same time a basic primer of Soviet contemporary politics, a deep portrait of the psychology of totalitarian manipulation, and a sensitive appreciation of the nobler aspirations of the Russian people that is part and parcel of their great language.

Gorbachev: His Life and Times

Gorbachev: His Life and Times PDF Author: William Taubman
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393245683
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 541

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Book Description
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction The definitive biography of the transformational Russian leader by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Khrushchev. "Essential reading for the twenty-first [century]." —Radhika Jones, The New York Times Book Review When Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, the USSR. was one of the world’s two superpowers. By 1989, his liberal policies of perestroika and glasnost had permanently transformed Soviet Communism, and had made enemies of radicals on the right and left. By 1990 he, more than anyone else, had ended the Cold War, and in 1991, after barely escaping from a coup attempt, he unintentionally presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union he had tried to save. In the first comprehensive biography of the final Soviet leader, William Taubman shows how a peasant boy became the Soviet system’s gravedigger, how he clambered to the top of a system designed to keep people like him down, how he found common ground with America’s arch-conservative president Ronald Reagan, and how he permitted the USSR and its East European empire to break apart without using force to preserve them. Throughout, Taubman portrays the many sides of Gorbachev’s unique character that, by Gorbachev’s own admission, make him "difficult to understand." Was he in fact a truly great leader, or was he brought low in the end by his own shortcomings, as well as by the unyielding forces he faced? Drawing on interviews with Gorbachev himself, transcripts and documents from the Russian archives, and interviews with Kremlin aides and adversaries, as well as foreign leaders, Taubman’s intensely personal portrait extends to Gorbachev’s remarkable marriage to a woman he deeply loved, and to the family that they raised together. Nuanced and poignant, yet unsparing and honest, this sweeping account has all the amplitude of a great Russian novel.

Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia

Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia PDF Author: Francisco Martinez
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 1787353532
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
What happens to legacies that do not find any continuation? In Estonia, a new generation that does not remember the socialist era and is open to global influences has grown up. As a result, the impact of the Soviet memory in people’s conventional values is losing its effective power, opening new opportunities for repair and revaluation of the past. Francisco Martinez brings together a number of sites of interest to explore the vanquishing of the Soviet legacy in Estonia: the railway bazaar in Tallinn where concepts such as ‘market’ and ‘employment’ take on distinctly different meanings from their Western use; Linnahall, a grandiose venue, whose Soviet heritage now poses diffi cult questions of how to present the building’s history; Tallinn’s cityscape, where the social, spatial and temporal co-evolution of the city can be viewed and debated; Narva, a city that marks the border between the Russian Federation, NATO and the European Union, and represents a place of continual negotiation of belonging; and the new Estonian National Museum in Raadi, an area on the outskirts of Tartu, that has been turned into a memory field. The anthropological study of all these places shows that national identity and historical representations can be constructed in relation to waste and disrepair too, also demonstrating how we can understand generational change in a material sense. Praise for Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia 'By adopting the tropes of ‘repair’ and ‘waste’, this book innovatively manages to link various material registers from architecture, intergenerational relations, affect and museums with ways of making the past present. Through a rigorous yet transdisciplinary method, Martínez brings together different scales and contexts that would often be segregated out. In this respect, the ethnography unfolds a deep and nuanced analysis, providing a useful comparative and insightful account of the processes of repair and waste making in all their material, social and ontological dimensions.' Victor Buchli, Professor of Material Culture at UCL 'This book comprises an endearingly transdisciplinary ethnography of postsocialist material culture and social change in Estonia. Martínez creatively draws on a number of critical and cultural theorists, together with additional research on memory and political studies scholarship and the classics of anthropology. Grappling concurrently with time and space, the book offers a delightfully thick description of the material effects generated by the accelerated post-Soviet transformation in Estonia, inquiring into the generational specificities in experiencing and relating to the postsocialist condition through the conceptual anchors of wasted legacies and repair. This book defies disciplinary boundaries and shows how an attention to material relations and affective infrastructures might reinvigorate political theory.' Maria Mälksoo, Senior Lecturer, Brussels School of International Studies at the University of Kent

Soviet Cities: Labour, Life and Leisure

Soviet Cities: Labour, Life and Leisure PDF Author: Arseniy Kotov
Publisher: Fuel
ISBN: 9781916218413
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
The Soviet dream of modernist architecture for all, portrayed on the brink of its erasure In recent years Russian cities have visibly changed. The architectural heritage of the Soviet period has not been fully acknowledged. As a result many unique modernist buildings have been destroyed or changed beyond recognition. Russian photographer Arseniy Kotov intends to document these buildings and their surroundings before they are lost forever. He likes to take pictures in winter, during the "blue hour," which occurs immediately after sunset or just before sunrise. At this time, the warm yellow colors inside apartment-block windows contrast with the twilight gloom outside. To Kotov, this atmosphere reflects the Soviet period of his imagination. His impression of this time is unashamedly idealistic: he envisages a great civilization, built on a fair society, which hopes to explore nature and conquer space. From the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the desert steppes of Kazakhstan to the grim monolithic high-rise dormitory blocks of inner-city Volgograd, Kotov captures the essence of the post-Soviet world. "The USSR no longer exists and in these photographs we can see what remains--the most outstanding buildings and constructions, where Soviet people lived and how Soviet cities once looked: no decoration, no bright colors and no luxury, only bare concrete and powerful forms." This superbly designed volume is the latest in Fuel's revelatory and inspiring series on Soviet-era architecture.

The Gulag Archipelago (1918-1956)

The Gulag Archipelago (1918-1956) PDF Author: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenit︠s︡yn
Publisher: Harvill Press
ISBN: 9781860466328
Category : Political persecution
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description


Chernenko, the Last Bolshevik

Chernenko, the Last Bolshevik PDF Author: Ilya Zemtsov
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000675017
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko, a figure who appeared to the outside worid as a commonplace Russian bureaucrat cut from the mold of a Gogol short story, was elevated in 1984 to the post of general sec retary of the Communist party of the Soviet Union. Thus, a post held by such awesome, fearsome figures as Lenin and Stalin passed into the hands of someone perceived as a nondescript bureaucrat, de void of ideas or initiative, and crippled by old age and infirmity.A singular merit of this work is that it shows how far from the mark were these perceptions. This is the only full-length treatment of Chernenko. in contrast to the vast tomes written on his five predecessors as well as on the present incumbent, Mkrhail Gorbachev. The work delves into archival materials never before reported in either the East or West. The picture that emerges is not of some run-of-the-mill ap paratchik, but of a figure who in the con text of the Brezhnev era came forth with ideas that were revolutionary, at least in the sense of a realization of the deep mal aise into which Soviet economy and so ciety had fallen.Zemtsov's volume explains the paradox of a servile conservative member of th Politburo becoming an innovative, even courageous, leader during the thirteen fateful months he held Soviet power, it is a tribute to this effort at reconstruction that what emerges is a rounded human being and not simply a political actor. This analytical study of the transformation of a peasant into a politician fills out a missing link without which the current impulse to reform in the U.S.S.R. is hard to under stand or appreciate.

Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies, and Secret Operations

Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies, and Secret Operations PDF Author: Richard Trahair
Publisher: Enigma Books
ISBN: 1936274264
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 562

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Book Description
The only comprehensive and up-to-date book of its kind with the latest information.

The Dostoevsky Encyclopedia

The Dostoevsky Encyclopedia PDF Author: Kenneth Lantz
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313052581
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
One of the greatest writers of all time, Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) is best known for such masterpieces as Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. His works are widely read and studied today, and he has received much biographical and critical attention. Like many other writers of enduring literature, he engages timeless moral and theological issues. His writings and ideas are complex and reflect the swirling political and intellectual controversies of his time. This encyclopedia is a convenient and comprehensive guide to his life and writings. Through more than 200 alphabetically arranged entries, this reference details his life and career. Each of his fictional works is discussed, as are his major pieces of journalism. There are also entries for his family members, close friends and associates, places where he lived, literary movements with which he is associated, and journals or newspapers in which he published. Also included are entries for major writers and thinkers who influenced his works, and for ideas and themes that figure prominently in his writings. The entries cite works for further reading, and the encyclopedia closes with a selected, general bibliography of major works.

Soviets

Soviets PDF Author: Dant︠s︡ik Sergeevich Baldaev
Publisher: Fuel Publishing
ISBN: 9780956896278
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Soviets features previously unpublished drawings from the archive of Danzig Baldaev, alongside classic propaganda photographs made by Sergei Vasiliev for the newspaper Vercherny Chelyabinsk."--From the publisher's web site.