A Public Empire

A Public Empire PDF Author: Ekaterina Pravilova
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691180717
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
"Property rights" and "Russia" do not usually belong in the same sentence. Rather, our general image of the nation is of insecurity of private ownership and defenselessness in the face of the state. Many scholars have attributed Russia's long-term development problems to a failure to advance property rights for the modern age and blamed Russian intellectuals for their indifference to the issues of ownership. A Public Empire refutes this widely shared conventional wisdom and analyzes the emergence of Russian property regimes from the time of Catherine the Great through World War I and the revolutions of 1917. Most importantly, A Public Empire shows the emergence of the new practices of owning "public things" in imperial Russia and the attempts of Russian intellectuals to reconcile the security of property with the ideals of the common good. The book analyzes how the belief that certain objects—rivers, forests, minerals, historical monuments, icons, and Russian literary classics—should accede to some kind of public status developed in Russia in the mid-nineteenth century. Professional experts and liberal politicians advocated for a property reform that aimed at exempting public things from private ownership, while the tsars and the imperial government employed the rhetoric of protecting the sanctity of private property and resisted attempts at its limitation. Exploring the Russian ways of thinking about property, A Public Empire looks at problems of state reform and the formation of civil society, which, as the book argues, should be rethought as a process of constructing "the public" through the reform of property rights.

Great Private Collections of Imperial Russia

Great Private Collections of Imperial Russia PDF Author: Oleg Neverov
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780500511824
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Imperial Russia before the 1917 Revolution had a great tradition of private collecting. In this book, the authors reconstruct a tour of the great Russian collections as they would have been just prior to the fall of the Romanovs. The collections are brought back to life by watercolours and drawings of their palaces, as well as photographs of interiors, family portraits and, naturally, by the works of art that they collected, now all in Russian museums or museums abroad.

A Public Empire

A Public Empire PDF Author: Ekaterina Pravilova
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691180717
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
"Property rights" and "Russia" do not usually belong in the same sentence. Rather, our general image of the nation is of insecurity of private ownership and defenselessness in the face of the state. Many scholars have attributed Russia's long-term development problems to a failure to advance property rights for the modern age and blamed Russian intellectuals for their indifference to the issues of ownership. A Public Empire refutes this widely shared conventional wisdom and analyzes the emergence of Russian property regimes from the time of Catherine the Great through World War I and the revolutions of 1917. Most importantly, A Public Empire shows the emergence of the new practices of owning "public things" in imperial Russia and the attempts of Russian intellectuals to reconcile the security of property with the ideals of the common good. The book analyzes how the belief that certain objects—rivers, forests, minerals, historical monuments, icons, and Russian literary classics—should accede to some kind of public status developed in Russia in the mid-nineteenth century. Professional experts and liberal politicians advocated for a property reform that aimed at exempting public things from private ownership, while the tsars and the imperial government employed the rhetoric of protecting the sanctity of private property and resisted attempts at its limitation. Exploring the Russian ways of thinking about property, A Public Empire looks at problems of state reform and the formation of civil society, which, as the book argues, should be rethought as a process of constructing "the public" through the reform of property rights.

Jewels of the Tsars

Jewels of the Tsars PDF Author: Michel (Prince of Greece)
Publisher: Vendome Press
ISBN:
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
The worlds fascination with the Russian imperial family endures, and with this stunning book a new spotlight is added. "Jewels of the Tsars," the first book to examine the familys unparalleled collection, is illustrated with extraordinary photographs taken under special conditions at the Kremlins Diamond Fund, and accompanied by 18th- and 19th-century portraits and photographs of the Tsars, their families, and their court. Prince Michael of Greece, a Romanoff descendant, writes with an insiders knowledge of his familys passion for rare and beautiful jewels, and their place in the troubled history of Imperial Russia.

The Empress of Art

The Empress of Art PDF Author: Susan Jaques
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1681771144
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 655

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Book Description
A German princess who married a decadent and lazy Russian prince, Catherine mobilized support amongst the Russian nobles, playing off of her husband's increasing corruption and abuse of power. She then staged a coup that ended with him being strangled with his own scarf in the halls of the palace, and herself crowned the Empress of Russia. Intelligent and determined, Catherine modeled herself off of her grandfather in-law, Peter the Great, and sought to further modernize and westernize Russia. She believed that the best way to do this was through a ravenous acquisition of art, which Catherine often used as a form of diplomacy with other powers throughout Europe. She was a self-proclaimed "glutton for art" and she would be responsible for the creation of the Hermitage, one of the largest museums in the world, second only to the Louvre. Catherine also spearheaded the further expansion of St. Petersburg, and the magnificent architectural wonder the city became is largely her doing. There are few women in history more fascinating than Catherine the Great, and for the first time, Susan Jaques brings her to life through the prism of art.

Tolstoy

Tolstoy PDF Author: Rosamund Bartlett
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1847652832
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 506

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Book Description
In November 1910, Count Lev Tolstoy died at a remote Russian railway station attended by the world's media. He was eighty-two years old and had lived a remarkable and long life during one of the most turbulent periods of Russian history. Born into a privileged aristocratic family, he seemed set to join the ranks of degenerate Russian noblemen, but fighting in the Crimean war alongside rank and file soldiers opened his eyes to Russia's social problems and he threw himself into teaching the peasantry to read and write. After his marriage he wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, both regarded as two of the greatest novels in world literature. Rosamund Bartlett's exceptional biography of this brilliant, maddening and contrary man draws on key Russian sources, including the many fascinating new materials which have been published about Tolstoy and his legacy since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Possession

Possession PDF Author: Erin L. Thompson
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300208529
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
A riveting account of private art collectors' passion from Roman times to the present Whether it's the discovery of $1.6 billion in Nazi-looted art or the news that Syrian rebels are looting UNESCO archaeological sites to buy arms, art crime commands headlines. Erin Thompson, America's only professor of art crime, explores the dark history of looting, smuggling, and forgery that lies at the heart of many private art collections and many of the world's most renowned museums. Enlivened by fascinating personalities and scandalous events, Possession shows how collecting antiquities has been a way of creating identity, informed by a desire to annex the past while providing an illicit thrill along the way. Thompson's accounts of history's most infamous collectors--from the Roman Emperor Tiberius, who stole a life-sized nude Greek statue for his bedroom, to Queen Christina of Sweden, who habitually pilfered small antiquities from her fellow aristocrats, to Sir William Hamilton, who forced his mistress to enact poses from his collection of Greek vases--are as mesmerizing as they are revealing.

Imperial Russian Navy

Imperial Russian Navy PDF Author: Vladimir Krestjaninov
Publisher: Uniform Press
ISBN: 9781906509491
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This unique look at the Russian Imperial Navy of the late 19th and early 20th century contains nearly 500 images from archives, museums and private collections.

Art of Transition

Art of Transition PDF Author: Elise Herrala
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429659601
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
The dissolution of the Soviet Union brought a massive change in every domain of life, particularly in the cultural sector, where artists were suddenly "free" from party-mandated modes of representation and now could promote and sell their work globally. But in Russia, the encounter with Western art markets was fraught. The Russian field of art still remains on the periphery of the international art world, struggling for legitimacy in the eyes of foreign experts and collectors. This book examines the challenges Russian art world actors faced in building a field of art in a society undergoing rapid and significant economic, political, and social transformation and traces those challenges into the twenty-first century. Drawing on historical and ethnographic research, Art of Transition traces the ways the field of art has developed, evolved, and been sustained in Russia after socialism. It shows how Russia’s art world has grappled with its Soviet past and negotiated its standing in an unequal, globalized present. By attending to the historical legacy of Russian art throughout the twentieth century, this book constructs a genealogy of the contemporary field of postsocialist art that illuminates how Russians have come to understand themselves and their place in the world.

Jewels from Imperial St. Petersburg

Jewels from Imperial St. Petersburg PDF Author: Ulla Tillander-Godenhielm
Publisher: Unicorn
ISBN: 9781910065150
Category : Gems
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A beautifully researched and illustrated volume about the jewelry from pre-revolutionary Russia.

My Hermitage

My Hermitage PDF Author: Dr. Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky
Publisher: Rizzoli Publications
ISBN: 0847843785
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
In a memoir, the museum’s longtime director takes the reader on a private tour of this global treasure. Holding one of the largest collections of Western art in the world, the Hermitage is also a product of Russia and its dramatic history. Founded by Empress Catherine the Great in 1764, the stunning Winter Palace was built to house her growing collection of Old Masters and to serve as a home for the imperial family. Tsars came and went over the years, artworks were acquired and sold, buildings were burned down in terrible fires, and still the collections grew. After the violent upheavals of the Russian Revolution in 1917, the palaces and collections were opened to the public. Now, in an unprecedented collection of illuminating essays, Piotrovsky explores the cultural history of a collection as rich in adventure as art. From fascinating intrigues to revelatory scholarship on the collection’s incredible art and artifacts, My Hermitage is a profound and captivating story of art’s timelessness and how it brings people together.