Download or read book The Caucasus written by Thomas de Waal and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-02 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new edition of The Caucasus is a thorough update of an essential guide that has introduced thousands of readers to a complex region. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and the break-away territories that have tried to split away from them constitute one of the most diverse and challenging regions on earth, impressing the visitor with their multi-layered history and ethnic complexity. Over the last few years, the South Caucasus region has captured international attention again because of disputes between the West and Russia, its unresolved conflicts, and its role as an energy transport corridor to Europe. The Caucasus gives the reader a historical overview and an authoritative guide to the three conflicts that have blighted the region. Thomas de Waal tells the story of the "Five-Day War" between Georgia and Russia and recent political upheavals in all three countries. He also finds time to tell the reader about Georgian wine, Baku jazz and how the coast of Abkhazia was known as "Soviet Florida." Short, stimulating and rich in detail, The Caucasus is the perfect guide to this fascinating and little-understood region.
Download or read book Legends of the Caucasus written by David Hunt and published by Saqi. This book was released on 2012-05-28 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Caucasus has an extremely rich folk literature, almost unknown among English speakers, which includes myths, legends, magical tales, anecdotes and proverbs. The one hundred and one legends included in this book reflect the cultures of fourteen different ethnic groups - their dynamism and the matters that concerned them: survival against external dangers, the risk of starvation and the persistence of the family or clan as a coordinated group. Descended from an oral tradition, much of their knowledge was retained in memories and passed down the generations. Yet, with the introduction of the alphabet, the way of life they portray is rapidly becoming extinct. An incomparable collection, Legends of the Caucasus conveys the poetry and romance of these swiftly vanishing tribes. 'This book has brought into light some of the hidden treasures of the Caucasus ... A major contribution not only to the study of the Caucasus, but also to world folklore.' John Colarusso, McMaster University, Canada 'Inventive and meticulous in rendering the extraordinary folk poetry of the many nations of the Caucasus ... [This is] essential reading for anyone seeking an insight into the cultures of the Caucasus.' Donald Rayfield, Queen Mary University of London, UK
Download or read book The Archaeology of the Caucasus written by Antonio Sagona and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 563 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This conspectus brings together in an accessible and systematic manner a dizzy array of archaeological cultures situated between several worlds.
Download or read book The Caucasus An Introduction written by Frederik Coene and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-10-16 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a comprehensive introduction to the Caucasus. It covers the geography and the historical development of the region, economics, politics and government, population, religion and society, culture and traditions, and conflicts and international relations. It is written throughout in an accessible style and requires no prior knowledge.
Download or read book Days in the Caucasus written by Banine and published by Pushkin Press. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A scintillatingly witty memoir telling the story of a young woman's determined struggle for freedom This is the unforgettable memoir of an 'odd, rich, exotic' childhood, of growing up in Azerbaijan in the turbulent early twentieth century, caught between East and West, tradition and modernity. Banine remembers her luxurious home, with endless feasts of sweets and fruit; her beloved, flaxen-haired German governess; her imperious, swearing, strict Muslim grandmother; her bickering, poker-playing, chain-smoking relatives. She recalls how the Bolsheviks came, and they lost everything. How, amid revolution and bloodshed, she fell passionately in love, only to be forced into marriage with a man she loathed- until the chance of escape arrived.
Download or read book Bourdieu s Secret Admirer in the Caucasus written by Georgi M. Derluguian and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2005-07-15 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus is a gripping account of the developmental dynamics involved in the collapse of Soviet socialism. Fusing a narrative of human agency to his critical discussion of structural forces, Georgi M. Derluguian reconstructs from firsthand accounts the life story of Musa Shanib—who from a small town in the Caucasus grew to be a prominent leader in the Chechen revolution. In his examination of Shanib and his keen interest in the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, Derluguian discerns how and why this dissident intellectual became a nationalist warlord. Exploring globalization, democratization, ethnic identity, and international terrorism, Derluguian contextualizes Shanib's personal trajectory from de-Stalinization through the nationalist rebellions of the 1990s, to the recent rise in Islamic militancy. He masterfully reveals not only how external economic and political forces affect the former Soviet republics but how those forces are in turn shaped by the individuals, institutions, ethnicities, and social networks that make up those societies. Drawing on the work of Charles Tilly, Immanuel Wallerstein, and, of course, Bourdieu, Derluguian's explanation of the recent ethnic wars and terrorist acts in Russia succeeds in illuminating the role of human agency in shaping history.
Download or read book The Ghost of Freedom written by Charles King and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2008-02-11 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " ... The first general history of the modern Caucasus, stretching from the beginning of Russian imperial expansion up to rise of new countries after the Soviet Union's collapse."--Cover.
Download or read book War and Peace in the Caucasus written by Vicken Cheterian and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-12 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the collapse of the Soviet Union the Caucasus was wracked by ethnic and separatist violence as the peoples of the region struggled for self-determination. Vicken Cheterian, who spent many years as a reporter and analyst covering the region's conflicts, asks why nationalism emerged as a dominant political current, and why, of the many nationalist movements that emerged, some led to violence while others did not. He explains also why minority rebellions were victorious against larger armies, in mountainous Karabakh, Abkhazia, and in the first war of Chechnya, and discusses the ongoing instability and armed resistance in the North Caucasus. He concludes his book by examining chapters the great power competition between Russia, the US, and the EU over the oil and gas resources of the Caspian region.
Download or read book Europe in the Caucasus Caucasus in Europe written by Thomas Makarychev, Andrey Krüssmann and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2019-09-30 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book series „European Studies in the Caucasus” offers innovative perspectives on regional studies of the Caucasus. By embracing the South Caucasus as well as Turkey and Russia as the major regional powers, it moves away from a traditional viewpoint of European Studies that considers the countries of the region as objects of Europeanization. This first volume emphasizes the movements of ideas in both directions—from Europe to the Caucasus and from the Caucasus to Europe. This double-track frame illuminates new aspects of a variety of issues requiring reciprocity and intersubjectivity, including rivalries between different integration systems in the southern and eastern fringes of Europe, various dimensions of interaction between countries of the South Caucasus and the European Union in a situation of the ongoing conflict with Russia, and different ways of using European experiences for the sake of domestic reforms in the South Caucasus. Topics range from identities to foreign policies, and from memory politics to religion.
Download or read book Shamanic Journeys Through the Caucasus written by Michael Berman and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2009-12-01 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What were the religious beliefs and practices of the early inhabitants of the Caucasus? Some of the answers can be found by looking at the folktales from the region, which is what this book does.
Download or read book Islam in Central Asia and the Caucasus Since the Fall of the Soviet Union written by Bayram Balci and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, a major turning point in all former Soviet republics, Central Asian and Caucasian countries began to reflect on their history and identities. As a consequence of their opening up to the global exchange of ideas, various strains of Islam and trends in Islamic thought have nourished the Islamic revival that had already started in the context of glasnost and perestroika--from Turkey, Iran, the Arabian Peninsula, and from the Indian subcontinent; the four regions with strong ties to Central Asian and Caucasian Islam in the years before Soviet occupation. Bayram Balci seeks to analyse how these new Islamic influences have reached local societies and how they have interacted with pre-existing religious belief and practice. Combining exceptional erudition with rare first-hand research, Balci's book provides a sophisticated account of both the internal dynamics and external influences in the evolution of Islam in the region.
Download or read book Security Society and the State in the Caucasus written by Kevork Oskanian and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Caucasus, including the South Caucasus states and Russia’s North Caucasus, continues to be an area of instability and conflict. This book, based on extensive original research, explores in detail at both the local and regional level the interaction between state and society and the impact of external actors' engagement in the region within a conceptual framework linking security and democracy. Unlike other books on the subject, which tend to examine the issues from a Western political science perspective, this book incorporates insights from sociology, geography and anthropology as well as politics and contains contributions from scholars who have carried out extensive research in the region within a European Commission-funded Seventh Framework Programme project.
Download or read book History of the Caucasus written by Christoph Baumer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Rich and illuminating." Literary Review A landscape of high mountains and narrow valleys stretching from the Black to the Caspian Seas, the Caucasus region has been home to human populations for nearly 2 million years. In this richly illustrated 2-volume series, historian and explorer Christoph Baumer tells the story of the region's history through to the present day. It is a story of encounters between many different peoples, from Scythians, Turkic and Mongol peoples of the East to Greeks and Romans from the West, from Indo-European tribes from the West as well as the East, and to Arabs and Iranians from the South. It is a story of rival claims by Empires and nations and of how the region has become home to more than 50 languages that can be heard within its borders to this very day. This first volume charts the period from the emergence of the earliest human populations in the region – the first known human populations outside Africa - to the Seljuk conquests of 1050CE. Along the way the book charts the development of Neolithic, Iron and Bronze Age cultures, the first recognizable Caucasian state and the arrival of a succession of the great transnational Empires, from the Greeks, the Romans and the Armenian to competing Christian and Muslim conquerors. The History of the Caucasus: Volume 1 also includes more than 200 full colour images and maps bringing the changing cultures of these lands vividly to life.
Download or read book Highlanders written by Yo'av Karny and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2001-12-05 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the region, told by an intrepid journalist Many dire predictions followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, but nowhere have they materialized as dramatically as in the Caucasus: insurrection, civil wars, ethnic conflicts, economic disintegration, and up to two million refugees. Moreover, in the 1990s Russia twice went to war in the Caucasus, and suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of a nation so tiny that it could fit into a single district of Moscow. What is it about the Caucasus that makes the region so restless, so unpredictable, so imbued with heroism but also with fanaticism and pain? In Highlanders, Yo'av Karny offers a better understanding of a region described as a "museum of civilizations," where breathtaking landscapes join with an astounding human diversity. Karny has spent many months among members of some of the smallest ethnic groups on earth, all of them living in the grim shadow of an unhappy empire. But his book is a journey not only to a geographic region but also to darker sides of the human soul, where courage vies with senseless vindictiveness; where honor and duty require people to share the present with long-dead ancestors, some real, some imaginary; and where an ancient way of life is drawing to an end under the combined weight of modernity and intolerance.
Download or read book The Caucasus written by James Forsyth and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time, this major new survey of the Caucasus traces a unified narrative history of this complex and turbulent region at the borderlands of Europe, Asia and the Middle East, from prehistory to the present. For thousands of years the Caucasus has formed the intersection of routes of migration, invasion, trade and culture, and a geographical bridge between Europe and Asia, subject to recurring imperial invasion. Drawing on sources in English, Russian, Persian and Arabic, amongst others, this authoritative study centres on the region's many indigenous peoples, including Abkhazians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Chechens and Circassians, and their relations with outsiders who still play an important part in the life of the region today. The book presents a critical view of the historical role of Russian imperialism in events in the Caucasian countries, and the violent struggle of some of these peoples in their efforts to establish a precarious independence.
Download or read book Religion Nation and Democracy in the South Caucasus written by Alexander Agadjanian and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-10 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores developments in the three major societies of the South Caucasus – Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia – focusing especially on religion, historical traditions, national consciousness, and political culture, and on how these factors interact. It outlines how, despite close geographical interlacement, common historical memories and inherited structures, the three countries have deep differences; and it discusses how development in all three nations has differed significantly from the countries’ declared commitments to democratic orientation and European norms and values. The book also considers how external factors and international relations continue to impact on the three countries.
Download or read book The Vegetation of Georgia South Caucasus written by George Nakhutsrishvili and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-08-23 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book describes richness and diversity of Georgia’s vegetation. Contrasting ecosystems coexist on the relatively small territory of the country and include semi-deserts in East Georgia, Colchic forests with almost sub-tropical climate in West Georgia and subnival plant communities in high mountains. West Georgia lacks xerophilous vegetation zone and mesophilous forest vegetation spreads from the sea level to subalpine zone. The Colchic refugium (West Georgia) ensured survival of the Tertiary’s mesophilous forest flora. Vertical profile of the vegetation is more complex in East Georgia with semi-desert, steppe and arid open forest zone. In South Georgia the montane zone represented by montane steppe is devoid of forests
