Virgin Soil Upturned
Virgin Soil Upturned

Author: Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov

Publisher: University Press of the Pacific

Published: 2000-12

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780898751147

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Mikhail Sholokhov is rightly considered both in his own country and abroad the foremost Soviet novelist of his generation. Born in 1905, in a working Cossack family, Sholokhov?s most impressionable years were those of the Russian Revolution and Civil War, which he had described with penetrating insight. In 1926, he began his great epic of the Civil War And Quite Flows the Don, and, to use his own words,"found himself" as a writer "in that arduous and joyful creative work". And Quite Flows the Don was completed in 1940. The first book of Virgin Soil Upturned came out in 1932. The second was competed in 1960. In 1957 Sholokhov wrote a story, The Fate of a Man, which has become world famous. Also, he was working on They Fought for Their Country, a novel about Soviet people in the Second World War. Sholokhov is truly a writer of the people. His books have been printed in more than thirty-two million copies and translated into sixty-four languages. Through the scene is set in a small Cossack village, Sholokhov?s scope is no less great than in his other work, for the fate of his characters is the fate of a whole nation undergoing the greatest social revolution in its history. A process of change had been set afoot that was to spread into every corner of Cossack life. Outworn traditions and habits were swept aside, personalities and ideas that had taken generations to form were either broken or made anew and all this in the face of bitter opposition from those who could not or would not change. With a telling humanity Sholokhov depicts the faults and strivings, the suffering and laughter both of the fighters for progress with whom he himself has such deep ties, and their opponents. This book has a fundamental message for those who wish to understand the stresses and strains of Soviet life from the 1930's to the present day.

Stalin's Scribe
Stalin's Scribe

Author: Brian Boeck

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2019-02-05

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 1681779390

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A masterful and definitive biography of one of the most misunderstood and controversial writers in Russian literature. Mikhail Sholokhov is arguably one of the most contentious recipients of the Nobel Prize in literature in history. As a young man, Sholokhov’s epic novel, Quiet Don, became an unprecedented overnight success. Stalin’s Scribe is the first biography of a man who was once one of the Soviet Union’s most prominent political figures. Thanks to the opening of Russia’s archives, Brian Boeck discovers that Sholokhov’s official Soviet biography is actually a tangled web of legends, half-truths, and contradictions. Boeck examines the complex connection between an author and a dictator, revealing how a Stalinist courtier became an ideological acrobat and consummate politician in order to stay in favor and remain relevant after the dictator’s death. Stalin's Scribe is remarkable biography that both reinforces and clashes with our understanding of the Soviet system. It reveals a Sholokhov who is bold, uncompromising, and sympathetic—and reconciles him with the vindictive and mean-spirited man described in so many accounts of late Soviet history. Shockingly, at the height of the terror, which claimed over a million lives, Sholokhov became a member of the most minuscule subset of the Soviet Union’s population—the handful of individuals whom Stalin personally intervened to save.

Socialist Cosmopolitanism
Socialist Cosmopolitanism

Author: Nicolai Volland

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2017-03-28

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 0231544758

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Socialist Cosmopolitanism offers an innovative interpretation of literary works from the Mao era that reads Chinese socialist literature as world literature. As Nicolai Volland demonstrates, after 1949 China engaged with the world beyond its borders in a variety of ways and on many levels—politically, economically, and culturally. Far from rejecting the worldliness of earlier eras, the young People's Republic developed its own cosmopolitanism. Rather than a radical break with the past, Chinese socialist literature should be seen as an integral and important chapter in China's long search to find a place within world literature. Socialist Cosmopolitanism revisits a range of genres, from poetry and land reform novels to science fiction and children's literature, and shows how Chinese writers and readers alike saw their own literary production as part of a much larger literary universe. This literary space, reaching from Beijing to Berlin, from Prague to Pyongyang, from Warsaw to Moscow to Hanoi, allowed authors and texts to travel, reinventing the meaning of world literature. Chinese socialist literature was not driven solely by politics but by an ambitious—but ultimately doomed—attempt to redraw the literary world map.

An Anthology of Russian Literature from Earliest Writings to Modern Fiction
An Anthology of Russian Literature from Earliest Writings to Modern Fiction

Author: Nicholas Rzhevsky

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-09-16

Total Pages: 566

ISBN-13: 1317476867

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Russia has a rich, huge, unwieldy cultural tradition. How to grasp it? This classroom reader is designed to respond to that problem. The literary works selected for inclusion in this anthology introduce the core cultural and historic themes of Russia's civilisation. Each text has resonance throughout the arts - in Rublev's icons, Meyerhold's theatre, Mousorgsky's operas, Prokofiev's symphonies, Fokine's choreography and Kandinsky's paintings. This material is supported by introductions, helpful annotations and bibliographies of resources in all media. The reader is intended for use in courses in Russian literature, culture and civilisation, as well as comparative literature.

Virgin Lands
Virgin Lands

Author: L. I. Brezhnev

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 2014-05-19

Total Pages: 127

ISBN-13: 1483152162

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Virgin Lands: Two Years in Kazakhstan, 1954-5 focuses on the life, career, and experiences of L. I. Brezhnev when he stayed in Kazakhstan to push for the improvement of the agriculture sector of the country. The book first offers information on the experiences of L. I. Brezhnev as a farmer, land-use surveyor, metallurgist, factory worker, and politician. Brezhnev underscores how he pushed for the organization of collective farms. The text also highlights the poor state of agriculture in the country, including the farming methodologies that Brezhnev and his countrymen have adopted to overcome the extreme conditions of farming lands. The manuscript details the improvement of state farms, particularly noting the increase in harvest and the number of farms to be set up. Brezhnev narrates how the state farms are affected by drought and extreme weather conditions, and how they have doubled the crop areas through the use of farm implements. The book also underscores the role of farm machineries in the increase of production of grain, meat, and vegetables. The text is a dependable source of data for readers interested in the life and career of L. I. Brezhnev, particularly his dedication to develop agriculture in Kazakhstan.

Red Virgin
Red Virgin

Author: Louise Michel

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Published: 1981

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0817300635

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Louise Michel was born illegitimate in 1830 and became a schoolmistress in Paris. She was involved in radical activities during the twilight of France’s Second Empire, and during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the siege of Paris. She was a leading member of the revolutionary groups controlling Montmarte. Michel emerged as one of the leaders of the insurrection during the Paris Commune of March-May 1871; and French anarchists saw her as martyr and saint – The Red Virgin. When the Versailles government crushed the Commune in May 1871, Michel was sentenced to exile in New Caledonia, until the general amnesty of 1880, when she returned to France and great popular acclaim and support from the working people of the country. Michel was arrested again during a demonstration in Paris in 1883 and sentenced to six years in prison. Pardoned after three years, she continued her speeches and writing, although she spent the greater part of her time from 1890 until her death in 1905 in England in self-imposed exile. It was during her prison term from 1883 to 1886 that she compiled her Memoires, now available in English. These memoirs offer readers a view of the non-Marxist left and give an in-depth look into the development of the revolutionary spirit. The early chapters treat her childhood, the development of her revolutionary feelings, and her training as a schoolteacher. The next section describes her activities as a schoolteacher in the Haute-Marne and Paris and therefore contains much of interest on education in 19th-century Europe. Her chapters on the siege of Paris, the Commune, and her first trial show those events from the point of view of a major participant. Of particular interest is a chapter on women’s rights, which Michel saw as part of the search for the rights of all people, male and female, and not as a separate struggle. The Red Virgin: Memoirs of Louise Michel will be useful to both scholars and students of 19th-century French history and women’s studies.