You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This book sets out to present the Polish-Russian conflict the way the elite of Russian society saw it. One of its chief research topics is the interaction between Russian public opinion, the policy the Empire pursued on its uncompliant subjects, and the impact the Polish conflict had on the evolution of Russian political ideas and movements. A major issue it addresses is the reaction of Russian society, its diverse political factions and social and philosophical trends and their relationship to the Polish national movement, and the effect of the Polish question on their evolution. Research in numerous archives and manuscript collections in Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, played a fundamental role in the work for this book. This book was originally published in Polish as Fatalna sprawa: Kwestia polska w rosyjskiej mysli politycznej (Kraków: Arcana, 2000). It was awarded the Klio Prize, a prestigious Polish award for the best monograph on a historical subject. This English translation is an abridged version (about 1/3 of the book's original size).
Founded by Peter the Great in 1718, Russia’s police were key instruments of tsarist power. In the reign of Alexander II (1855-1881), local police forces took on new importance. The liberation of 23 million serfs from landlord control, growing fear of crime, and the terrorist violence of the closing years challenged law enforcement with new tasks that made worse what was already a staggering burden. (“I am obliged to inform Your Imperial Highness that the police often fail to carry out their assignments and, when they do execute them, they do so poorly because of their moral corruption...”) This book describes the regime’s decades-long struggle to reform and strengthen the police. The...
A definitive new history of Russia from early Rus' to the collapse of the Soviet Union
This open access book uncovers one important, yet forgotten, form of itinerant livelihoods, namely petty trade, more specifically how it was practiced in Northern Europe during the period 1820–1960. It investigates how traders and customers interacted in different spaces and approaches ambulatory trade as an arena of encounters by looking at everyday social practices. Petty traders often belonged to subjugated social groups, like ethnic minorities and migrants, whereas their customers belonged to the resident population. How were these mobile traders perceived and described? What goods did they peddle? How did these commodities enable and shape trading encounters? What kind of narratives can be found, and whose? These questions pertaining to daily practices on a grass-root level have not been addressed in previous research. Encounters and Practices embarks on hidden histories of survival, vulnerability, and conflict, but also discloses reciprocal relations, even friendships.
Laitin portrays these Russian-speakers as a "beached diaspora" since the populations did not cross international borders; the borders themselves receded. He asks what will become of these populations. Will they learn the languages of the republics in which they live and prepare their children for assimilation? Will they return to a homeland many have never seen? Or will they become loyal citizens of the new republics while maintaining a Russian identity?
In 1998, Estonia became the first of the former Soviet republics to enter membership negotiations with the EU. This book traces the remarkable reforms that have propelled Estonia from the USSR to the threshold of the EU in less than a decade.
This thoughtful book describes the range of nationalist ideas that have taken root in Russia since 1856. Drawing on a wide range of archival documents and unparalleled interview material from the post-Soviet period, Tuminez analyzes two cases_Russian panslavism in 1856-1878 and great power nationalism in 1905-1914_when aggressive nationalist ideas clearly influenced Russian foreign policy and contributed to decisions to go to war. Yet not all forms of nationalism have been malevolent, and the author assesses competing nationalist ideologies in the post-Soviet period to clarify the conditions under which a particularly belligerent nationalism could flourish and influence Russian international behavior.
Chronicles the experiences of immigrants in two iconic South Side Polish neighborhoods in Chicago to demonstrate how Poles created new communities in an attempt to preserve the customs of their homeland.