Author: Hugh Ragsdale
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315480794
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 299
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Book Description
This work provides an interpretive history of Russia from earliest times to today, recounting the story of Russia's past. It discusses Russia's strengths and weaknesses as a civilization, and the challenges posed by the contemporary effort to remake Russia.
Author: Hugh Ragsdale
Publisher: M.E. Sharpe
ISBN: 9780765637079
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332
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Book Description
A well-written interpretive history of Russia from earliest times to today--a recounting of the story of Russia's past that is rich with insights into the nation's present torment. The author discusses Russia's strengths and weaknesses as a civilization, the dilemmas that have always confronted it, and the challenges posed by the contemporary effort to remake Russia. In ten chronological and thematic chapters, the author --describes the distinctive nature of Russia's experience as an Eastern civilization, of Europe, but not of the West; --evokes the ways in which Russia's culture, especially its rich literature, has both embodied and expressed the nation's ambivalent identity; --chronicles the periodic efforts of the Russian state, over three centuries, to catch up with the West without becoming Western; With grace and good sense, Ragsdale revisits the past not to explain, justify, or condemn, but to illuminate the present.
Author: Hugh Ragsdale
Publisher: M.E. Sharpe
ISBN: 9781563247552
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
Edith Base's letters to her pen pal Phylabe Houston in Greeley, Colorado, are an unwittingly (and perhaps for that reason) fascinating historical document of the day to day life of a Londoner from 1941 to 1947. With great humor and astute observation she explains to her pal how people coped during the war years, describes her patrols as an air raid warden, the darkly humorous social organization of the shelters, and the more mundane life details that simply underscore the eerie "normality" that arises in extraordinary situations. Lacks an index. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author: Walter G. Moss
Publisher: Anthem Press
ISBN: 0857287524
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 654
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Book Description
This new edition retains the features of the first edition that made it a popular choice in universities and colleges throughout the US, Canada and around the world. Moss's accessible history includes full treatment of everyday life, the role of women, rural life, law, religion, literature and art. In addition, it provides many other features that have proven successful, including: a well-organized and clearly written text, references to varying historical perspectives, numerous illustrations and maps, fully updated bibliographies accompanying each chapter as well as a general bibliography, a glossary, and chronological and genealogical lists.
Author:
Publisher: M.E. Sharpe
ISBN: 9780765633620
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 302
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Book Description
Author: Michael Kort
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 143810829X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
Serves as a guide to the history and culture of Russia. This book details the social, economic, and political changes and crises that the people of Russia have had to endure. It includes a chronology, bibliography, and, suggested readings. It also covers the conquest and rule of Russia by the Mongol Golden Horde as well as the reign of terror.
Author: Samuel H. Baron
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317477731
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 290
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Book Description
American historians of Russia have always been an intrepid lot. Their research trips were spent not in Cambridge or Paris, Rome or Berlin, but in Soviet dormitories with official monitors. They were seeking access to a historical record that was purposefully shrouded in secrecy, boxed up and locked away in closed archives. Their efforts, indeed their curiosity itself, sometimes raised suspicion at home as well as in a Soviet Union that did not want to be known even while it felt misunderstood. This lively volume brings together the reflections of twenty leading specialists on Russian history representing four generations. They relate their experiences as historians and researchers in Russia from the first academic exchanges in the 1950s through the Cold War years, detente, glasnost, and the first post-Soviet decade. Their often moving, acutely observed stories of Russian academic life record dramatic change both in the historical profession and in the society that they have devoted their careers to understanding.
Author: Matthew W. Slaboch
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812249801
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
Matthew W. Slaboch examines the work of German philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer and Oswald Spengler, Russian novelists Leo Tolstoy and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and American historians Henry Adams and Christopher Lasch—rare skeptics of the idea of progress who have much to offer political theory, a field dominated by historical optimists.
Author: Maxim Trudolyubov
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509527028
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
Russian novels, poetry and ballet put the country squarely in the European family of cultures and yet there is something different about this country, especially in terms of its political culture. What makes Russia different? Maxim Trudolyubov uses private property as a lens to highlight the most important features that distinguish Russia as a political culture. In many Western societies, private property has acted as the private individual’s bulwark against the state; in Russia, by contrast, it has mostly been used by the authorities as a governance tool. Nineteenth-century Russian liberals did not consider property rights to be one of the civil causes worthy of defending. Property was associated with serfdom, and even after the emancipation of the serfs the institution of property was still seen as an attribute of retrograde aristocracy and oppressive government. It was something to be destroyed – and indeed it was, in 1917. Ironically, it was the Soviet Union that, with the arrival of mass housing in the 1960s, gave the concept of private ownership a good name. After forced collectivization and mass urbanization, people were yearning for a space of their own. The collapse of the Soviet ideology allowed property to be called property, but not all properties were equal. You could own a flat but not an oil company, which could be property on paper but not in reality. This is why most Russian entrepreneurs register their businesses in offshore jurisdictions and park their money abroad. This fresh and highly original perspective on Russian history will be of great interest to anyone who wants to understand Russia today.
Author: Marie-Pierre Rey
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1609090659
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 437
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Book Description
Alexander I was a ruler with high aspirations for the people of Russia. Cosseted as a young grand duke by Catherine the Great, he ascended to the throne in 1801 after the brutal assassination of his father. In this magisterial biography, Marie-Pierre Rey illuminates the complex forces that shaped Alexander's tumultuous reign and sheds brilliant new light on the handsome ruler known to his people as "the Sphinx." Despite an early and ambitious commitment to sweeping political reforms, Alexander saw his liberal aspirations overwhelmed by civil unrest in his own country and by costly confrontations with Napoleon, which culminated in the French invasion of Russia and the burning of Moscow in 1812. Eventually, Alexander turned back Napoleon's forces and entered Paris a victor two years later, but by then he had already grown weary of military glory. As the years passed, the tsar who defeated Napoleon would become increasingly preoccupied with his own spiritual salvation, an obsession that led him to pursue a rapprochement between the Orthodox and Roman churches. When in exile, Napoleon once remarked of his Russian rival: "He could go far. If I die here, he will be my true heir in Europe." It was not to be. Napoleon died on Saint Helena and Alexander succumbed to typhus four years later at the age of forty-eight. But in this richly nuanced portrait, Rey breathes new life into the tsar who stood at the center of the political chessboard of early nineteenth-century Europe, a key figure at the heart of diplomacy, war, and international intrigue during that region's most tumultuous years.
