Author: Mirra Ginsburg
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN: 0802195873
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 351
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Book Description
The classic collection of wildly inventive and bitingly satirical tales of post-revolutionary Russia: “amusing and excellent reading” (Isaac Bashevis Singer). This famous collection of Soviet satire from 1918 to 1963 devastatingly lampoons the social, economic, and cultural changes wrought by the Russian Revolution. Among the seventeen boldly outspoken writers represented here are Mikhail Bulgakov, Ilya Ilf, Yevgeny Petrov, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Valentin Katayev, and Yury Kazakov. Whether the stories and novellas collected here take the form of allegory, fantasy, or science fiction, the results are ingenious, critical, and hilariously timeless. “The stories in this collection tell the reader more about Soviet life than a dozen sociological or political tracts.” —Isaac Bashevis Singer “An altogether admirable collection . . . by the highly talented translator Mirra Ginsburg . . . Many of these stories and sketches are delicious, even—a miracle!—funny, and full of subtlety and intelligence.” —The New Leader “Hilarious entertainment. Beyond this it illuminates with the cruel light of satire the reality behind the pretentious façade of the Soviet state.” —Sunday Sun
Author: Mikhail Bulgakov
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780704301825
Category : Political satire, Russian
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
Author: Neil Cornwell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134260709
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1013
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Book Description
First Published in 1998. This volume will surely be regarded as the standard guide to Russian literature for some considerable time to come... It is therefore confidently recommended for addition to reference libraries, be they academic or public.
Author: Neil Cornwell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134569076
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 282
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Book Description
The Routledge Companion to Russian Literature is an engaging and accessible guide to Russian writing of the past thousand years. The volume covers the entire span of Russian literature, from the Middle Ages to the post-Soviet period, and explores all the forms that have made it so famous: poetry, drama and, of course, the Russian novel. A particular emphasis is given to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when Russian literature achieved world-wide recognition through the works of writers such as Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Nabokov and Solzhenitsyn. Covering a range of subjects including women's writing, Russian literary theory, socialist realism and émigré writing, leading international scholars open up the wonderful diversity of Russian literature. With recommended lists of further reading and an excellent up-to-date general bibliography, The Routledge Companion to Russian Literature is the perfect guide for students and general readers alike.
Author: Andrew Kahn
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192549537
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1202
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Book Description
Russia possesses one of the richest and most admired literatures of Europe, reaching back to the eleventh century. A History of Russian Literature provides a comprehensive account of Russian writing from its earliest origins in the monastic works of Kiev up to the present day, still rife with the creative experiments of post-Soviet literary life. The volume proceeds chronologically in five parts, extending from Kievan Rus' in the 11th century to the present day. The coverage strikes a balance between extensive overview and in-depth thematic focus. Parts are organized thematically in chapters, which a number of keywords that are important literary concepts that can serve as connecting motifs and 'case studies', in-depth discussions of writers, institutions, and texts that take the reader up close and personal. Visual material also underscores the interrelation of the word and image at a number of points, particularly significant in the medieval period and twentieth century. The History addresses major continuities and discontinuities in the history of Russian literature across all periods, and in particular brings out trans-historical features that contribute to the notion of a national literature. The volume's time range has the merit of identifying from the early modern period a vital set of national stereotypes and popular folklore about boundaries, space, Holy Russia, and the charismatic king that offers culturally relevant material to later writers. This volume delivers a fresh view on a series of key questions about Russia's literary history, by providing new mappings of literary history and a narrative that pursues key concepts (rather more than individual authorial careers). This holistic narrative underscores the ways in which context and text are densely woven in Russian literature, and demonstrates that the most exciting way to understand the canon and the development of tradition is through a discussion of the interrelation of major and minor figures, historical events and literary politics, literary theory and literary innovation.
Author: Stephen Kotkin
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698170105
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 978
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Book Description
A magnificent new biography that revolutionizes our understanding of Stalin and his world It has the quality of myth: a poor cobbler’s son, a seminarian from an oppressed outer province of the Russian empire, reinvents himself as a top leader in a band of revolutionary zealots. When the band seizes control of the country in the aftermath of total world war, the former seminarian ruthlessly dominates the new regime until he stands as absolute ruler of a vast and terrible state apparatus, with dominion over Eurasia. While still building his power base within the Bolshevik dictatorship, he embarks upon the greatest gamble of his political life and the largest program of social reengineering ever attempted: the collectivization of all agriculture and industry across one sixth of the earth. Millions will die, and many more millions will suffer, but the man will push through to the end against all resistance and doubts. Where did such power come from? In Stalin, Stephen Kotkin offers a biography that, at long last, is equal to this shrewd, sociopathic, charismatic dictator in all his dimensions. The character of Stalin emerges as both astute and blinkered, cynical and true believing, people oriented and vicious, canny enough to see through people but prone to nonsensical beliefs. We see a man inclined to despotism who could be utterly charming, a pragmatic ideologue, a leader who obsessed over slights yet was a precocious geostrategic thinker—unique among Bolsheviks—and yet who made egregious strategic blunders. Through it all, we see Stalin’s unflinching persistence, his sheer force of will—perhaps the ultimate key to understanding his indelible mark on history. Stalin gives an intimate view of the Bolshevik regime’s inner geography of power, bringing to the fore fresh materials from Soviet military intelligence and the secret police. Kotkin rejects the inherited wisdom about Stalin’s psychological makeup, showing us instead how Stalin’s near paranoia was fundamentally political, and closely tracks the Bolshevik revolution’s structural paranoia, the predicament of a Communist regime in an overwhelmingly capitalist world, surrounded and penetrated by enemies. At the same time, Kotkin demonstrates the impossibility of understanding Stalin’s momentous decisions outside of the context of the tragic history of imperial Russia. The product of a decade of intrepid research, Stalin is a landmark achievement, a work that recasts the way we think about the Soviet Union, revolution, dictatorship, the twentieth century, and indeed the art of history itself. Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 will be published by Penguin Press in October 2017
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.
Author: Mikhail Bulgakov
Publisher: Translit Publishing
ISBN: 0981269532
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 112
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Book Description
As the turbulent years following the Russian revolution of 1917 settle down into a new Soviet reality, the brilliant and eccentric zoologist Persikov discovers an amazing ray that drastically increases the size and reproductive rate of living organisms. At the same time, a mysterious plague wipes out all the chickens in the Soviet republics. The government expropriates Persikov's untested invention in order to rebuild the poultry industry, but a horrible mix-up quickly leads to a disaster that could threaten the entire world. This H. G. Wells-inspired novel by the legendary Mikhail Bulgakov is the only one of his larger works to have been published in its entirety during the author's lifetime. A poignant work of social science fiction and a brilliant satire on the Soviet revolution, it can now be enjoyed by English-speaking audiences through this accurate new translation. Includes annotations and afterword.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Europe, Eastern
Languages : en
Pages : 608
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Book Description
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 2168
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Book Description
A world list of books in the English language.
