My Soviet Union

My Soviet Union PDF Author: Michael Dumanis
Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Book Description
The speaker of the simultaneously funny and devastating poems in this remarkable first collection comes from a country that, like the Soviet Union, no longer exists, a place he treats with a mixture of nostalgia, disdain, and bewilderment as he strives to achieve a sense of order in his current disordered environment, a post-apocalyptic landscape with striking similarities to our own. He takes the reader through haunting and disjunctive childhood memories, on visits to Azerbaijan and West Des Moines, through the ravages of physical and spiritual illness, into and out of wars and ill-fated romantic escapades, as he carefully pieces together a complex narrative of self. This is a book of location and dislocation, intent and inaction, struggle and failure, restraint and mania, love and anger, savagery and healing, grief and merriment, elegy and ode. Technically, the poems - often litanies - are marked by syntactical variation, recurring imagery, paradoxical statement, cultural idioms, shifts between high and low diction, a carnivalesque sense of humor, and an elliptical approach to exposition. including Joseph Cornell, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Pol Pot, a vaudevillian, a movie extra, minor dictators, vagrants, ambigendered lovers, and a lighthouse keeper on an uninhabited island. from The Death of Elegy: Reluctant, I must onward, dearest wantword, fairest ragebird: I can no longer in the throatscratched marshland, nor do I find myself capable in the Cathedral of Learning, or any(for that matter)where in Pittsburgh. Have lugged too many bodies through its freightyards in my translucent slip. In my gauche veil, I thought I'd steel myself against despair, did not accomplish. The moon is black tonight, as if there is none. The moon tonight is either black, or stolen, and I do not possess the wherewithal to up-and-down, in search for it, on the funiculars. What I've become. An overcoat with hands, hands I would fail to feel if it were colder. ...]

My Soviet Union

My Soviet Union PDF Author: Michael Dumanis
Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 100

Get Book Here

Book Description
The speaker of the simultaneously funny and devastating poems in this remarkable first collection comes from a country that, like the Soviet Union, no longer exists, a place he treats with a mixture of nostalgia, disdain, and bewilderment as he strives to achieve a sense of order in his current disordered environment, a post-apocalyptic landscape with striking similarities to our own. He takes the reader through haunting and disjunctive childhood memories, on visits to Azerbaijan and West Des Moines, through the ravages of physical and spiritual illness, into and out of wars and ill-fated romantic escapades, as he carefully pieces together a complex narrative of self. This is a book of location and dislocation, intent and inaction, struggle and failure, restraint and mania, love and anger, savagery and healing, grief and merriment, elegy and ode. Technically, the poems - often litanies - are marked by syntactical variation, recurring imagery, paradoxical statement, cultural idioms, shifts between high and low diction, a carnivalesque sense of humor, and an elliptical approach to exposition. including Joseph Cornell, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Pol Pot, a vaudevillian, a movie extra, minor dictators, vagrants, ambigendered lovers, and a lighthouse keeper on an uninhabited island. from The Death of Elegy: Reluctant, I must onward, dearest wantword, fairest ragebird: I can no longer in the throatscratched marshland, nor do I find myself capable in the Cathedral of Learning, or any(for that matter)where in Pittsburgh. Have lugged too many bodies through its freightyards in my translucent slip. In my gauche veil, I thought I'd steel myself against despair, did not accomplish. The moon is black tonight, as if there is none. The moon tonight is either black, or stolen, and I do not possess the wherewithal to up-and-down, in search for it, on the funiculars. What I've become. An overcoat with hands, hands I would fail to feel if it were colder. ...]

My Soviet Youth

My Soviet Youth PDF Author: Irina Rodríguez
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476638063
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Putting on gas masks and learning how to shoot Kalashnikov rifles in grade school made Soviet children fear possible attack by Cold War enemies. But a more prosaic invasion of Colorado beetles in the 1980s turned out to be a far more real threat to Soviet families. Many had to master farming when the state, near its demise, no longer had the finances to pay salaries. One of the last generation of Soviet teenagers who tasted the political restrictions and propaganda, and the benefits and deficits of the communist state, the author recalls her early years in a Soviet school, a Young Pioneer inauguration ceremony, work on a collective farm, her family's plot of land and their fights against invasive insects, and her first breaths of post-Soviet freedom, which brought economic havoc and bitter disappointments, along with new hopes.

On My Country and the World

On My Country and the World PDF Author: Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231115148
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
One of the most important and intriguing figures of the 20th century sheds light on Russia's 1917 revolution, 1991 breakup, and 21st-century future.

My Six Years with Gorbachev

My Six Years with Gorbachev PDF Author: Anatoly C. Chernyaev
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271058110
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
Drawing on his own diary as well as secret documents and transcripts of high-level meetings, Anatoly Chernyaev recounts the drama that swept the Soviet Union between 1985 and 1991. As Gorbachev&’s chief foreign policy aide for most of that period, he played a central role in efforts to halt the arms race, discard a confrontational ideology, and open his country to the world. And as Gorbachev&’s confidant on many domestic issues as well, Chernyaev offers rare insights into the struggle over glasnost, the growth of separatism, and the rise of Boris Yeltsin. While admiring of perestroika&’s founder, Chernyaev is frank in faulting Gorbachev for his hesitancy in economic reforms, for his delay in decentralizing Union-republic ties, and above all for his misplaced faith in the reformability of the Communist Party. Altogether this book is essential reading for those interested in the Cold War&’s end, the USSR&’s collapse, and especially the role played by ideas, ambitions, and key personalities in these momentous events.

My Russia

My Russia PDF Author: Peter Ustinov
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description


My Life in Stalin's Russia

My Life in Stalin's Russia PDF Author: Roman Schmalz
Publisher: Tate Pub & Enterprises Llc
ISBN: 1598865706
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
My Life in Stalin's Russia tells the story of one man and his ancestors who lived through the horrifying experience of life in the Soviet Union during a very turbulent era. Though perhaps a secret territory to rest of the world, the Soviet Union was home to author Roman Schmalz, and in this book, he provides a brief collection of memoirs and reflections in hopes of filling in pieces of a huge puzzle in history. He describes everyday life under Soviet rule, and he offers his thoughts on how the world got to that point and where it might be headed.

Gorbachev

Gorbachev PDF Author: Mikhail Gorbachev
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023150019X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
The last president of the Soviet Union discusses Communism, the Cold War, and bringing democracy to Russia in this sweeping political memoir. Drawing on his own experience and rich archival material, Mikhail Gorbachev shares his illuminating perspective on Russia's past, present, and future place in the world. Beginning with the October Revolution of 1917, he notes how much Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik Party did to modernize Russia. While he argues that the Soviet Union had a positive influence on social policy in the West, Gorbachev maintains that this positive development was cut short by Stalinist totalitarianism. Discussing the fall of the USSR in depth, Gorbachev examines the goals of perestroika, awakening ethnic tensions, the inability of democrats to unite, and his own attempts to preserve the union through reform. In retracing those fateful days, he explains the origins of Russia's present crisis. He then lays out a blueprint for Russia’s future, charting a path toward meaningful economic and political reforms. He also presents possible resolutions to a number of international dilemmas, including NATO expansion, the role of the UN, the fate of nuclear weapons, and environmental problems

My Country and the World

My Country and the World PDF Author: Andreĭ Sakharov
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 9780394720678
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 109

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Book Description
A strong and controversial book from the leading political dissident still living-and speaking out- in the Soviet Union. Discusses the Soviets internal problems like low living standards, alcoholism, economic stagnation, and super militarization.

Unforgettable

Unforgettable PDF Author: Latif Shams
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781682898635
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description
What you are reading is the actual life of an student who went for education to the Soviet Union. USSR was a communist country being a closed society. She was separated from the rest of the world by an iron curtain. I lived in the Soviet union for six years in the 1960s. I lived as a foreign student with negative & positive side of it.This book sheds light on the Soviet, s education system, student life, culture,& other way of lives.I saw how G.G.B. agents were spying on young people even in a dancing hall.I personally experienced life under dictatorship .

Over the Abyss

Over the Abyss PDF Author: I. G. Starinov
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
THE ONLY ACCOUNT IN ENGLISH ABOUT LRRPs IN THE USSR Colonel I. G. Starinov, who began as a mere private in the Red Army and went on to become Russia's top demolitions expert, is a rare eyewitness to the entire history of the Soviet regime and one of the few to survive disagreeing with Stalin's military decisions. From partisan operations in the Russian Civil War through training and fighting with Spanish guerrillas against Franco, to using the first radio-detonated mine to kill a German general, Starinov narrates events never before revealed in the West. Caught by accident right at the border when the Germans attacked in WWII, Starinov went on to play a crucial role in the creation and training of a virtual partisan army. By wreaking havoc with the German railroad supply lines, these guerrillas were crucial to Soviet success at the front. Now in his nineties, Starinov survived warfare and even more terrifying political purges to provide this personal, firsthand look of the some of the greatest dramas in history.