This book offers a firsthand glimpse into the intellectual challenges that Russia's turbulent transition generated. It deals with many of the most important reforms, from Gorbachev's half-hearted "perestroika," to the mass privatization program, to the efforts to build legal and regulatory institutions of a market economy.
The years of late Stalinism are one of the murkiest periods in Soviet history, best known to us through the voices of Ehrenburg, Khrushchev and Solzhenitsyn. This is a sweeping history of Russia from the end of the war to the Thaw by one of Russia's respected younger historians. Drawing on the resources of newly opened archives as well as the recent outpouring of published diaries and memoirs, Elena Zubkova presents a richly detailed portrayal of the basic conditions of people's lives in Soviet Russia from 1945 to 1957. She brings out the dynamics of postwar popular expectations and the cultural stirrings set in motion by the wartime experience versus the regime's determination to reassert command over territories and populations and the mechanisms of repression. Her interpretation of the period establishes the context for the liberalizing and reformist impulses that surfaced in the post-Stalin succession struggle, characterizing what would be the formative period for a future generation of leaders: Gorbachev, Yeltsin and their contemporaries.
In Russian Society and Politics 1921-1929, Vladimir Brovkin offers a comprehensive cultural, political, economic and social history of developments in Russia in the 1920's.
In this original and timely assessment of cultural expressions of paranoia in contemporary Russia, Eliot Borenstein samples popular fiction, movies, television shows, public political pronouncements, internet discussions, blogs, and religious tracts to build a sense of the deep historical and cultural roots of konspirologiia that run through Russian life. Plots against Russia reveals through dramatic and exciting storytelling that conspiracy and melodrama are entirely equal-opportunity in modern Russia, manifesting themselves among both pro-Putin elites and his political opposition. As Borenstein shows, this paranoid fantasy until recently characterized only the marginal and the irrelevant. Now, through its embodiment in pop culture, the expressions of a conspiratorial worldview are seen everywhere. Plots against Russia is an important contribution to the fields of Russian literary and cultural studies from one of its preeminent voices.
Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 brought East - West relations to a low. But, by selling the annexation in starkly nationalist terms to grassroots nationalists, Putin's popularity reached record heights. This volume examines the interactions and tensions between state and societal nationalisms before and after the annexation.
Russia's transition from communism holds great significance not only for itself but also for the wider world. This collection of essays examines the spectrum of Russia's transition since 1991 - considering not only the pattern of events but also what the changes have meant for Russians themselves.
After Russia is considered the high point in Tsvetaeva's output of shorter poems. Tsvetaeva told Pasternak that all that mattered in the book was its anguish. Technical mastery and experimentation are underpinned by suicidal thoughts, a sense of exclusion from the circle of human love and companionship, and an increasing alienation from life.
This book presents a comprehensive overview of religious policy in Russia since the end of the communist regime, exposing many of the ambiguities and uncertainties about the position of religion in Russian life. It reveals how religious freedom in Russia has, contrary to the widely held view, a long tradition, and how the leading religious institutions in Russia today, including especially the Russian Orthodox Church but also Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist establishments, owe a great deal of their special positions to the relationship they had with the former Soviet regime. It examines the resurgence of religious freedom in the years immediately after the end of the Soviet Union, showing how this was subsequently curtailed, but only partially, by the important law of 1997. It discusses the pursuit of privilege for the Russian Orthodox Church and other ‘traditional’ beliefs under presidents Putin and Medvedev, and assesses how far Russian Orthodox Christianity is related to Russian national culture, demonstrating the unresolved nature of the key question, ‘Is Russia to be an Orthodox country with religious minorities or a multi-confessional state?’ It concludes that Russian society’s continuing failure to reach a consensus on the role of religion in public life is destabilising the nation.