Power and Possession in the Russian Revolution

Power and Possession in the Russian Revolution PDF Author: Anne O'Donnell
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069120554X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
"Most histories of economic life explore how markets are built. This book looks instead at how they have been dismantled. Soon after the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, they began the process of transforming the economy, and indeed all of society, in accordance with communist ideology. Asserting their authority and creating a Soviet republic involved confiscating property and demolishing existing systems of exchanging goods. At a national level, industries like transport and banking were brought under state control. At the local level, everything from apartments to personal possessions were subject to seizure. In analyzing the confiscation of property and its redistribution, historian Anne O'Donnell focuses on the lived experience of revolution, drawing upon archival sources such as popular petitions, neighborhood meeting transcripts, audits of state agencies, and testimony in court cases. Telling the stories of both people who were dispossessed and the bureaucrats who inventoried and managed the property that now belonged to the state, O'Donnell reveals the making of an illiberal state, arguing that Soviet statecraft was built upon imperfect attempts to install new forms of valuation consistent with communist principles through chaotic property seizures. The work also offers a novel look at the everyday life of revolutionary Russia"--

Power and Possession in the Russian Revolution

Power and Possession in the Russian Revolution PDF Author: Anne O'Donnell
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069120554X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
"Most histories of economic life explore how markets are built. This book looks instead at how they have been dismantled. Soon after the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, they began the process of transforming the economy, and indeed all of society, in accordance with communist ideology. Asserting their authority and creating a Soviet republic involved confiscating property and demolishing existing systems of exchanging goods. At a national level, industries like transport and banking were brought under state control. At the local level, everything from apartments to personal possessions were subject to seizure. In analyzing the confiscation of property and its redistribution, historian Anne O'Donnell focuses on the lived experience of revolution, drawing upon archival sources such as popular petitions, neighborhood meeting transcripts, audits of state agencies, and testimony in court cases. Telling the stories of both people who were dispossessed and the bureaucrats who inventoried and managed the property that now belonged to the state, O'Donnell reveals the making of an illiberal state, arguing that Soviet statecraft was built upon imperfect attempts to install new forms of valuation consistent with communist principles through chaotic property seizures. The work also offers a novel look at the everyday life of revolutionary Russia"--

Power and Possession in the Russian Revolution

Power and Possession in the Russian Revolution PDF Author: Anne O'Donnell
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069125589X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
A history that reframes the Bolsheviks’ unprecedented attempts to abolish private property after the revolutions of 1917 The revolutions of 1917 swept away not only Russia’s governing authority but also the property order on which it stood. The upheaval sparked waves of dispossession that rapidly moved beyond the seizure of factories and farms from industrialists and landowners, envisioned by Bolshevik revolutionaries, to penetrate the bedrock of social life: the spaces where people lived. In Power and Possession in the Russian Revolution, Anne O’Donnell reimagines the Bolsheviks’ unprecedented effort to eradicate private property and to create a new political economy—socialism—to replace it. O’Donnell’s account captures the story of property in reverse, showing how the bonds connecting people to their things were broken and how new ways of knowing things, valuing them, and possessing them coalesced amid the political ferment and economic disarray of the Revolution. O’Donnell reminds us that Russia’s postrevolutionary confiscation of property, like many other episodes of mass dispossession in the twentieth century, largely escaped traditional forms of record keeping. She repairs this omission, drawing on sources that chronicle the lived experience of upheaval—popular petitions, apartment inspections, internal audits of revolutionary institutions, and records of the political police—to reconstruct an archive of dispossession. The result is an unusually intimate history of the Bolsheviks’ attempts to conquer people and things. The Bolsheviks’ reimagining of property not only changed peoples’ lives and destinies, it formed the foundation of a new type of state—one that eschewed the defense of private property rights in favor of an enduring but enigmatic new domain: socialist state property.

The Russian Revolution 1917

The Russian Revolution 1917 PDF Author: Nikolai Nikolaevich Sukhanov
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400857104
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 745

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Book Description
Author of the only full-length eyewitness account of the 1917 Revolution, Sukhanov was a key figure in the first revolutionary Government. His seven-volume book, first published in 1922, was suppressed under Stalin. This reissue of the abridged version is, as the editor's preface points out, one of the few things written about this most dramatic and momentous event, which actually has the smell of life, and gives us a feeling for the personalities, the emotions, and the play of ideas of the whole revolutionary period." Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The End of Tsarist Russia

The End of Tsarist Russia PDF Author: Dominic Lieven
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143109553
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
An Economist Best Book of the Year A Financial Times Best Book of the Year Winner of the the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize Finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize An Amazon Best Book of the Month (History) One of the world’s leading scholars offers a fresh interpretation of the linked origins of World War I and the Russian Revolution "Lieven has a double gift: first, for harvesting details to convey the essence of an era and, second, for finding new, startling, and clarifying elements in familiar stories. This is history with a heartbeat, and it could not be more engrossing."—Foreign Affairs World War I and the Russian Revolution together shaped the twentieth century in profound ways. In The End of Tsarist Russia, acclaimed scholar Dominic Lieven connects for the first time the two events, providing both a history of the First World War’s origins from a Russian perspective and an international history of why the revolution happened. Based on exhaustive work in seven Russian archives as well as many non-Russian sources, Dominic Lieven’s work is about far more than just Russia. By placing the crisis of empire at its core, Lieven links World War I to the sweep of twentieth-century global history. He shows how contemporary hot issues such as the struggle for Ukraine were already crucial elements in the run-up to 1914. By incorporating into his book new approaches and comparisons, Lieven tells the story of war and revolution in a way that is truly original and thought-provoking.

History of the Russian Revolution

History of the Russian Revolution PDF Author: Leon Trotsky
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1931859450
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 994

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Book Description
"During the first two months of 1917 Russia was still a Romanov monarchy. Eight months later the Bolsheviks stood at the helm. They were little known to anybody when the year began, and their leaders were still under indictment for state treason when they came to power. You will not find another such sharp turn in history especially if you remember that it involves a nation of 150 million people. It is clear that the events of 1917, whatever you think of them, deserve study." --Leon Trotsky, from History of the Russian Revolution Regarded by many as among the most powerful works of history ever written, this book offers an unparalleled account of one of the most pivotal and hotly debated events in world history. This book reveals, from the perspective of one of its central actors, the Russian Revolution's profoundly democratic, emancipatory character. Originally published in three parts, Trotsky's masterpiece is collected here in a single volume. It serves as the most vital and inspiring record of the Russian Revolution to date. "[T]he greatest history of an event that I know." --C. L. R. James "Justly celebrated as a towering, vivid, historically vital work." --China Miéville, October "In Trotsky all passions were aroused, but his thought remained calm and his vision clear.... His involvement in the struggle, far from blurring his sight, sharpens it.... The History is his crowning work, both in scale and power and as the fullest expression of his ideas on revolution. As an account of a revolution, given by one of its chief actors, it stands unique in world literature." --Isaac Deutscher

The French Revolutionary Tradition in Russian and Soviet Politics, Political Thought, and Culture

The French Revolutionary Tradition in Russian and Soviet Politics, Political Thought, and Culture PDF Author: Jay Bergman
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198842708
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 568

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Book Description
The Bolsheviks sought legitimacy and inspiration in historic revolutionary traditions, and Jay Bergman argues that they saw the revolutions in France in 1789, 1830, 1848, and 1871 as supplying practically everything Marxism lacked, including guidance in constructing socialism and communism, and useful fodder for political and personal polemics.

History's Greatest Heist

History's Greatest Heist PDF Author: Sean McMeekin
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300152795
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
How Lenin’s regime turned Russia’s priceless cultural patrimony into armored cars, trains, planes, and machine guns Historians have never resolved a central mystery of the Russian Revolution: How did the Bolsheviks, despite facing a world of enemies and leaving nothing but economic ruin in their path, manage to stay in power through five long years of civil war? In this penetrating book, Sean McMeekin draws on previously undiscovered materials from the Soviet Ministry of Finance and other European and American archives to expose some of the darkest secrets of Russia’s early days of communism. Building on one archival revelation after another, the author reveals how the Bolsheviks financed their aggression through astonishingly extensive thievery. Their looting included everything from the cash savings of private citizens to gold, silver, diamonds, jewelry, icons, antiques, and artwork. By tracking illicit Soviet financial transactions across Europe, McMeekin shows how Lenin’s regime accomplished history’s greatest heist between 1917 and 1922 and turned centuries of accumulated wealth into the sinews of class war. McMeekin also names names, introducing for the first time the compliant bankers, lawyers, and middlemen who, for a price, helped the Bolsheviks launder their loot, impoverish Russia, and impose their brutal will on millions.

Ten Days that Shook the World

Ten Days that Shook the World PDF Author: John Reed
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486149765
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
DIVReed's passionately involved narrative captures the opening days of the Russian Revolution, the fall of the provisional government, the assault on the Winter Palace, Lenin's seizure of power, and other tumultuous events. /div

Will the Bolsheviks Maintain Power?

Will the Bolsheviks Maintain Power? PDF Author: Vladimir Ilʹich Lenin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Communism
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description


Through the Russian Revolution

Through the Russian Revolution PDF Author: Albert Rhys Williams
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Communism
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description