The Revolutionary Ascetic
The Revolutionary Ascetic

Author: Bruce Mazlish

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1351475150

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Why have the great revolutionary leaders of modern times from Robespierre to Lenin and Mao Tse-tung‘so often been ascetics, austere "puritans" with few emotional ties? What functions, political as well as personal, do these ascetic traits perform for the modern revolutionary leader and for his followers?Noted historian and author Bruce Mazlish is convinced that, beginning in the nineteenth century, the needs of modernizing revolutions have produced a distinct new type of political leader, the revolutionary ascetic. This individual's denial of personal pleasures and commitments both enables him to perform politically necessary, if personally repulsive, revolutionary acts, and to command the allegiance of his more worldly followers.Starting with Cromwell and the religious ascetics of the Puritan Revolution, Mazlish shows, in a series of fascinating personality sketches, how this asceticism first became secularized with the French Revolution and then in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was put to the service of a new kind of "total" modernizing revolution in Russia, China, and elsewhere. In two remarkably vivid portraits of Lenin and Mao Tse-tung, Mazlish shows us precisely how two of the century's best-known revolutionaries consciously and unconsciously used their personal asceticism to induce revolutionary change.

The Revolutionary Ascetic
The Revolutionary Ascetic

Author: Bruce Mazlish

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1351475142

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Why have the great revolutionary leaders of modern times?from Robespierre to Lenin and Mao Tse-tung?so often been ascetics, austere "puritans" with few emotional ties? What functions, political as well as personal, do these ascetic traits perform for the modern revolutionary leader and for his followers?Noted historian and author Bruce Mazlish is convinced that, beginning in the nineteenth century, the needs of modernizing revolutions have produced a distinct new type of political leader, the revolutionary ascetic. This individual's denial of personal pleasures and commitments both enables him to perform politically necessary, if personally repulsive, revolutionary acts, and to command the allegiance of his more worldly followers.Starting with Cromwell and the religious ascetics of the Puritan Revolution, Mazlish shows, in a series of fascinating personality sketches, how this asceticism first became secularized with the French Revolution and then in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was put to the service of a new kind of "total" modernizing revolution in Russia, China, and elsewhere. In two remarkably vivid portraits of Lenin and Mao Tse-tung, Mazlish shows us precisely how two of the century's best-known revolutionaries consciously and unconsciously used their personal asceticism to induce revolutionary change.

Beyond the Monastery Walls
Beyond the Monastery Walls

Author: Patrick Lally Michelson

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres

Published: 2017-07-11

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0299312003

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As the cultural and ideological foundations of imperial Russia were threatened by forces of modernity, an array of Orthodox churchmen, theologians, and lay thinkers turned to asceticism, hoping to ensure the coming Kingdom of God promised to the Russian nation.

Saints and Revolutionaries
Saints and Revolutionaries

Author: Marcia A. Morris

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1993-01-01

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9780791412992

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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, Epifanii's 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 fascination with themes of apocalypse and perfectibility to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Morris also documents the development of a divergence in ideological approach between Russian writers who continued to view apocalypticism and deification as religious phenomena and those who used them as tools of social and political struggle. Works by Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chernyshevsky, and Gorky, as well as classic novels of the socialist realist tradition are analyzed as evidence of the underlying unity of the literary manifestations of this ostensibly bifurcated intellectual tradition.

Way of the Ascetics
Way of the Ascetics

Author: Tito Colliander

Publisher: St Vladimir's Seminary Press

Published: 1985

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 9780881410495

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"Way of the Ascetics is a rich, compact introduction for modern readers to the Eastern Christian spiritual tradition that has been an inspiration to millions for centuries. These compassionate and insightful reflections on self-control and inner peace are meant to lead the readers to fuller union with God. The author makes a generous selection of succinct yet profound extracts from the spiritual Fathers and provides an illuminating commentary and practical applications for daily devotion. He tempers austerity with common sense, warmth, and even humor, as he urges us on our journey toward God. Written for lay persons living fully in the world as much as for clergy, Way of the Ascetics is an excellent resource for daily meditation, authentic spiritual guidance, and a revitalized religious life."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Lenin
Lenin

Author: Christopher Read

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-01-11

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 1134624719

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From a highly distinguished author on the subject, this biography is an excellent scholarly introduction to one of the key figures of the Russian Revolution and post-Tsarist Russia. Not only does it make use of archive material made newly available in the glasnost and post-Soviet eras, it re-examines traditional sources as well, providing an original interpretation of Lenin's life and historical importance. Focal points of this study are: Lenin's revolutionary ascetic personality how he exploited culture, education and propaganda his relationship to Marxism his changing class analysis of Russia his 'populist' instincts. A prominent figure at the forefront of debates on the Russina revolution, Read makes sure that Lenin remains in his place as a highly influential and significant figure of the recent past.

Maoist People's War and the Revolution of Everyday Life in Nepal
Maoist People's War and the Revolution of Everyday Life in Nepal

Author: Ina Zharkevich

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-05-09

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1108600387

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By providing a rich ethnography of wartime social processes in the former Maoist heartland of Nepal, this book explores how the Maoist People's War (1996–2006) transformed Nepali society. Drawing on long-term fieldwork with people who were located at the epicentre of the conflict, including both ardent Maoist supporters and 'reluctant rebels', it explores how a remote Himalayan village was forged as the centre of the Maoist rebellion, how its inhabitants coped with the situation of war and the Maoist regime of governance, and how they came to embrace the Maoist project and maintain ordinary life amidst the war while living in a guerilla enclave. By focusing on people's everyday lives, the book illuminates how the everyday became a primary site of revolution of crafting new subjectivities, introducing 'new' social practices and displacing the 'old' ones, and reconfiguring the ways that people act in and think about the world through the process of 'embodied change'.

Saints and Revolutionaries
Saints and Revolutionaries

Author: Marcia A. Morris

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 1993-02-04

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 1438413688

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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, Epifanii's 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 fascination with themes of apocalypse and perfectibility to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Morris also documents the development of a divergence in ideological approach between Russian writers who continued to view apocalypticism and deification as religious phenomena and those who used them as tools of social and political struggle. Works by Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chernyshevsky, and Gorky, as well as classic novels of the socialist realist tradition are analyzed as evidence of the underlying unity of the literary manifestations of this ostensibly bifurcated intellectual tradition.