Download or read book VNIITE written by Aleksandra Sanʹkova and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Formed in Soviet Russia in 1962, by the design visionary Yuri Soloviev, this vast network contained Moscow?s most progressive designers. The ?Vniitians?, as they were called, designed for the future and developed new theories and approaches to design in the USSR.0But more than ?fty years later, the organisation is all but forgotten. It?s hard to fathom how such an institution, dedicated to the promotion of utopian design, in theory and in practice, and the improvement of design standards within the Soviet Union, could have faded so far from view. After the disintegration of the USSR, the VNIITE and its library of images and prototypes were presumed lost. 0Until now, that is. Thanks to the efforts of the Moscow Design Museum ? and the discovery of the personal archives of some of the VNIITE designers ? the story of this remarkable organisation is being pieced back together.0Alongside images of sketches, models and prototypes, the book also includes a selection of covers of one of the USSR?s hidden gems of graphic design ? the VNIITE?s monthly journal, 'Technical Aesthetics'. Showcased together for the first time, these covers chart Soviet graphic trends from the 1960s to the early 1990s.

Download or read book Inside the Stalin Archives written by Jonathan Brent and published by Scribe Publications. This book was released on 2009 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To most Westerners, Russia remains as enigmatic today as it was during the Iron Curtain era. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country had an opportunity to confront its tortured past. In INSIDE THE STALIN ARCHIVES, Jonathan Brent asks why this didn't happen. Why are the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion sold openly in the lobby of the State Duma? Why are archivists under surveillance and phones still tapped? Why does Stalin, a man responsible for the deaths of millions of his own people, remain popular enough to appear on boxes of chocolate sold in the Moscow airport? Brent draws on fifteen years of access to high-level Soviet archives to answer these questions. He shows us a Russia where, in 1992, used toothbrushes were sold on the sidewalks, while now shops are filled with luxury goods and the streets are jammed with BMWs. Stalin's spectre hovers throughout, and in the book's crescendo Brent takes us deep into the dictator's personal papers, an unnerving prophecy of the world to come. Both cultural history and personal memoir, INSIDE THE STALIN ARCHIVES is a deeply felt and vivid portrait of Russia in the twenty-first century.

Download or read book Uncovering Soviet Disasters written by James E. Oberg and published by Random House (NY). This book was released on 1988 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oberg investigates modern disasters in the Soviet Union--from space shots to industrial catastrophes, to pollution, floods and fires. What really happened, why were they covered up, and how were they finally discovered? This book explains it all. 8 pages of black-and-white photos.

Download or read book Discovering the Soviet Union written by Nikolaĭ Nikolaevich Mikhaĭlov and published by Moscow : Progress Publishers. This book was released on 1970 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Black on Red written by Robert Robinson and published by Acropolis Books (NY). This book was released on 1988 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Robert Robinson (1907?-1994) was a Jamaican-born toolmaker who worked in the auto industry in the United States. At the age of 23, he was recruited to work in the Soviet Union, where he spent 44 years after the government refused to give him an exit visa for return. Starting with a one-year contract by Russians to work in the Soviet Union, he twice renewed his contract. He became trapped by the German invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II and the government's refusal to give him an exit visa. He earned a degree in mechanical engineering during the war. He finally left the Soviet Union in 1974 on an approved trip to Uganda, where he asked for and was given asylum. He married an African-American professor working there. He finally gained re-entry to the United States in 1976, and gained attention for his accounts of his 44 years in the Soviet Union."--Wikipedia.

Download or read book The Red Atlas written by John Davies and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The “utterly fascinating” untold story of Soviet Russia’s global military mapping program—featuring many of the surprising maps that resulted (Marina Lewycka, author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian). From 1950 to 1990, the Soviet Army conducted a global topographic mapping program, creating large-scale maps for much of the world that included a diversity of detail that would have supported a full range of military planning. For big cities like New York, Washington, D.C., and London to towns like Pontiac, MI, and Galveston, TX, the Soviets gathered enough information to create street-level maps. The information on these maps ranged from the locations of factories and ports to building heights, road widths, and bridge capacities. Some of the detail suggests early satellite technology, while other specifics, like detailed depictions of depths and channels around rivers and harbors, could only have been gained by Soviet spies on the ground. The Red Atlas includes over 350 extracts from these incredible Cold War maps, exploring their provenance and cartographic techniques as well as what they can tell us about their makers and the Soviet initiatives that were going on all around us.

Download or read book A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to Its Legacy written by Peter Kenez and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-24 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This concise yet comprehensive textbook examines political, social, and cultural developments in the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet period. It begins by identifying the social tensions and political inconsistencies that spurred radical change in Russia's government, from the turn of the century to the revolution of 1917. Peter Kenez presents this revolution as a crisis of authority that the creation of the Soviet Union resolved. The text traces the progress of the Soviet Union through the 1920s, the years of the New Economic Policies, and into the Stalinist order. It illustrates how post-Stalin Soviet leaders struggled to find ways to rule the country without using Stalin's methods - but also without openly repudiating the past - and to negotiate a peaceful but antipathetic coexistence with the capitalist West. This updated third edition includes substantial new material, discussing the challenges Russia currently faces in the era of Putin.

Download or read book The Decline and Fall of Soviet Empire written by Fred Coleman and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1996 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Red Coleman, A Moscow correspondent for the Associated Press, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report, has spent over thirty years gathering observations and experiences to produce this in-depth, up-close, definitive examination of the fall of the Soviet Union and the people and events that contributed essentially to its demise. From the Kremlin Palace coup against Nikita Khrushchev in 1964 to the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the emergence of the Soviet dissident movement during Leonid Brezhnev's rule, to the rise and fall of Mikhail Gorbachev, and Boris Yeltsin's troubled presidency through 1995, Coleman was the man on the scene for virtually every defining event of Russian history in the postwar era.

Download or read book Stalin s Master Narrative written by David Brandenberger and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-01 with total page 759 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical edition of the text that defined communist party ideology in Stalin's Soviet Union The Short Course on the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) defined Stalinist ideology both at home and abroad. It was quite literally the the master narrative of the USSR--a hegemonic statement on history, politics, and Marxism-Leninism that scripted Soviet society for a generation. This study exposes the enormous role that Stalin played in the development of this all-important text, as well as the unparalleled influence that he wielded over the Soviet historical imagination.

Download or read book Stalin and the Scientists written by Simon Ings and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2017-02-21 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the finest, most gripping surveys of the history of Russian science in the twentieth century.” —Douglas Smith, author of Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy Stalin and the Scientists tells the story of the many gifted scientists who worked in Russia from the years leading up to the revolution through the death of the “Great Scientist” himself, Joseph Stalin. It weaves together the stories of scientists, politicians, and ideologues into an intimate and sometimes horrifying portrait of a state determined to remake the world. They often wreaked great harm. Stalin was himself an amateur botanist, and by falling under the sway of dangerous charlatans like Trofim Lysenko (who denied the existence of genes), and by relying on antiquated ideas of biology, he not only destroyed the lives of hundreds of brilliant scientists, he caused the death of millions through famine. But from atomic physics to management theory, and from radiation biology to neuroscience and psychology, these Soviet experts also made breakthroughs that forever changed agriculture, education, and medicine. A masterful book that deepens our understanding of Russian history, Stalin and the Scientists is a great achievement of research and storytelling, and a gripping look at what happens when science falls prey to politics. Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction in 2016 A New York Times Book Review “Paperback Row” selection “Ings’s research is impressive and his exposition of the science is lucid . . . Filled with priceless nuggets and a cast of frauds, crackpots and tyrants, this is a lively and interesting book, and utterly relevant today.” —The New York Times Book Review “A must read for understanding how the ideas of scientific knowledge and technology were distorted and subverted for decades across the Soviet Union.” —The Washington Post

Download or read book Vodka Shot Pickle Chaser written by David a. Kalis and published by Publishing. This book was released on 2014-03-31 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After graduating from college, David Kalis planned a thirty-day tour of Leningrad. When the 1991 coup d'état attempt occurred, he ended up staying for two and a half tumultuous years.

Download or read book Secondhand Time written by Svetlana Alexievich and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-05-24 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A symphonic oral history about the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia, from Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY • LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing “a new kind of literary genre,” describing her work as “a history of emotions—a history of the soul.” Alexievich’s distinctive documentary style, combining extended individual monologues with a collage of voices, records the stories of ordinary women and men who are rarely given the opportunity to speak, whose experiences are often lost in the official histories of the nation. In Secondhand Time, Alexievich chronicles the demise of communism. Everyday Russian citizens recount the past thirty years, showing us what life was like during the fall of the Soviet Union and what it’s like to live in the new Russia left in its wake. Through interviews spanning 1991 to 2012, Alexievich takes us behind the propaganda and contrived media accounts, giving us a panoramic portrait of contemporary Russia and Russians who still carry memories of oppression, terror, famine, massacres—but also of pride in their country, hope for the future, and a belief that everyone was working and fighting together to bring about a utopia. Here is an account of life in the aftermath of an idea so powerful it once dominated a third of the world. A magnificent tapestry of the sorrows and triumphs of the human spirit woven by a master, Secondhand Time tells the stories that together make up the true history of a nation. “Through the voices of those who confided in her,” The Nation writes, “Alexievich tells us about human nature, about our dreams, our choices, about good and evil—in a word, about ourselves.” A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Financial Times, Kirkus Reviews

Download or read book Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse written by Robert W. Strayer and published by M.E. Sharpe. This book was released on 1998 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Coming Apart: The Final Days of the Soviet Union -- QUESTIONS AND CONTROVERSIES: Why a Peaceful Death? -- QUESTIONS AND CONTROVERSIES: Meaning and History -- Suggestions for Further Study -- Index -- About the Author

Download or read book Thirteen Days A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis written by Robert F. Kennedy and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-04-25 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A minor classic in its laconic, spare, compelling evocation by a participant of the shifting moods and maneuvers of the most dangerous moment in human history." —Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. During the thirteen days in October 1962 when the United States confronted the Soviet Union over its installation of missiles in Cuba, few people shared the behind-the-scenes story as it is told here by the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy. In this unique account, he describes each of the participants during the sometimes hour-to-hour negotiations, with particular attention to the actions and views of his brother, President John F. Kennedy. In a new foreword, the distinguished historian and Kennedy adviser Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., discusses the book's enduring importance and the significance of new information about the crisis that has come to light, especially from the Soviet Union.

Download or read book How Not to Network a Nation written by Benjamin Peters and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-03-25 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How, despite thirty years of effort, Soviet attempts to build a national computer network were undone by socialists who seemed to behave like capitalists. Between 1959 and 1989, Soviet scientists and officials made numerous attempts to network their nation—to construct a nationwide computer network. None of these attempts succeeded, and the enterprise had been abandoned by the time the Soviet Union fell apart. Meanwhile, ARPANET, the American precursor to the Internet, went online in 1969. Why did the Soviet network, with top-level scientists and patriotic incentives, fail while the American network succeeded? In How Not to Network a Nation, Benjamin Peters reverses the usual cold war dualities and argues that the American ARPANET took shape thanks to well-managed state subsidies and collaborative research environments and the Soviet network projects stumbled because of unregulated competition among self-interested institutions, bureaucrats, and others. The capitalists behaved like socialists while the socialists behaved like capitalists. After examining the midcentury rise of cybernetics, the science of self-governing systems, and the emergence in the Soviet Union of economic cybernetics, Peters complicates this uneasy role reversal while chronicling the various Soviet attempts to build a “unified information network.” Drawing on previously unknown archival and historical materials, he focuses on the final, and most ambitious of these projects, the All-State Automated System of Management (OGAS), and its principal promoter, Viktor M. Glushkov. Peters describes the rise and fall of OGAS—its theoretical and practical reach, its vision of a national economy managed by network, the bureaucratic obstacles it encountered, and the institutional stalemate that killed it. Finally, he considers the implications of the Soviet experience for today's networked world.

Download or read book Heroines of the Soviet Union 1941 45 written by Henry Sakaida and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-04-20 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Great Patriotic War began many women volunteered for the armed forces, but most of them were rejected. They were steered towards nursing or other supportive roles. Many determined women managed to enter combat by first volunteering as field medics and nurses, then simply picking up a gun during the battle, and charging boldly into the line of fire. In the area of aviation, women also contributed greatly to the war effort. In rickety biplanes, they flew bombing missions at night, without parachutes; their only protection was the darkness. This book tells the stories of the brave women that were awarded the Soviet Union's most prestigious title Hero of the Soviet Union for their bravery in protecting their homeland.

Download or read book American Girls in Red Russia written by Julia L. Mickenberg and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-04-25 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you were an independent, adventurous, liberated American woman in the 1920s or 1930s where might you have sought escape from the constraints and compromises of bourgeois living? Paris and the Left Bank quickly come to mind. But would you have ever thought of Russia and the wilds of Siberia? This choice was not as unusual as it seems now. As Julia L. Mickenberg uncovers in American Girls in Red Russia, there is a forgotten counterpoint to the story of the Lost Generation: beginning in the late nineteenth century, Russian revolutionary ideology attracted many women, including suffragists, reformers, educators, journalists, and artists, as well as curious travelers. Some were famous, like Isadora Duncan or Lillian Hellman; some were committed radicals, though more were just intrigued by the “Soviet experiment.” But all came to Russia in search of social arrangements that would be more equitable, just, and satisfying. And most in the end were disillusioned, some by the mundane realities, others by horrifying truths. Mickenberg reveals the complex motives that drew American women to Russia as they sought models for a revolutionary new era in which women would be not merely independent of men, but also equal builders of a new society. Soviet women, after all, earned the right to vote in 1917, and they also had abortion rights, property rights, the right to divorce, maternity benefits, and state-supported childcare. Even women from Soviet national minorities—many recently unveiled—became public figures, as African American and Jewish women noted. Yet as Mickenberg’s collective biography shows, Russia turned out to be as much a grim commune as a utopia of freedom, replete with economic, social, and sexual inequities. American Girls in Red Russia recounts the experiences of women who saved starving children from the Russian famine, worked on rural communes in Siberia, wrote for Moscow or New York newspapers, or performed on Soviet stages. Mickenberg finally tells these forgotten stories, full of hope and grave disappointments.