You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This masterwork of interpretative history begins with a bold declaration: The Modern Age is the Jewish Age--and we are all, to varying degrees, Jews. The assertion is, of course, metaphorical. But it underscores Yuri Slezkine's provocative thesis. Not only have Jews adapted better than many other groups to living in the modern world, they have become the premiere symbol and standard of modern life everywhere. Slezkine argues that the Jews were, in effect, among the world's first free agents. They traditionally belonged to a social and anthropological category known as "service nomads," an outsider group specializing in the delivery of goods and services. Their role, Slezkine argues, was part...
For over five hundred years the Russians wondered what kind of people their Arctic and sub-Arctic subjects were. "They have mouths between their shoulders and eyes in their chests," reported a fifteenth-century tale. "They rove around, live of their own free will, and beat the Russian people," complained a seventeenth-century Cossack. "Their actions are exceedingly rude. They do not take off their hats and do not bow to each other," huffed an eighteenth-century scholar. They are "children of nature" and "guardians of ecological balance," rhapsodized early nineteenth-century and late twentieth-century romantics. Even the Bolsheviks, who categorized the circumpolar foragers as "authentic prole...
On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the epic story of an enormous apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destruction The House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment. Written in the tradition of Tolstoy's War and Peace, Grossman’s Life and Fate, and Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, Yuri Slezkine’s gripping narrative tells the true story of the residents of an enormous Moscow apartment building where top Communist officials and their families lived before they were destroyed in Stalin’s purges. A vivid account of the personal and public lives of Bolshevik true believers, the book ...
Being Soviet adopts a refreshing and innovative approach to the crucial years between 1939 and 1953 in the USSR. It examines how the language of Soviet identity evolved in this period, and how ordinary citizens responded to that shift.
Covering the period 1879 to 1959, and taking in everything from Ibsen to Beckett, this book is volume one of a two-part comprehensive examination of the plays, dramatists, and movements that comprise modern world drama. Contains detailed analysis of plays and playwrights, connecting themes and offering original interpretations Includes coverage of non-English works and traditions to create a global view of modern drama Considers the influence of modernism in art, music, literature, architecture, society, and politics on the formation of modern dramatic literature Takes an interpretative and analytical approach to modern dramatic texts rather than focusing on production history Includes coverage of the ways in which staging practices, design concepts, and acting styles informed the construction of the dramas
This book is a tribute to the memory of Victor Zaslavsky (1937?2009), sociologist, ‚migr‚ from the Soviet Union, Canadian citizen, public intellectual, and keen observer of Eastern Europe.In seventeen essaysleading European, American and Russian scholars discuss the theory and the history of totalitarian society with a comparative approach. They revisit and reassess what Zaslavsky considered the most important project in the latter part of his life: the analysis of Eastern European - especially Soviet societies and their difficult ?transition? after the fall of communism in 1989?91. The variety of the contributions reflects the diversity of specialists in the volume, but also reveals Zaslavsky?s gift: he surrounded himself with talented people from many different fields and disciplines. In line with Zaslavsky?s work and scholarly method, the book promotes new theoretical and methodological approaches to the concept of totalitarianism for understanding Soviet and East European societies, and the study of fascist and communist regimes in general. ÿ
The Russian Empire s American holding, Alaska, was governed by men who fought to bring trade as well as civilization and enlightenment to the colony. Many histories tell and retell that story, but there s another side. In 1829 the Russian-America Company decreed that women would be central to their civilizing mission. Any governor appointed after that date had to have a wife. Rabow-Edling s extraordinary scholarship (including primary research in English, Russian, Swedish, and German) sets the context for that RAC decision and explores the lives of three governor s wives: Elisabeth von Wrangell, Margaretha Etholen, and Anna Furuhjelm. Each woman left behind writing that reveals both personal and cultural struggles and insights while working to fulfill the mission that brought them to Novo-Archangel sk."
Kosovo: The Politics of Identity and Space explores the Albanian-Serbian confrontation after Slobodan Milosevic's rise to power and the policy of repression in Kosovo through the lens of the Kosovo education system. The argument is woven around the story of imposed ethnic segregation in Kosovo's education, and its impact on the emergence of exclusive notions of nation and homeland among the Serbian and Albanian youth in the 1990s. The book also critically explores the wider context of the Albanian non-violent resistance, including the emergence of the parallel state and its weaknesses. Kosovo: The Politics of Identity and Space not only provides an insight into events that led to the bloodshed in Kosovo in the late 1990s, but also shows that the legacy of segregation is one of the major challenges the international community faces in its efforts to establish an integrated multi-ethnic society in the territory.
Asked shortly after the revolution about how she viewed the new government, Tatiana Varsher replied, "With the wide-open eyes of a historian." Her countrywoman, Zinaida Zhemchuzhnaia, expressed a similar need to take note: "I want to write about the way those events were perceived and reflected in the humble and distant corner of Russia that was the Cossack town of Korenovskaia." What these women witnessed and experienced, and what they were moved to describe, is part of the extraordinary portrait of life in revolutionary Russia presented in this book. A collection of life stories of Russian women in the first half of the twentieth century, In the Shadow of Revolution brings together the tes...
This work draws upon the history of Arctic development and the view of the Arctic in different states to explain how such a discourse has manifested itself in current broader cooperation across eight statistics analysis based on organization developments from the late 1970s to the present, shows that international region discourse has largely been forwarded through the extensive role of North American, particularly Canadian, networks and deriving form their frontier-based conceptualization of the north.