Tolstoy
Tolstoy

Author: Rosamund Bartlett

Publisher: HMH

Published: 2011-11-08

Total Pages: 581

ISBN-13: 0547545878

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This biography of the brilliant author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina “should become the first resort for everyone drawn to its titanic subject” (Booklist, starred review). In November 1910, Count Lev Tolstoy died at a remote Russian railway station. At the time of his death, he was the most famous man in Russia, more revered than the tsar, with a growing international following. Born into an aristocratic family, Tolstoy spent his existence rebelling against not only conventional ideas about literature and art but also traditional education, family life, organized religion, and the state. In “an epic biography that does justice to an epic figure,” Rosamund Bartlett draws extensively on key Russian sources, including fascinating material that has only become available since the collapse of the Soviet Union (Library Journal, starred review). She sheds light on Tolstoy’s remarkable journey from callow youth to writer to prophet; discusses his troubled relationship with his wife, Sonya; and vividly evokes the Russian landscapes Tolstoy so loved and the turbulent times in which he lived.

Ivan Pavlov
Ivan Pavlov

Author: Daniel Philip Todes

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 897

ISBN-13: 0199925194

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This is a definitive, deeply researched biography of Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) and is the first scholarly biography to be published in any language. The book is Todes's magnum opus, which he has been working on for some twenty years. Todes makes use of a wealth of archival material to portray Pavlov's personality, life, times, and scientific work. Combining personal documents with a close reading of scientific texts, Todes fundamentally reinterprets Pavlov's famous research on conditional reflexes. Contrary to legend, Pavlov was not a behaviorist (a misimpression captured in the false iconic image of his "training a dog to salivate to the sound of a bell"); rather, he sought to explain not simply external behaviors, but the emotional and intellectual life of animals and humans. This iconic "objectivist" was actually a profoundly anthropomorphic thinker whose science was suffused with his own experiences, values, and subjective interpretations. This book is also a traditional "life and times" biography that weaves Pavlov into some 100 years of Russian history-particularly that of its intelligentsia--from the emancipation of the serfs to Stalin's time. Pavlov was born to a family of priests in provincial Ryazan before the serfs were emancipated, made his home and professional success in the glittering capital of St. Petersburg in late imperial Russia, suffered the cataclysmic destruction of his world during the Bolshevik seizure of power and civil war of 1917- 1921, rebuilt his life in his 70s as a "prosperous dissident" during the Leninist 1920s, and flourished professionally as never before in 1929-1936 during the industrialization, revolution, and terror of Stalin. Todes's story of this powerful personality and extraordinary man is based upon interviews with surviving coworkers and family members (along with never-before-analyzed taped interviews from the 1960s and 1970s), examination of hundreds of scientific works

Everyday Life in Russia
Everyday Life in Russia

Author: Choi Chatterjee

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2015-01-29

Total Pages: 443

ISBN-13: 0253012600

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A panoramic, interdisciplinary survey of Russian lives and “a must-read for any scholar engaging with Russian culture” (The Russian Review). In this interdisciplinary collection of essays, distinguished scholars survey the cultural practices, power relations, and behaviors that characterized Russian daily life from pre-revolutionary times through the post-Soviet present. Microanalyses and transnational perspectives shed new light on the formation and elaboration of gender, ethnicity, class, nationalism, and subjectivity. Changes in consumption and communication patterns, the restructuring of familial and social relations, systems of cultural meanings, and evolving practices in the home, at the workplace, and at sites of leisure are among the topics explored. “Offers readers a richly theoretical and empirical consideration of the ‘state of play’ of everyday life as it applies to the interdisciplinary study of Russia.” —Slavic Review “An engaging look at a vibrant area of research . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice “Volumes of such diversity frequently miss the mark, but this one represents a welcomed introduction to and a ‘must’ read for anyone seriously interested in the subject.” —Cahiers du Monde russe

Dangerous Thoughts
Dangerous Thoughts

Author: Yuri Orlov

Publisher: William Morrow

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13:

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In this highly personal memoir, Yuri Orlov, celebrated scientist and human rights activist, recalls his life in pre-Glasnost Russia. He describes his days as a young man under Stalin, the persecution of his friends Sakharov and Scharansky, and his release from exile, in the famous spy for dissident swap arranged by the U.S., which generated international headlines.

A Life Under Russian Serfdom
A Life Under Russian Serfdom

Author: Savva Dmitrievich Purlevskii

Publisher: Central European University Press

Published: 2005-01-01

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13: 9789637326158

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"Gorshkov's introduction provides some basic knowledge about Russian serfdom and draws upon the most recent scholarship. Notes provide references and general information about events, places and people mentioned in the memoirs."--Jacket.

The Things of Life
The Things of Life

Author: Alexey Golubev

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2020-12-15

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 1501752901

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The Things of Life is a social and cultural history of material objects and spaces during the late socialist era. It traces the biographies of Soviet things, examining how the material world of the late Soviet period influenced Soviet people's gender roles, habitual choices, social trajectories, and imaginary aspirations. Instead of seeing political structures and discursive frameworks as the only mechanisms for shaping Soviet citizens, Alexey Golubev explores how Soviet people used objects and spaces to substantiate their individual and collective selves. In doing so, Golubev rediscovers what helped Soviet citizens make sense of their selves and the world around them, ranging from space rockets and model aircraft to heritage buildings, and from home gyms to the hallways and basements of post-Stalinist housing. Through these various materialist fascinations, The Things of Life considers the ways in which many Soviet people subverted the efforts of the Communist regime to transform them into a rationally organized, disciplined, and easily controllable community. Golubev argues that late Soviet materiality had an immense impact on the organization of the Soviet historical and spatial imagination. His approach also makes clear the ways in which the Soviet self was an integral part of the global experience of modernity rather than simply an outcome of Communist propaganda. Through its focus on materiality and personhood, The Things of Life expands our understanding of what made Soviet people and society "Soviet."

Life Is Elsewhere
Life Is Elsewhere

Author: Anne Lounsbery

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2019-11-15

Total Pages: 489

ISBN-13: 1501747932

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In Life Is Elsewhere, Anne Lounsbery shows how nineteenth-century Russian literature created an imaginary place called "the provinces"—a place at once homogeneous, static, anonymous, and symbolically opposed to Petersburg and Moscow. Lounsbery looks at a wide range of texts, both canonical and lesser-known, in order to explain why the trope has exercised such enduring power, and what role it plays in the larger symbolic geography that structures Russian literature's representation of the nation's space. Using a comparative approach, she brings to light fundamental questions that have long gone unasked: how to understand, for instance, the weakness of literary regionalism in a country as large as Russia? Why the insistence, from Herzen through Chekhov and beyond, that all Russian towns look the same? In a literary tradition that constantly compared itself to a western European standard, Lounsbery argues, the problem of provinciality always implied difficult questions about the symbolic geography of the nation as a whole. This constant awareness of a far-off European model helps explain why the provinces, in all their supposed drabness and predictability, are a topic of such fascination for Russian writers—why these anonymous places are in effect so important and meaningful, notwithstanding the culture's nearly unremitting emphasis on their nullity and meaninglessness.

Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia
Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia

Author: Olʹga Petrovna Semenova-Ti︠a︡n-Shanskai︠a︡

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 9780253347978

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Ò . . . a marvelous source for the social history of Russian peasant society in the years before the revolution. . . . The translation is superb.Ó ÑSteven Hoch Ò . . . one of the best ethnographic portraits that we have of the Russian village. . . . a highly readable text that is an excellent introduction to the world of the Russian peasantry.Ó ÑSamuel C. Ramer Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia provides a unique firsthand portrait of peasant family life as recorded by Olga Semyonova Tian-Shanskaia, an ethnographer and painter who spent four years at the turn of the twentieth century observing the life and customs of villagers in a central Russian province. Unusual in its awareness of the rapid changes in the Russian village in the late nineteenth century and in its concentration on the treatment of women and children, SemyonovaÕs ethnography vividly describes courting rituals, marriage and sexual practices, childbirth, infanticide, child-rearing practices, the lives of women, food and drink, work habits, and the household economy. In contrast to a tradition of rosy, romanticized descriptions of peasant communities by Russian upper-class observers, Semyonova gives an unvarnished account of the harsh living conditions and often brutal relationships within peasant families.

The Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks
The Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks

Author: Igort

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2016-04-26

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1451678878

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Graphic novelist Igort illuminates two harrowing moments in recent history--the Ukraine famine and the assassination of a Russian journalist.