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This is the first full biography of an unjustly forgotten man: Thomas Witlam Atkinson (1799 - 1861), architect, artist, traveller extraordinaire, author - and bigamist. Famous in his lifetime as 'the Siberian traveller', he spent seven years travelling nearly 40,000 miles through the Urals, Kazakhstan and Siberia with special authorisation from the Tsar, producing 560 watercolour sketches - many published here for the first time - of the often dramatic scenery and exotic peoples. He kept a detailed daily journal, now extensively quoted for the first time with his descendants' cooperation.This is also the story of Lucy, his spirited and intrepid wife and their son Alatau Tamchiboulac, called after their favourite places and born in a remote Cossack fort. They both shared his many adventures and extremes of heat and cold, travelling with him on horseback up and down precipices and across dangerous rivers, escaping a murder plot atop a great cliff and befriending the famous Decembrist exiles.
A definitive new history of Russia from early Rus' to the collapse of the Soviet Union
This book provides a unique view of British-Russian relations during the last 15 years of the Soviet regime and the first 10 years following its collapse, by one of the main British players.
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A review of international law in the polar regions and its importance to the environment and to international relations.
The Earth has entered a new age—the Anthropocene—in which humans are the most powerful influence on global ecology. Since the mid-twentieth century, the accelerating pace of energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and population growth has thrust the planet into a massive uncontrolled experiment. The Great Acceleration explains its causes and consequences, highlighting the role of energy systems, as well as trends in climate change, urbanization, and environmentalism. More than any other factor, human dependence on fossil fuels inaugurated the Anthropocene. Before 1700, people used little in the way of fossil fuels, but over the next two hundred years coal became the most important energy ...
The essays in this book examine the arguments and rhetoric used by the United States and the USSR following two catastrophes that impacted both countries, as blame is cast and consequences are debated. In this environment, it was perhaps inevitable that conspiracy theories would arise, especially about the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 over the Sea of Japan. Those theories are examined, resulting in at least one method for addressing conspiracy arguments. In the case of Chernobyl, the disaster ruptured the “social compact” between the Soviet government and the people; efforts to overcome the resulting disillusionment quickly became the focus of state efforts.
After a period of relative weakness and isolation during most of the 1990s, Russia is again appearing as a major security player in world politics. This book provides a comprehensive assessment of Russia's current security situation, addressing such questions as: What kind of player is Russia in the field of security? What is the essence of its security policy? What are the sources, capabilities and priorities of its security policy? What are the prospects for the future? One important conclusion to emerge is that, while Russian foreign policy under Putin has become more pragmatic and responsive to both problems and opportunities, the growing lack of checks and balances in domestic politics makes political integration with the West difficult and gives the president great freedom in applying Russia's growing power abroad.
The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe are moving away from a centrally planned economy toward integration within the global economy. How did this transition begin? Is this an aim which all the countries can afford? What conditions are to be met so that the countries will achieve a level of development comparable with the average level of their industrial partners? In this 1992 volume, leading international political economists from both the East and West provide an in-depth analysis of these questions. The contributors assess how the transition to the market requires liberalizing foreign trade, introducing convertibility, and transforming property structures, all of which are also part of the ongoing domestic reform. They also examine how these countries overcome their development lag and implement a restructuring policy.