The Popular Theatre Movement in Russia, 1862-1919
The Popular Theatre Movement in Russia, 1862-1919

Author: Gary Thurston

Publisher: Northwestern University Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 9780810115507

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In The Popular Theatre Movement in Russia, Gary Thurston illuminates the "popular theater" of pre-revolutionary Russia, which existed alongside the performing arts for the nation's economic elite. He shows how from Peter the Great's creation of Europe's first theater for popular enlightenment to Lenin's decree nationalizing all Soviet theaters, Russian rulers aggressively exploited this enduring art form for ideological ends rather than for its commercial potential. After the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, educated Russians began to present plays as part of a crusade to "civilize" the peasants. Relying on archival and published material virtually unknown outside Russia, this study looks at how playwrights criticized Russian social and political realities, how various groups perceived their plays, and how the plays motivated viewers to change themselves or change their circumstances. The picture that emerges is of a potent civic art influential in a way that eluded and challenged authoritarian control.

Food in Russian History and Culture
Food in Russian History and Culture

Author: Musya Glants

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 1997-08-22

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 9780253211064

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This Collection of Original Essays gives surprising insights into what foodways reveal about Russia's history and culture from Kievan times to the present. A wide array of sources - including chronicles, diaries, letters, police records, poems, novels, folklore, paintings, and cookbooks - help to interpret the moral and spiritual role of food in Russian culture. Stovelore in Russian folklife, fasting in Russian peasant culture, food as power in Dostoevsky's fiction, Tolstoy and vegetarianism, restaurants in early Soviet Russia, Soviet cookery and cookbooks, and food as art in Soviet paintings are among the topics discussed in this appealing volume.

Making Peasants Backward
Making Peasants Backward

Author: Y. Kotsonis

Publisher: Springer

Published: 1999-06-30

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0230376304

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In this first monograph on the Russian cooperative movement before 1914, economic and social change is considered alongside Russian political culture. Looking at such historical actors as Sergei Witte, Piotr Stolypin, and Alexander Chaianov, and by tapping into several newly opened Russian local and state archives on peasant practice in the movement, Kotsonis suggests how cooperatives reflected a pan-European dilemma over whether and to what extent populations could participate in their own transformation.

Party, State, and Society in the Russian Civil War
Party, State, and Society in the Russian Civil War

Author: Diane P. Koenker

Publisher:

Published: 1989-12-22

Total Pages: 472

ISBN-13:

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"This volume is a valuable source of information that also represents a genuinely collaborative approach to understanding Soviet history. The collection is so rich that every scholar and teacher of Soviet history will want to consult it. Highly recommended." —Choice "Documentation of this well-edited volume is exhaustive. It can be highly recommended for undergraduate and graduate students and specialists." —History "This is a surprisingly readable, well-structured book that is an absolute necessity for a college library as well as a useful addition to a scholar's personal library." —Perspectives on Political Science " . . . essential reading . . . abundant empirical research and fresh interpretations." —The Russian Review To what extent were the social responses and political choices of the Civil War years the product of social and economic circumstances and to what extent were they the result of the independent exercise of conscious political will? This landmark volume presents the leading edge of current scholarship on the social history of the Russian Civil War.

Hungry Moscow
Hungry Moscow

Author: Mauricio Borrero

Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13:

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Severe food shortages and unremitting hunger served as the background to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the civil war that followed. Hungry Moscow examines the impact of these food shortages on Moscow residents, focusing on the survival strategies they devised to overcome or minimize hunger. Also examined is the interplay between these short-term individual survival strategies and the formulation and development of long-term government policies by the Bolshevik government. Through the prisms of hunger and urban life, this book contributes to our understanding of important issues in early Soviet history, such as the relationship between central and local institutions, rationing, the growth of black markets, Bolshevik social policies, and the reordering of urban life during revolutionary times.