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Author: Tim McDaniel
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400822157
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212
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Book Description
Boris Yeltsin's attempts at democratic reform have plunged a long troubled Russia even further into turmoil. This dramatic break with the Soviet past has left Russia politically fragmented and riddled with corruption, its people with little hope for the future. In a fascinating account for anyone interested in Russia's current political struggles, Tim McDaniel explores the inability of all its leaders over the last two centuries--tsars and Communist rulers alike--to create the foundations of a viable modern society. The problem then and now, he argues, is rooted in a cultural trap endemic to Russian society and linked to a unique sense of destiny embodied by the "Russian idea." In its most basic sense, the Russian idea is the belief that Russia can forge a path in the modern world that sets itself apart from the West through adherence to shared beliefs, community, and equality. These cultural values, according to McDaniel, have mainly reversed the values of Western society rather than having provided a real alternative to them. By relying on the Russian idea in their programs of change, dictatorial governments almost unavoidably precipitated social breakdown. When the Yeltsin government declared war on the Communist past, it broke with deeply held Russian values and traditions. McDaniel shows that in cutting people off from their pasts and promoting the West as the sole model of modernity, the reformers have simultaneously undermined the foundations of Russian morality and the people's sense of a future. Unwittingly, the Yeltsin government has thereby annihilated its own authority. McDaniel lived in Russia for three years during both the Communist and post-Communist periods. Basing his analysis on broad historical research, extensive travels, countless interviews and conversations, and friendships with Russians from all walks of life, McDaniel emphasizes the perils of assuming that Russians understand the world in the same way that we do, and so can and should become like us. Challenging and provocative in its claims, this book is intended for anyone seeking to understand Russia's attempts to create a new society.
Author: Tim McDaniel
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400822157
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212
Get Book
Book Description
Boris Yeltsin's attempts at democratic reform have plunged a long troubled Russia even further into turmoil. This dramatic break with the Soviet past has left Russia politically fragmented and riddled with corruption, its people with little hope for the future. In a fascinating account for anyone interested in Russia's current political struggles, Tim McDaniel explores the inability of all its leaders over the last two centuries--tsars and Communist rulers alike--to create the foundations of a viable modern society. The problem then and now, he argues, is rooted in a cultural trap endemic to Russian society and linked to a unique sense of destiny embodied by the "Russian idea." In its most basic sense, the Russian idea is the belief that Russia can forge a path in the modern world that sets itself apart from the West through adherence to shared beliefs, community, and equality. These cultural values, according to McDaniel, have mainly reversed the values of Western society rather than having provided a real alternative to them. By relying on the Russian idea in their programs of change, dictatorial governments almost unavoidably precipitated social breakdown. When the Yeltsin government declared war on the Communist past, it broke with deeply held Russian values and traditions. McDaniel shows that in cutting people off from their pasts and promoting the West as the sole model of modernity, the reformers have simultaneously undermined the foundations of Russian morality and the people's sense of a future. Unwittingly, the Yeltsin government has thereby annihilated its own authority. McDaniel lived in Russia for three years during both the Communist and post-Communist periods. Basing his analysis on broad historical research, extensive travels, countless interviews and conversations, and friendships with Russians from all walks of life, McDaniel emphasizes the perils of assuming that Russians understand the world in the same way that we do, and so can and should become like us. Challenging and provocative in its claims, this book is intended for anyone seeking to understand Russia's attempts to create a new society.
Author: Katlijn Malfliet
Publisher: Leuven University Press
ISBN: 9789058673459
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 120
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Book Description
How can we best define Russias long-term national interests in the field of political sovereignty, sustainable economic development and military security? How will Russia view its federal state structure, as it finds itself confronted with a centuries-old tension between national and regional identity? Does Russia have to make a choice between East and West? All these questions relate to the centuries-old debate on the Russian Idea. The contributors to this book seek to study the quest for Russian identity, approaching this multi-layered and diffuse problem from a historical, political, cultural and economic perspective.
Author: Andrei P. Tsygankov
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000893251
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 189
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Book Description
The "Russian Idea" in International Relations identifies different approaches within Russian Civilizational tradition — Russia’s nationally distinctive way of thinking — by situating them within IR literature and connecting them to practices of the country’s international relations. Civilizational ideas in IR theory express states’ cultural identification and stress religious traditions, social customs, and economic and political values. This book defines Russian civilizational ideas by two criteria: the values they stress and their global ambitions. The author identifies leading voices among those positioning Russia as an exceptional and globally significant system of values and traces their arguments across several centuries of the country’s development. In addition, the author explains how and why Russian civilizational ideas rise, fall, and are replaced by alternative ideas. The book identifies three schools of Russian civilizational thinking about international relations – Slavophiles, Communists, and Eurasianists. Each school focuses on Russia’s distinctive spiritual, social, and geographic roots, respectively. Each one is internally divided between those claiming Russia’s exceptionalism, potentially resulting in regional autarchy or imperial expansion, and those advocating the Russian Idea as global in its appeal. Those favoring the latter perspective have stressed Russia’s unique capacity for understanding different cultures and guarding the world against extremes of nationalism and hegemony in international relations. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Russian foreign policy, Russia–Western relations, IR theory, diplomatic studies, political science, and European history, including the history of ideas.
Author: Robert English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231504748
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 417
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Book Description
An intriguing "intellectual portrait" of a generation of Soviet reformers, this book is also a fascinating case study of how ideas can change the course of history. In most analyses of the Cold War's end the ideological aspects of Gorbachev's "new thinking" are treated largely as incidental to the broader considerations of power—as gloss on what was essentially a retreat forced by crisis and decline. Robert English makes a major contribution by demonstrating that Gorbachev's foreign policy was in fact the result of an intellectual revolution. English analyzes the rise of a liberal policy-academic elite and its impact on the Cold War's end. English worked in the archives of the USSR Foreign Ministry and also gained access to the restricted collections of leading foreign-policy institutes. He also conducted nearly 400 interviews with Soviet intellectuals and policy makers—from Khrushchev- and Brezhnev-era Politburo members to Perestroika-era notables such as Eduard Shevardnadze and Gorbachev himself. English traces the rise of a "Westernizing" worldview from the post-Stalin years, through a group of liberals in the late1960s–70s, to a circle of close advisers who spurred Gorbachev's most radical reforms.
Author: Igorʹ Aleksandrovich Zevelëv
Publisher: US Institute of Peace Press
ISBN: 9781929223084
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
Includes statistics.
Author: S. Cosgrove
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230006000
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 253
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Book Description
Russian nationalism, increasingly important as the Russian Federation finds its place in the world, is not a new phenomenon. Who were the Russian nationalists before the creation of today's Russia? What were their views? What was their political influence? This book seeks answers to these questions by looking in detail at the last decade of the USSR through the eyes of a group of Russian nationalist intellectuals gathered around the literary journal Nash sovremennik . The author suggests that, in the Twenty-first-century, a specifically Russian type of nationalism, ethnic and statist, could provide the ideological underpinning for a new authoritarianism.
Author: Alina G. Birzache
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317310632
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 220
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Book Description
This monograph explores the way that the profile and the critical functions of the holy fool have developed in European cinema, allowing this traditional figure to capture the imagination of new generations in an age of religious pluralism and secularization. Alina Birzache traces the cultural origins of the figure of the holy fool across a variety of European traditions. In so doing, she examines the critical functions of the holy fool as well as how filmmakers have used the figure to respond to and critique aspects of the modern world. Using a comparative approach, this study for the first time offers a comprehensive explanation of the enduring appeal of this protean and fascinating cinematic character. Birzache examines the trope of holy foolishness in Soviet and post-Soviet cinema, French cinema, and Danish cinema, corresponding broadly to and permitting analysis of the three main orientations in European Christianity: Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant. This study will be of keen interest to scholars of religion and film, European cinema, and comparative religion.
Author: Konstantin Sheiko
Publisher: ibidem-Verlag / ibidem Press
ISBN: 3838265653
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
This astonishing book explores the delusional imaginings of Russia's past by the pseudo-scientific 'Alternative History' movement. Despite the chaotic collapse of two empires in the last century, Russia's glorious imperial past continues to inspire millions. The lively movement of 'Alternative History', diligently re-writing Russia's past and 'rediscovering' its hidden greatness, has been growing dramatically since the collapse of Communism in 1991. Virtually unknown in the West, these pseudo-historians have published best-selling books, attracted widespread media attention, and are a prominent voice in Internet discussions about Russian and world history. Alternative History claims that Russia is much older than Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome; that the medieval Mongol Empire was in fact a Slav-Turk world empire; and that, in the twentieth century, duplicitous foreign powers stabbed Russia in the back and stole its empire. For its followers the key to Russia's greatness in the future lies in ensuring that Russians understand the true wealth of their past. Alternative history has become a popular therapy for Russians still coming to terms with the reality of Post-Soviet life. It is one of the forces shaping a new Russian nationalism and an important factor in the geopolitics of the twenty-first century.
Author: Richard Lourie
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1250135966
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
An electrifying and timely book, by leading Russian expert Richard Lourie, that explores Putin's failures and whether Trump's election gives Putin extraordinarily dangerous opportunities in our mad new world. "A master chronicler of modern Russia. Drawing on his own expertise, Lourie paints a convincing portrait of a ruthless authoritarian leader headed toward failure. This book serves as an essential primer on Putin and, by extension, Russia."—Publishers Weekly For reasons that are made clear in this book, Putin’s Russia will collapse just as Imperial Russia did in 1917 and as Soviet Russia did in 1991. The only questions are when, how violently, and with how much peril for the world. The U.S. election complicates everything, including: · Putin’s next land grab · Exploitations of the Arctic · Cyber-espionage · Putin and China ...and many more crucial topics. Putin: His Downfall and Russia's Coming Crash is an essential read for everybody bewildered and dismayed by the new world order.
Author: Birgit Beumers
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 075560590X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 232
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Book Description
This is the first book to deal exclusively with Russian cinema of the 1990s. It introduces readers to the currents and common interests of contemporary Russian cinema, offers close studies of the work of filmmakers like Sokurov, Muratova and Astrakhan, reviews the Russian film industry in a period of massive economic transformation, and assesses cinema's function as a definer of Russia's new identity.
