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Zenovia A. Sochor here assesses one of the most important debates within the Bolshevik leadership during the early years of Soviet power-that between A. A. Bogdanov and V. I. Lenin. Once comrades-in-arms, Bogdanov and Lenin became political rivals prior to the October Revolution. Their disagreements over political and cultural issues led to a split in the Bolshevik Party, with Bogdanov spearheading the party's left-wing faction and attracting a following of notable intellectuals. Before Lenin died in 1924, however, he had succeeded in shaping Soviet society according to his own vision, and today Bolshevism is commonly identified with Leninism while Bogdanovism is little known. Sochor provides the first full exposition in English of Bogdanov's views, which, she asserts, must be understood to appreciate the choices available and the paths not taken during the formative years of the Soviet regime.
The Philosophy of Living Experience is the single best introduction to the thought of Alexander Bogdanov (1873–1928), a Russian polymath who was co-founder, with Lenin, of the Bolshevik Party. His landmark achievements are Empiriomonism (1904–6), a philosophy of radical empiricism that he developed to replace what he considered to be the crude materialism of contemporary Marxists, and Tektology: Universal Organisational Science (1912–17), a precursor of cybernetics and systems theory. The Philosophy of Living Experience (1913) was written at a transitional point between the two; it is a final summing up of empiriomonism, an illustration of his theory of the social genesis of ideas, and an anticipation of Tektology.
Crucial texts, many available in English for the first time, written before and during the Bolshevik Revolution by the radical biopolitical utopianists of Russian Cosmism. Cosmism emerged in Russia before the October Revolution and developed through the 1920s and 1930s; like Marxism and the European avant-garde, two other movements that shared this intellectual moment, Russian Cosmism rejected the contemplative for the transformative, aiming to create not merely new art or philosophy but a new world. Cosmism went the furthest in its visions of transformation, calling for the end of death, the resuscitation of the dead, and free movement in cosmic space. This volume collects crucial texts, ma...
This searing critique of participatory art—from its development to its political ambitions—is “an essential title for contemporary art history scholars and students as well as anyone who has . . . thought, ‘Now that’s art!’ or ‘That’s art?’” (Library Journal) Since the 1990s, critics and curators have broadly accepted the notion that participatory art is the ultimate political art: that by encouraging an audience to take part an artist can promote new emancipatory social relations. Around the world, the champions of this form of expression are numerous, ranging from art historians such as Grant Kester, curators such as Nicolas Bourriaud and Nato Thompson, to performance t...
This book makes the case that several East Central European countries have emerged as fully consolidated democracies. As such, they may be integrated into the mainstream of political science research, and not consigned forever to a transitional category encompassing countries that are now fully democracies as well as some that are not democratic at all. The author outlines the steps of another transition - from post-communist studies to political science research. He demonstrates how institutionalist, or rational choice, theories can be applied to the analysis of political processes in the successfully democratized countries, and proposes a new research agenda for political scientists studying the region. The results of this work can enrich political science as well as our understanding of both democracy and the polities of contemporary Eastern Europe.
An examination of literary works spanning more than seven centuries, this volume studies the ascetic hero and asceticism, exploring the elusive interplay between religion, politics, and belles lettres in Russia. The first part places works including the thirteenth-century Kievan Crypt Patericon and Life of Avraamii Smolenskii, Epifaniis Life of Sergii Radonezhskii, and other lives written in the north of Russia, in the context of crucial religious doctrines such as apocalypticism and deification. The author shows how Old Russian literature plays a major cultural role in the continuing development of these doctrines on Russian soil. The second part traces a revival of the Russian fascinatio...
'...erudite, thought-provoking and well-written.'Archie Brown, Professor of Politics, Oxford University. The return to prominence of the concept of political culture offers an opportunity to re-evaluate its contribution to the social sciences. This study casts a broader than usual net, embracing not only political science (with equal emphasis placed on the concept's use in communist studies), but also sociology and history. On this basis a distinctive theory of political culture, and not merely another typology, is developed. Political culture, instead of being a token in the sterile debate between interest- and culture-based explanation, offers the means of transcending that debate.
This ambitious ten-volume series develops a comprehensive analysis of the evolving world role of the post-Soviet successor states. Each volume considers a different factor influencing the relationship between internal politics and international relations in Russia and in the western and southern tiers of newly independent states. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the discrediting of Marxism-Leninism as a source of political legitimacy have prompted a search for fresh principles of political organization that will shape the nature of political culture in all the post-Soviet countries. This volume analyzes the nature of the emerging political cultures and their impact on the processes of democratization in these new states.
This book offers an innovative examination of the interactions of science and technology, art, and literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Scholars in the history of art, literature, architecture, computer science, and media studies focus on five historical themes in the transition from energy to information: thermodynamics, electromagnetism, inscription, information theory, and virtuality. Different disciplines are grouped around specific moments in the history of science and technology in order to sample the modes of representation invented or adapted by each field in response to newly developed scientific concepts and models. By placing literary fictions and the plastic arts...
Coffee from East Africa, wine from California, chocolate from the Ivory Coast - all those every day products are based on labour, often produced under appalling conditions, but always involving the combination of various work processes we are often not aware of. What is the day-to-day reality for workers in various parts of the world, and how was it in the past? How do they work today, and how did they work in the past? These and many other questions comprise the field of the global history of work – a young discipline that is introduced with this handbook. In 8 thematic chapters, this book discusses these aspects of work in a global and long term perspective, paying attention to several kinds of work. Convict labour, slave and wage labour, labour migration, and workers of the textile industry, but also workers' organisation, strikes, and motivations for work are part of this first handbook of global labour history, written by the most renowned scholars of the profession.