Empire of Nations
Empire of Nations

Author: Francine Hirsch

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2014-10-03

Total Pages: 389

ISBN-13: 0801455944

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When the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, they set themselves the task of building socialism in the vast landscape of the former Russian Empire, a territory populated by hundreds of different peoples belonging to a multitude of linguistic, religious, and ethnic groups. Before 1917, the Bolsheviks had called for the national self-determination of all peoples and had condemned all forms of colonization as exploitative. After attaining power, however, they began to express concern that it would not be possible for Soviet Russia to survive without the cotton of Turkestan and the oil of the Caucasus. In an effort to reconcile their anti-imperialist position with their desire to hold on to as much territory as possible, the Bolsheviks integrated the national idea into the administrative-territorial structure of the new Soviet state. In Empire of Nations, Francine Hirsch examines the ways in which former imperial ethnographers and local elites provided the Bolsheviks with ethnographic knowledge that shaped the very formation of the new Soviet Union. The ethnographers—who drew inspiration from the Western European colonial context—produced all-union censuses, assisted government commissions charged with delimiting the USSR's internal borders, led expeditions to study "the human being as a productive force," and created ethnographic exhibits about the "Peoples of the USSR." In the 1930s, they would lead the Soviet campaign against Nazi race theories . Hirsch illuminates the pervasive tension between the colonial-economic and ethnographic definitions of Soviet territory; this tension informed Soviet social, economic, and administrative structures. A major contribution to the history of Russia and the Soviet Union, Empire of Nations also offers new insights into the connection between ethnography and empire.

Intermarriage and the Friendship of Peoples
Intermarriage and the Friendship of Peoples

Author: Adrienne Edgar

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2022-05-15

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 1501762958

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Intermarriage and the Friendship of Peoples examines the racialization of identities and its impact on mixed couples and families in Soviet Central Asia. In marked contrast to its Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union celebrated mixed marriages among its diverse ethnic groups as a sign of the unbreakable friendship of peoples and the imminent emergence of a single "Soviet people." Yet the official Soviet view of ethnic nationality became increasingly primordial and even racialized in the USSR's final decades. In this context, Adrienne Edgar argues, mixed families and individuals found it impossible to transcend ethnicity, fully embrace their complex identities, and become simply "Soviet." Looking back on their lives in the Soviet Union, ethnically mixed people often reported that the "official" nationality in their identity documents did not match their subjective feelings of identity, that they were unable to speak "their own" native language, and that their ambiguous physical appearance prevented them from claiming the nationality with which they most identified. In all these ways, mixed couples and families were acutely and painfully affected by the growth of ethnic primordialism and by the tensions between the national and supranational projects in the Soviet Union. Intermarriage and the Friendship of Peoples is based on more than eighty in-depth oral history interviews with members of mixed families in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, along with published and unpublished Soviet documents, scholarly and popular articles from the Soviet press, memoirs and films, and interviews with Soviet-era sociologists and ethnographers.

The People's Artist
The People's Artist

Author: Simon Morrison

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2010-10-25

Total Pages: 504

ISBN-13: 0199830983

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Sergey Prokofiev was one of the twentieth century's greatest composers--and one of its greatest mysteries. Until now. In The People's Artist, Simon Morrison draws on groundbreaking research to illuminate the life of this major composer, deftly analyzing Prokofiev's music in light of new archival discoveries. Indeed, Morrison was the first scholar to gain access to the composer's sealed files in the Russian State Archives, where he uncovered a wealth of previously unknown scores, writings, correspondence, and unopened journals and diaries. The story he found in these documents is one of lofty hopes and disillusionment, of personal and creative upheavals. Morrison shows that Prokofiev seemed to thrive on uncertainty during his Paris years, stashing scores in suitcases, and ultimately stunning his fellow emigrés by returning to Stalin's Russia. At first, Stalin's regime treated him as a celebrity, but Morrison details how the bureaucratic machine ground him down with corrections and censorship (forcing rewrites of such major works as Romeo and Juliet), until it finally censured him in 1948, ending his career and breaking his health.

The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire
The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire

Author: Margus Kolga

Publisher: eBookIt.com

Published: 2013-07-19

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 994933098X

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The publisher of this book was a man who was born in 1938, in a free and democratic country (Estonia), with Estonian identity and citizenship. That all was amended in 1940 by Russian Empire as a result of the occupation of a sovereign country. The book was written with help of leading specialists of that time and with an attempt to stay neutral, almost as bystanders. The purpose was to describe cultures and ethnic groups of people who have suffered or have been eradicated under the power of "Russian Empire." Oppression of neighbors has taken place for over 500 years, and continues even today with Russian Federation changing daily into more totalitarian and dangerous state in an attempt to restore its former glory. Also Russian Federation is the only surviving colonial country in the world, from whose clutches have fled only a few nations, who gained sovereignty. Still this is not an complete view of the Empire, because the 84 nations covered in this book is only a third of more than 200 nations and cultures, whose fate is evanesce and disappearance into the larger Russian population by aggressive social politics. This relentless process is irreparable loss to world cultural heritage, diversity and democratic freedoms. On the other hand, it is also a loss to these nations economy, because the aggressor ravages and robs natural resources while destroying the environment. The idea of the book the author, publisher and financier a Thomas Niimann.

The Development of Capitalism in Russia
The Development of Capitalism in Russia

Author: Vladimir I. Lenin

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781410213006

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CONTENTS The Development of Capitalism in Russia The Theoretical Mistakes of the Narodnik Economists The Differentiation of the Peasantry The Landowners' Transition from Corvée to Capitalist Economy The Growth of Commercial Agriculture The First Stages of Capitalism in Industry Capitalist Manufacture and Capitalist Domestic Industry The Development of Large-Scale Machine Industry The Formation of the Home Market

The Formation of the Soviet Union
The Formation of the Soviet Union

Author: Richard Pipes

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1964

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 9780674309517

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Here is the history of the disintegration of the Russian Empire, and the emergence of a multinational Communist state. Pipes tells how the Communists exploited the new nationalism of the peoples of the Ukraine, Belorussia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Volga-Ural area—first to seize power and then to expand into the borderlands.

Rulers and Victims
Rulers and Victims

Author: Geoffrey Hosking

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 504

ISBN-13: 9780674021785

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Many westerners used to call the Soviet Union "Russia." Russians too regarded it as their country, but that did not mean they were entirely happy with it. In the end, in fact, Russia actually destroyed the Soviet Union. How did this happen, and what kind of Russia emerged? In this illuminating book, Geoffrey Hosking explores what the Soviet experience meant for Russians. One of the keys lies in messianism--the idea rooted in Russian Orthodoxy that the Russians were a "chosen people." The communists reshaped this notion into messianic socialism, in which the Soviet order would lead the world in a new direction. Neither vision, however, fit the "community spirit" of the Russian people, and the resulting clash defined the Soviet world. Hosking analyzes how the Soviet state molded Russian identity, beginning with the impact of the Bolshevik Revolution and civil war. He discusses the severe dislocations resulting from collectivization and industrialization; the relationship between ethnic Russians and other Soviet peoples; the dramatic effects of World War II on ideas of homeland and patriotism; the separation of "Russian" and "Soviet" culture; leadership and the cult of personality; and the importance of technology in the Soviet world view. At the heart of this penetrating work is the fundamental question of what happens to a people who place their nationhood at the service of empire. There is no surer guide than Geoffrey Hosking to reveal the historical forces forging Russian identity in the post-communist world.

Peoples of the USSR
Peoples of the USSR

Author: Ronald Wixman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-28

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1315475405

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First Published in 2017. This book is a short reference on the peoples of Russia and the USSR. It includes approximately 3,000 entries, cross-references and spelling variations, fifteen original maps and information on dialects, literary languages and religions. It is intended for anyone who needs basic information about the ethnographic groups of the Russian Empire and the USSR in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.