Download or read book Food in Russian History and Culture written by Musya Glants and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1997-08-22 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Collection of Original Essays gives surprising insights into what foodways reveal about Russia's history and culture from Kievan times to the present. A wide array of sources - including chronicles, diaries, letters, police records, poems, novels, folklore, paintings, and cookbooks - help to interpret the moral and spiritual role of food in Russian culture. Stovelore in Russian folklife, fasting in Russian peasant culture, food as power in Dostoevsky's fiction, Tolstoy and vegetarianism, restaurants in early Soviet Russia, Soviet cookery and cookbooks, and food as art in Soviet paintings are among the topics discussed in this appealing volume.
Download or read book Other Animals written by Jane T. Costlow and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2010-08-15 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The lives of animals in Russia are intrinsically linked to cultural, political and psychological transformations of the imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet eras. Other Animals examines the interaction of animals and humans in Russian literature, art, and life from the eighteenth century until the present. The chapters explore the unique nature of the Russian experience in a range of human-animal relationships through tales of cruelty, interspecies communion and compassion, and efforts to either overcome or establish the human-animal divide. Four themes run through the volume: the prevalence of animals in utopian visions; the ways in which Russians have incorporated and sometimes challenged Western sensibilities and practices, such as the humane treatment of animals and the inclusion of animals in urban domestic life; the quest to identify and at times exploit the physiological basis of human and animal behavior and the ideological implications of these practices; and the breakdown of traditional human-animal hierarchies and categories during times of revolutionary upheaval, social transformation, or disintegration.From failed Soviet attempts to transplant the seminomadic Sami and their reindeer herds onto collective farms, to performance artist Oleg Kulik's scandalous portrayal of Pavlov's dogs as a parody of the Soviet "new man," to novelist Tatyana Tolstaya's post-cataclysmic future world of hybrid animal species and their disaffection from the past, Other Animals presents a completely new perspective on Russian and Soviet history. It also offers a fascinating look into the Russian psyche as seen through human interactions with animals.
Download or read book Essays in Russian and East European History written by Leo Schelbert and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ed: University of Illinois.
Download or read book Eurasian Environments written by Nicholas Breyfogle and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through a series of essays, Eurasian Environments prompts us to rethink our understanding of tsarist and Soviet history by placing the human experience within the larger environmental context of flora, fauna, geology, and climate. This book is a broad look at the environmental history of Eurasia, specifically examining steppe environments, hydraulic engineering, soil and forestry, water pollution, fishing, and the interaction of the environment and disease vectors. Throughout, the authors place the history of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union in a trans-chronological, comparative context, seamlessly linking the local and the global. The chapters are rooted in the ecological and geological specificities of place and community while unveiling the broad patterns of human-nature relationships across the planet. Eurasian Environments brings together an international group scholars working on issues of tsarist/Soviet environmental history in an effort to showcase the wave of fascinating and field-changing research currently being written.
Download or read book Interpreting Emotions in Russia and Eastern Europe written by Mark D. Steinberg and published by Northern Illinois University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together important new work by an international and interdisciplinary group of leading scholars, Interpreting Emotions in Russia and Eastern Europe approaches emotions as a phenomenon complexly intertwined with society, culture, politics, and history. The stories in this book involve sensitive aristocrats, committed revolutionaries, aggressive nationalists, political leaders, female victims of sexual violence, perpetrators and victims of Stalinist terror, citizens in the former Yugoslavia in the wake of war, workers in post-socialist Romania, Balkan Romani "Gypsy" musicians, and veterans of the Afghan and Chechen wars. These essays explore emotional perception and expression not only as private, inward feeling but also as a way of interpreting and judging a troubled world, acting in it, and perhaps changing it. Essential reading for those interested in new perspectives on the study of Russia and Eastern Europe, past and present, this volume will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities who are seeking new and deeper approaches to understanding human experience, thought, and feeling.
Download or read book Imperial Russia written by Jane Burbank and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1998-09-22 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "On the basis of the work presented here, one can say that the future of American scholarship on imperial Russia is in good hands." —American Historial Review " . . . innovative and substantive research . . . " —The Russian Review "Anyone wishing to understand the 'state of the field' in Imperial Russian history would do well to start with this collection." —Theodore W. Weeks, H-Net Reviews "The essays are impressive in terms of research conceptualization, and analysis." —Slavic Review Presenting the results of new research and fresh approaches, the historians whose work is highlighted here seek to extend new thinking about the way imperial Russian history is studied and taught. Populating their essays are a varied lot of ordinary Russians of the 18th and 19th centuries, from a luxury-loving merchant and his extended family to reform-minded clerics and soldiers on the frontier. In contrast to much of traditional historical writing on Imperial Russia, which focused heavily on the causes of its demise, the contributors to this volume investigate the people and institutions that kept Imperial Russia functioning over a long period of time.
Download or read book Place and Nature written by Alexandra Bekasova and published by . This book was released on 2021-02 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers new perspectives on the environmental history of lands that have come under Russian and Soviet rule by paying attention to 'place' and 'nature' in the intersection between humans and the environments that surround them. Through case studies of specific places in northwestern Russia, for example the Solovetskie Islands, the Urals, Siberia, in particular Lake Baikal, and the Russian Far East, the book highlights the importance of local environments and the specificities of individual places and spaces in understanding the human-nature nexus. This focus is accentuated by the fact that the authors have considerable, first-hand experience of the places they write about that complements and supplements their research in textual sources.
Download or read book Russia in the Era of NEP written by Sheila Fitzpatrick and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1991-09-22 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " . . . a comprehensive look at an enigmatic era . . . " —Choice "This provocative collection of essays certainly takes some of the polish off Soviet socialism's golden age." —Journal of Interdisciplinary History "The authors and editors of this splendid volume deserve great praise. Their work moves the field of Soviet history several large steps forward." —Slavic Review Lenin's New Economic Policy of the 1920s, although a relatively free and open potential alternative to Soviet communism, was also a time of extreme tension, as Russian society and culture were rocked by the forces of resistance and change. These essays examine the social and cultural dimensions of NEP in urban and rural Russia in the years before Stalin and rapid industrialization.
Download or read book Between Europe and Asia written by Mark Bassin and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2015-06-18 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between Europe and Asia analyzes the origins and development of Eurasianism, an intellectual movement that proclaimed the existence of Eurasia, a separate civilization coinciding with the former Russian Empire. The essays in the volume explore the historical roots, the heyday of the movement in the 1920s, and the afterlife of the movement in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. The first study to offer a multifaceted account of Eurasianism in the twentieth century and to touch on the movement's intellectual entanglements with history, politics, literature, or geography, this book also explores Eurasianism's influences beyond Russia. The Eurasianists blended their search for a primordial essence of Russian culture with radicalism of Europe's interwar period. In reaction to the devastation and dislocation of the wars and revolutions, they celebrated the Orthodox Church and the Asian connections of Russian culture, while rejecting Western individualism and democracy. The movement sought to articulate a non-European, non-Western modernity, and to underscore Russia's role in the colonial world. As the authors demonstrate, Eurasianism was akin to many fascist movements in interwar Europe, and became one of the sources of the rhetoric of nationalist mobilization in Vladimir Putin's Russia. This book presents the rich history of the concept of Eurasianism, and how it developed over time to achieve its present form.
Download or read book Historical Concepts Between Eastern and Western Europe written by Manfred Hildermeier and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than a decade after the breakdown of the Soviet Empire and the reunification of Europe, historiographies and historical concepts still stood very much apart. This book talks about how there were no common efforts for joint interpretations and no attempts to reach a common understanding of central notions and concepts.
Download or read book Imagining the West in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union written by Gyorgy Peteri and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2010-11-28 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents work from an international group of writers who explore conceptualizations of what defined "East" and "West" in Eastern Europe, imperial Russia, and the Soviet Union. The contributors analyze the effects of transnational interactions on ideology, politics, and cultural production. They reveal that the roots of an East/West cultural divide were present many years prior to the rise of socialism and the Cold War. The chapters offer insights into the complex stages of adoption and rejection of Western ideals in areas such as architecture, travel writings, film, music, health care, consumer products, political propaganda, and human rights. They describe a process of mental mapping whereby individuals "captured and possessed" Western identity through cultural encounters and developed their own interpretations from these experiences. Despite these imaginaries, political and intellectual elites devised responses of resistance, defiance, and counterattack to defy Western impositions. Socialists believed that their cultural forms and collectivist strategies offered morally and materially better lives for the masses and the true path to a modern society. Their sentiments toward the West, however, fluctuated between superiority and inferiority. But in material terms, Western products, industry, and technology, became the ever-present yardstick by which progress was measured. The contributors conclude that the commodification of the necessities of modern life and the rise of consumerism in the twentieth century made it impossible for communist states to meet the demands of their citizens. The West eventually won the battle of supply and demand, and thus the battle for cultural influence.
Download or read book Transgressive Women in Modern Russian and East European Cultures written by Yana Hashamova and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investigating the genesis of the prosecuted "crimes" and implied sins of the female performing group Pussy Riot, the most famous Russian feminist collective to date, the essays in Transgressive Women in Modern Russian and East European Cultures: From the Bad to Blasphemous examine what constitutes bad social and political behavior for women in Russia, Poland, and the Balkans, and how and to what effect female performers, activists, and fictional characters have indulged in such behavior. The chapters in this edited collection argue against the popular perceptions of Slavic cultures as overwhelmingly patriarchal and Slavic women as complicit in their own repression, contextualizing proto-feminist and feminist transgressive acts in these cultures. Each essay offers a close reading of the transgressive texts that women authored or in which they figured, showing how they navigated, targeted, and, in some cases, co-opted these obstacles in their bid for agency and power. Topics include studies of how female performers in Poland and Russia were licensed to be bad (for effective comedy and popular/box office appeal), analyses of how women in film and fiction dare sacrilegious behavior in their prescribed roles as daughters and mothers, and examples of feminist political subversion through social activism and performance art.
Download or read book Yugoslavia written by Dennison Rusinow and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2008-12-01 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Defying Stalin and his brand of communism, Tito's Yugoslavia developed a unique kind of socialism that combined one-party rule with an economic system of workers' self-management that aroused intense interest throughout the cold war. As a member of the American Universities Field Staff, Dennison Rusinow became a long-time resident and frequent visitor to Yugoslavia during these transformative times. This volume presents the most significant of his refreshingly immediate and well-informed reports on life in Yugoslavia and the country's major political developments. Rusinow's essays explore such diverse topics as the first American-style supermarket and its challenge to traditional outdoor markets; the lessons of a Serbian holiday feast (Slava); the resignation of Vice President Aleksandar Rankovic; the Croatian political purge of 1971; ethnic divides and the rise of nationalism throughout the country; the tension between conservative and liberal forces in Yugoslav politics; and the student revolt at Belgrade University in 1968. Rusinow's final report from 1991 examines the serious challenges to the nation's future even as it collapsed.
Download or read book Scaling the Balkans written by Maria N. Todorova and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 683 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scaling the Balkans puts in conversation several fields that have been traditionally treated as discrete: Balkan studies, Ottoman studies, East European studies, and Habsburg and Russian studies. By looking at the complex interrelationship between countries and regions, demonstrating how different perspectives and different methodological approaches inflect interpretations and conclusions, it insists on the heuristic value of scales. The volume is a collection of published and unpublished essays, dealing with issues of modernism, backwardness, historical legacy, balkanism, post-colonialism and orientalism, nationalism, identity and alterity, society-and nation-building, historical demography and social structure, socialism and communism in memory, and historiography.
Download or read book Historical Legacies of Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe written by Mark Beissinger and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-07 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes stock of arguments about the historical legacies of communism that have become common within the study of Russia and East Europe more than two decades after communism's demise and elaborates an empirical approach to the study of historical legacies revolving around relationships and mechanisms rather than correlation and outward similarities. Eleven essays by a distinguished group of scholars assess whether post-communist developments in specific areas continue to be shaped by the experience of communism or, alternatively, by fundamental divergences produced before or after communism. Chapters deal with the variable impact of the communist experience on post-communist societies in such areas as regime trajectories and democratic political values; patterns of regional and sectoral economic development; property ownership within the energy sector; the functioning of the executive branch of government, the police, and courts; the relationship of religion to the state; government language policies; and informal relationships and practices.
Download or read book Russia and Eastern Europe 1789 1985 written by Raymond Pearson and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Russian and East European Books and Manuscripts in the United States written by Tanya Chebotarev and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gain a better understanding of the past and cultures of Slavic and East European peoples with American archival collections! Russian and East European Books and Manuscripts in the United States, the first collection of its kind, offers perspectives from leading Slavic librarians, archivists and historians on the cultural history of Russian and East European exiles and immigrants to North America in the twentieth century. Editor Tanya Chebotarev—curator of the Bahkmeteff Archive at Columbia University—and a group of leading authorities document the concerted effort to preserve Russian and East European written culture outside the bounds of Communist power. This book is a vital addition to the collections of archivists, librarians, historians, and graduate students in Russian studies and American immigrations. Russian and East European Books and Manuscripts in the United States explores the role of Russian émigrés, librarians, and scholars in the United States in providing a haven for archival collections of Russian literature, art, and historical manuscripts at the height of panic during the Cold War. This essential resource celebrates the efforts made by archivists and librarians in collecting émigré materials. This book addresses many important related topics, such as: an introduction to the life and work of Boris Aleksandrovich Bakhmeteff—financial contributor to the Archive and the last Russian ambassador to the United States before the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power the Eurasianist movement—its roles and views on science, culture, and empire reflections of Russian émigrés on Soviet nationality policies during the 1920s and 1930s American collections on immigrants from the Russian Empire the New York Public Library—its role in collecting and describing vernacular Slavic and East European language and history materials to a diverse readership Columbia University Libraries’ Slavic and East European Collections—a historical overview of these extraordinarily rich collections of materials from or about the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the countries and people of Eastern Europe the Hoover Institution’s Polish émigré collections and the Polish state archives Russian archives online—present status and future prospects This book also details recent efforts to “repatriate” archival collections and libraries abroad and return them to their countries of origin. Disagreements between countries are already emerging, and Russian and East European Books and Manuscripts in the United States discusses their implications and the future of America’s Slavic archives.
