The Electrification of Russia, 1880–1926
The Electrification of Russia, 1880–1926

Author: Jonathan Coopersmith

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2016-11-01

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 1501705369

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The Electrification of Russia, 1880–1926 is the first full account of the widespread adoption of electricity in Russia, from the beginning in the 1880s to its early years as a state technology under Soviet rule. Jonathan Coopersmith has mined the archives for both the tsarist and the Soviet periods to examine a crucial element in the modernization of Russia. Coopersmith shows how the Communist Party forged an alliance with engineers to harness the socially transformative power of this science-based enterprise. A centralized plan of electrification triumphed, to the benefit of the Communist Party and the detriment of local governments and the electrical engineers. Coopersmith’s narrative of how this came to be elucidates the deep-seated and chronic conflict between the utopianism of Soviet ideology and the reality of Soviet politics and economics.

Industry, State, and Society in Stalin's Russia, 1926–1934
Industry, State, and Society in Stalin's Russia, 1926–1934

Author: David R. Shearer

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-09-05

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1501729861

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In his reexamination of the origins of the Stalinist state during the formative period of rapid industrialization in the late 1920s and early 1930s, David R. Shearer argues that a centralized state-controlled economic system was the consciously conceived political creation of Stalinist leaders rather than the inevitable by-product of socialist industrialization. Focusing on the different economic and bureaucratic cultures within the industrial system, Shearer reconstructs the debates in 1928 and 1929 over administrative, financial, and commercial reform. He uses information from recently opened archives to show that attempts by the state's trading organizations to create a commercial economy enjoyed wide support, offering a model that combined planning and rapid industrialization with social democracy and economic prosperity. In an effort to crush the syndicate movement and establish tight political control over the economy, Stalinist leaders intervened with a program of radical reforms. Shearer demonstrates that professional engineers, planners and industrial administrators in many cases actively supported the creation of a powerful industrial state unhampered by domestic social and economic constraints. The paradoxical result, Shearer shows, was a loss of control. The overly centralized system that emerged during the first Five-Year Plan was rendered incoherent by periodic economic crises and the continuing influence of partially suppressed social and market forces.

The End and the Beginning
The End and the Beginning

Author: Vladimir Tismaneanu

Publisher: Central European University Press

Published: 2012-06-20

Total Pages: 602

ISBN-13: 6155053677

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A fresh interpretation of the contexts, meanings, and consequences of the revolutions of 1989, coupled with state of the art reassessment of the significance and consequences of the events associated with the demise of communist regimes. The book provides an analysis that takes into account the complexities of the Soviet bloc, the events' impact upon Europe, and their re-interpretation within a larger global context. Departs from static ways of analysis (events and their significance) bringing forth approaches that deal with both pre-1989 developments and the 1989 context itself, while extensively discussing the ways of resituating 1989 in the larger context of the 20th century and of its lessons for the 21st.Emphasizes the possibility for re-thinking and re-visiting the filters and means that scholars use to interpret such turning point. The editors perceive the present project as a challenge to existing readings on the complex set of issues and topics presupposed by a re-evaluation of 1989 as a symbol of the change and transition from authoritarianism to democracy.

Second Metropolis
Second Metropolis

Author: Blair A. Ruble

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2001-05-28

Total Pages: 502

ISBN-13: 9780521801799

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This book explores how social fragmentation led to pluralistic public policies in Chicago, Moscow, and Osaka.

A History of Russia Volume 1
A History of Russia Volume 1

Author: Walter G. Moss

Publisher: Anthem Press

Published: 2003-07-01

Total Pages: 654

ISBN-13: 1843310236

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This new edition retains the features of the first edition that made it a popular choice in universities and colleges throughout the US, Canada and around the world. Moss’s accessible history includes full treatment of everyday life, the role of women, rural life, law, religion, literature and art. In addition, it provides many other features that have proven successful with both professors and students, including: a well-organized and clearly written text, references to varying historical perspectives, numerous illustrations and maps that supplement and amplify the text, fully updated bibliographies accompanying each chapter as well as a general bibliography of more comprehensive works, a glossary, and chronological and genealogical lists. Moss’s A History of Russia will appeal to academics, students and general readers alike.

Central Asia in the Era of Sovereignty
Central Asia in the Era of Sovereignty

Author: Daniel L. Burghart

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2018-03-16

Total Pages: 545

ISBN-13: 1498572677

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After twenty-five years of independence, there is little doubt that the five Central Asian states will persist as sovereign, independent states. They increasingly differ from each other, and are making their way in global politics. No longer connected only to Russia, they are now connected in important ways to Afghanistan, South Asia, China, Iran, and each other. This volume covers a wide range of issues and presents the work of emerging scholars authors well-known for their expertise in the region. The first part addresses social issues. Covering a wide range from HIV/AIDs to social media, the rebirth of Islam, outmigration, and problematic borders, this section follows two main currents: political development in the region and states’ responses to transboundary challenges. The second part, addressing economics and security, provides analyses of new infrastructure, informal economies (from bazaars to criminal networks), energy development, the role of enclaves in the Ferghana Valley, and the development of the states’ military structures. This section illuminates the interactions between economic developments and security, and the forces that could undermine both. The final part, comprised of five case studies, offers a “deeper dive” into a specific factor that matters in the development of each Central Asian state. These cases include Kazakhstan’s foreign policy identity, Kyrgyzstan’s domestic politics, Tajikistan’s pursuit of hydropower, foreign direct investment in Turkmenistan, and the perception of everyday corruption in Uzbekistan.

Britain Confronts the Stalin Revolution
Britain Confronts the Stalin Revolution

Author: Gordon W. Morrell

Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press

Published: 2006-01-01

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0889206767

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“Russian politics, like opium, seems infallibly to provoke the most fantastic dreams and imaginings on the part of the people who study them.” — E.A. Walker, British Embassy, Moscow 1931 In March 1933 the economic section of the Soviet secret police arrested six British engineers employed by the Metropolitan Vickers Electrical Company. The arrests provoked a confrontation that brought Anglo-Soviet relations to the brink of disaster and resurrected the spectre of the show trials and purges of the technical intelligentsia that had shaken Soviet society from 1928 to 1931. Britain Confronts the Stalin Revolution is the first full-length study of the Metro-Vickers’ show trial of 1933. Based upon some new and many underutilized Soviet and British sources, Gordon Morrell examines the political, economic, social, legal and cultural dimensions of the only Stalinist political trial of the 1930s that directly engaged a foreign power. Morrell explores the roots of the crisis by analyzing Metro-Vickers’ role in the electrification of the USSR and he examines the political, economic and diplomatic relations between Britain and the Soviets that gave the crisis its international importance. He focusses on the efforts of the British Government to understand and respond to the new Stalinist order and, importantly, casts new light on the apparent role of the British Industrial Intelligence Centre during the early 1930s. Britain Confronts the Stalin Revolution is an accessible, original and multidimensional work that makes an important contribution to the study of Anglo-Soviet relations.

A History Of Russia Volume 2
A History Of Russia Volume 2

Author: Walter G. Moss

Publisher: Anthem Press

Published: 2004-10-01

Total Pages: 667

ISBN-13: 0857287397

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Moss has significantly revised his text and bibliography in this second edition to reflect new research findings and controversies on numerous subjects. He has also brought the history up to date by revising the post-Soviet material, which now covers events from the end of 1991 up to the present day. This new edition retains the features of the successful first edition that have made it a popular choice in universities and colleges throughout the US, Canada and around the world.

A Will within a Wheel
A Will within a Wheel

Author: T.R. Ormond

Publisher: FriesenPress

Published: 2024-02-02

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 1039182062

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Six-day races, record-breaking rides, and renegade leagues are at the heart of this fascinating short fiction collection that explores women’s competitive cycling in the late Victorian era. Each of the stories contained in this meticulously researched collection focuses on a distinct racing event and the individual “ladies” who competed in them—like the indomitable Tillie Anderson—who mustered every muscle and every ounce of strength to prove that women had a place in the world of cycling. Overcoming constant scrutiny, judgement, chauvinism, exploitation, and even danger, these racers pedaled their way into annals of feminism, freedom, and cycling history.