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The first half of the book features Viktor Gorgachuk. Born in the USSR, his Orthodox parents keep his birth a secret by bribing the midwife. When Viktor is four, he is left at a remote monastery for eight years. Here he is educated and then released to his parents at twelve years of age. About this time, the midwife reveals the secret birth to the KGB, who begin a search for Viktor. The parents secretly leave Viktor with a family of Pentecostals and flee to Vladivostok where they are discovered by the KGB. Refusing to divulge Viktors location, they are killed. Five years later, Viktor flees the USSR and immigrates to the United States. Viktors escape from the KGB after the murder of his pare...
This is the first work to set one of the great bloodless revolutions of the twentieth century in its proper historical context. John Dunlop pays particular attention to Yeltsin's role in opposing the covert resurgence of Communist interests in post-coup Russia, and faces the possibility that new institutions may not survive long enough to sink roots in a traditionally undemocratic culture.
For decades, tree planting and forestry have been pivotal to Chinese environmentalism. During the Mao era, while forests were razed to fuel rapid increases in industrial production, the "Greening the Motherland" campaign promoted conservationist tree-planting nationwide. Contested Environmentalisms explores the seemingly contradictory rhetoric and desires of Chinese conservation from the early twentieth century through to the present. Drawing on literary, cinematic, scientific, archival, and digital media sources, Cheng Li investigates the emergence, evolution, and devolution of Chinese conservationist ideas. Combining literary, historical, and environmental studies approaches, he shows that...
In a remote Albanian village, a place of banishment, a stranger appears, claiming to be Viktor Dragoti and looking for his long-lost love. That Viktor Dragoti has been dead for nine years, killed by the Albanian coast guard while trying to swim to freedom, only adds to the stranger's mystery--and to the suspense of this curiously real and yet otherworldly work by one of Albania's most distinguished writers. With echoes of The Return of Martin Guerre and Kafka's The Trial, with allusions to The Odyssey and the Albanian folktale of Ago Ymeri, a legendary hero released from the underworld for one day, Shehu's novel blends the autobiographical and the historical, the personal and the political into a powerful tale--a story that conveys the terrors, small and large, of a totalitarian state while capturing all that is surreal and even lyrical in life in such a deeply distorted world.
When East Germany collapsed in 1989-1990, outside observers were shocked to learn the extent of environmental devastation that existed there. Saving Nature Under Socialism introduces readers to environmentalism in Cold War East Germany and traces the evolution of environmental policy and protest in East Germany and central Europe from the 1960s.
This is the first comprehensive volume to compare the sociolinguistic situations of minorities in Russia and in Western Europe. As such, it provides insight into language policies, the ethnolinguistic vitality and the struggle for reversal of language shift, language revitalization and empowerment of minorities in Russia and the European Union. The volume shows that, even though largely unknown to a broader English-reading audience, the linguistic composition of Russia is by no means less diverse than multilingualism in the EU. It is therefore a valuable introduction into the historical backgrounds and current linguistic, social and legal affairs with regard to Russia’s manifold ethnic and linguistic minorities, mirrored on the discussion of recent issues in a number of well-known Western European minority situations.
The World Water Development Report 2003 pointed out the extensive problem that: 'Sadly, the tragedy of the water crisis is not simply a result of lack of water but is, essentially, one of poor water governance.' Cross-sectional and historical intra-national and international comparisons have been recognized as a valuable method of study in different sectors of human life, including technologies and governance. Environmental History of Water fills this gap, with its main focus being on water and sanitation services and their evolution. Altogether 34 authors have written 30 chapters for this multidisciplinary book which divides into four chronological parts, from ancient cultures to the challe...
Embracing the political, intellectual, social and cultural history of Soviet Russia, this book provides a useful perspective of Putin’s Russia. Focusing on the ethics in Soviet Russia, it explores the history of moral thinking amongst dissidents, and examines the ethical assumptions of the perestroika era.
This book explains how and why the state-socialist regime in Hungary used technology and propaganda to foster industrialization and the conservation of natural resources simultaneously. Further, this book explains why this process was ultimately a failure. By exploring the environmental pre-history of communist Hungary before analyzing the economic development of the Kádár regime, Pál investigates how economic and environmental policies and technology transfer were negotiated between the official communist ideology and the global economic reality of capitalist markets. Pál argues that the modernization project of the Kádár regime (1956–1990) facilitated ecological consciousness – at both an individual and societal level – which provoked great social unrest when positive environmental impact was not achieved. Today, global issues of climate change, urban pollution, resource depletion, and overpopulation transcend political systems, but economic and environmental discourses varied greatly in the twentieth century. This volume is important reading for all those interested in economic and environmental history, as well as political science.