Download or read book Conjuring Hope written by Galina Lindquist and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2006 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Notions of magic and healing have been changing over past years and are now understood as reflecting local ideas of power and agency, as well as structures of self, subjectivity and affect. This study focuses on contemporary urban Russia and, through exploring social conditions, conveys the experience of living that makes magic logical. By following people's own interpretations of the work of magic, the author succeeds in unraveling the logic of local practice and local understanding of affliction, commonly used to diagnose the experiences of illness and misfortune.
Download or read book Russia Transformed written by James H. Billington and published by New York : Free Press ; Toronto : Maxwell Macmillan Canada ; New York : Maxwell Macmillan International. This book was released on 1992 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Billington examines the changes that have occurred in the former Soviet Union over recent years and argues the necessity of the USA and other Western powers making positive economic, political, strategic and cultural responses to the new circumstances.
Download or read book Letters from Russia written by Marquis de Custine and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2014-06-26 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Marquis de Custine's unique perspective on a vast, fascinating country in the grip of oppressive tyranny In 1839, encouraged by his friend Balzac, Custine set out to explore Russia. His impressions turned into what is perhaps the greatest and most influential of all books about Russia under the Tsars. Rich in anecdotes as much about the court of Tsar Nicholas as the streets of St Petersburg, Custine is as brilliant writing about the Kremlin as he is about the great northern landscapes. An immediate bestseller on publication, Custine's book is also a central book for any discussion of 19th century history, as - like de Tocqueville's Democracy in America - it dramatizes far broader questions about the nature of government and society.
Download or read book Island of Hope Coming to America from Russia 1903 written by Kathleen M. Muldoon and published by Cover-To-Cover Chapter 2 Books. This book was released on 2002 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover-to-Cover Chapter 2 Books/Coming to America
Download or read book From Russia with Hope written by Elizabeth A. Stewart and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2015 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The journeys of twenty-one Russian women all of whom came to the West -some in the 1960s and some as late as the 2000s - some searching for a fresh start, some for love, some for a better life for their families. How do these women see their life, both past and present? How do they feel about their childhood, childbirth and abortion; their marriage and husbands; religion; their role as women; their new lives the West; and their dreams or hopes both fulfilled and/or dashed? Follow their experiences from the Soviet Union/Russia to their lives as immigrants in their new communities. Engage with their very personal stories of challenge, change and transformation. Meet and relive the tales of women of very different ages (from 30 to 70) - the oldest living under Stalin and the youngest remembering times just before Gorbachev. What happened to them when they came to the West? Why did they leave? Each story is unique but many common experiences are revealed. Read the accounts of their views and experiences as interviewed by Elizabeth A. Stewart, a noted Russian specialist and immigrant herself.
Download or read book Hope Against Hope written by Nadezhda Mandelstam and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-04-24 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the poet Osip Mandelstam, who suffered continuous persecution under Stalin, but whose wife constantly supported both him and his writings until he died in 1938. Since 1917 The Modern Library prides itself as The modern Library of the world s Best Books . Featuring introductions by leading writers, stunning translations, scholarly endnotes and reading group guides. Production values emphasize superior quality and readability. Competitive prices, coupled with exciting cover design make these an ideal gift to be cherished by the avid reader. Of the eighty-one years of her life, Nadezhda Mandelstam spent nineteen as the wife of Russia's greatest poet in this century, Osip Mandelstam, and forty-two as his widow. The rest was childhood and youth." So writes Joseph Brodsky in his appreciation of Nadezhda Mandelstam that is reprinted here as an Introduction. Hope Against Hope was first published in English in 1970. It is Nadezhda Mandelstam's memoir of her life with Osip, who was first arrested in 1934 and died in Stalin's Great Purge of 1937-38. Hope Against Hope is a vital eyewitness account of Stalin's Soviet Union and one of the greatest testaments to the value of literature and imaginative freedom ever written. But it is also a profound inspiration--a love story that relates the daily struggle to keep both love and art alive in the most desperate circumstances.
Download or read book Lost and Found in Russia written by Susan Richards and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2010-12-07 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the fall of communism, Russia was in a state of shock. The sudden and dramatic change left many people adrift and uncertain—but also full of a tentative but tenacious hope. Returning again and again to the provincial hinterlands of this rapidly evolving country from 1992 to 2008, Susan Richards struck up some extraordinary friendships with people in the middle of this historical drama. Anna, a questing journalist, struggles to express her passionate spirituality within the rules of the new society. Natasha, a restless spirit, has relocated from Siberia in a bid to escape the demands of her upper-class family and her own mysterious demons. Tatiana and Misha, whose business empire has blossomed from the ashes of the Soviet Union, seem, despite their luxury, uneasy in this new world. Richards watches them grow and change, their fortunes rise and fall, their hopes soar and crash. Through their stories and her own experiences, Susan Richards demonstrates how in Russia, the past and the present cannot be separated. She meets scientists convinced of the existence of UFOs and mind-control warfare. She visits a cult based on working the land and a tiny civilization founded on the practices of traditional Russian Orthodoxy. Gangsters, dreamers, artists, healers, all are wondering in their own ways, “Who are we now if we’re not communist? What does it mean to be Russian?” This remarkable history of contemporary Russia holds a mirror up to a forgotten people. Lost and Found in Russia is a magical and unforgettable portrait of a society in transition.
Download or read book A Man of Two Superpowers written by Yakov Grinshpun and published by Austin Macauley Publishers. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brainwashed by the school propaganda at the end of Stalin’s rule, Yakov Grinshpun becomes an ardent young patriot. Unable to reconcile the communist ideals with the anti-Semitism he encounters throughout his school years, Yakov dreams of a way to escape the shell of propaganda. A move from a shtetl to college in the city of Odessa opens his eyes to the realities of Soviet life: lack of freedom, harsh economic conditions, and the double life he is forced to live as a teacher. The idea of emigration is planted in his mind and grows into a desperation to leave the socialist “Paradise.” After living in a socialist zoo for decades, would he be able to escape and put roots in a capitalist jungle? A Man of Two Superpowers is an engaging, intimate, and moving memoir of struggle, depression, and accomplishments—sprinkled with humor and self-deprecation. This story gives an inside look of a transformation of a patriot into a “traitor” and the struggles an immigrant must overcome to become an American. “A Man of Two Superpowers is a powerful book about perseverance, resilience, and the huge human spirit. As a daughter of a Holocaust survivor, I found it particularly moving and relevant regarding today’s immigrant experience.” –Laura Zam, author of The Pleasure Plan “A Man of Two Superpowers is the perfect memoir for our times. It makes a solid and poignant case for the U.S. as a land of freedom and opportunity. Yakov Grinshpun makes the best possible argument for welcoming immigrants. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t have neighbors like him. And we would be the worse for it.”–Caren S. Neile, Ph.D. author of Florida Lore
Download or read book The Whisperers written by Orlando Figes and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-11-25 with total page 788 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History.
Download or read book To Russia with Love written by Victor Fischer and published by University of Alaska Press. This book was released on 2012-10-15 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Son of the famous American journalist Louis Fischer, who corresponded from Germany and then Moscow, and the Russian writer Markoosha Fischer, Victor Fischer grew up in the shadow of Hitler and Stalin, watching his friends’ parents disappear after political arrests. Eleanor Roosevelt personally engineered the Fischer family’s escape from Russia, and soon after Victor was serving in the United States Army in World War II and fighting opposite his childhood friends in the Russian and German armies. As a young adult, he went on to help shape Alaska’s map by planning towns throughout the state. This unique autobiography recounts Fischer’s earliest days in Germany, Russia, and Alaska, where he soon entered civic affairs and was elected as a delegate to the Alaska Constitutional Convention—the body responsible for establishing statehood in the territory. A move to Washington, DC, and further government appointments allowed him to witness key historic events of his era, which he also recounts here. Finally, Fischer brings his memoir up to the present, describing how he has returned to Russia many times to bring the lessons of Alaska freedom and prosperity to the newly democratic states.
Download or read book The Quest for the Authentic Shaman written by Galina Lindquist and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Russia and the Russians written by Geoffrey A. Hosking and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 776 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the history of the Russian Empire from the Mongol Invasion, through the Bolshevik Revolution, to the aftereffects of the Cold War.
Download or read book Leaving Russia written by Maxim D. Shrayer and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-03 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Narrated in the tradition of Tolstoy's confessional trilogy and Nabokov's autobiography, Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story is a searing account of growing up a Jewish refusenik, of a young poet's rebellion against totalitarian culture, and of Soviet fantasies of the West during the Cold War. Shrayer's remembrances ore set against a rich backdrop of politics, travel, and ethnic conflict on the brink of the Soviet empire's collapse. His moving story offers generous doses of humor and tenderness, counterbalanced with longing and violence.
Download or read book Opening the Red Door written by John A. Bernbaum and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the Berlin Wall fell, a group of Christian colleges in the U.S. seized the opportunity to begin strategic faculty and student exchanges with universities inside the Soviet Union. They could not have foreseen the doors that would open next. During a 1990 visit to Russia, John Bernbaum and his colleagues received a surprising invitation from a Russian government official: come help build a faith-based university in Moscow. Thus, after seventy years of fierce religious persecution under communism, the Russian-American Christian University (RACU) was born. In Opening the Red Door, Bernbaum presents an insider's account of the rise and fall of a Russian-American partnership. As a founder and later president of RACU, Bernbaum offers a ground-level perspective on Russia’s post-communist transition and the construction of a cultural-educational bridge between the two superpowers. He describes how American RACU staff worked to understand Russian history and culture—including the nation's rich spiritual heritage—so they could support their new Russian friends in rebuilding an educational system and a society. He documents the story of the first private Christian liberal arts university to be accredited in Russia's history, from its first steps, through its major successes, to its facing increasing opposition during the Putin era. Opening the Red Door offers unique insight not only into Russian culture and post–Cold War history but also traces the dynamics within international educational institutions and partnerships. When he first traveled to Russia, Bernbaum writes, he thought of it as a nation of mystery. But after more than twenty-five years of work there, he believes Russia can be understood. His journey of understanding will prove instructive to educators, administrators, students, missionaries, and anyone interested in international relations.
Download or read book The Invention of Russia written by Arkady Ostrovsky and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-06-07 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE WINNER OF THE CORNELIUS RYAN AWARD FINALIST FOR THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR “Fast-paced and excellently written…much needed, dispassionate and eminently readable.” —New York Times “Filled with sparkling prose and deep analysis.” –The Wall Street Journal The breakup of the Soviet Union was a time of optimism around the world, but Russia today is actively involved in subversive information warfare, manipulating the media to destabilize its enemies. How did a country that embraced freedom and market reform 25 years ago end up as an autocratic police state bent once again on confrontation with America? A winner of the Orwell Prize, The Invention of Russia reaches back to the darkest days of the cold war to tell the story of Russia's stealthy and largely unchronicled counter revolution. A highly regarded Moscow correspondent for the Economist, Arkady Ostrovsky comes to this story both as a participant and a foreign correspondent. His knowledge of many of the key players allows him to explain the phenomenon of Valdimir Putin - his rise and astonishing longevity, his use of hybrid warfare and the alarming crescendo of his military interventions. One of Putin's first acts was to reverse Gorbachev's decision to end media censorship and Ostrovsky argues that the Russian media has done more to shape the fate of the country than its politicians. Putin pioneered a new form of demagogic populism --oblivious to facts and aggressively nationalistic - that has now been embraced by Donald Trump.
Download or read book Hope in the Dark written by Rebecca Solnit and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2016-05-14 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[A] landmark book . . . Solnit illustrates how the uprisings that begin on the streets can upend the status quo and topple authoritarian regimes” (Vice). A book as powerful and influential as Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me, her Hope in the Dark was written to counter the despair of activists at a moment when they were focused on their losses and had turned their back to the victories behind them—and the unimaginable changes soon to come. In it, she makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable. Drawing on her decades of activism and a wide reading of environmental, cultural, and political history, Solnit argues that radicals have a long, neglected history of transformative victories, that the positive consequences of our acts are not always immediately seen, directly knowable, or even measurable, and that pessimism and despair rest on an unwarranted confidence about what is going to happen next. Now, with a moving new introduction explaining how the book came about and a new afterword that helps teach us how to hope and act in our unnerving world, she brings a new illumination to the darkness of our times in an unforgettable new edition of this classic book. “One of the best books of the 21st century.” —The Guardian “No writer has better understood the mix of fear and possibility, peril and exuberance that’s marked this new millennium.” —Bill McKibben, New York Times–bestselling author of Falter “An elegant reminder that activist victories are easily forgotten, and that they often come in extremely unexpected, roundabout ways.” —The New Yorker
Download or read book The Russian Job written by Douglas Smith and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning historian reveals the harrowing, little-known story of an American effort to save the newly formed Soviet Union from disaster After decades of the Cold War and renewed tensions, in the wake of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, cooperation between the United States and Russia seems impossible to imagine—and yet, as Douglas Smith reveals, it has a forgotten but astonishing historical precedent. In 1921, facing one of the worst famines in history, the new Soviet government under Vladimir Lenin invited the American Relief Administration, Herbert Hoover’s brainchild, to save communist Russia from ruin. For two years, a small, daring band of Americans fed more than ten million men, women, and children across a million square miles of territory. It was the largest humanitarian operation in history—preventing the loss of countless lives, social unrest on a massive scale, and, quite possibly, the collapse of the communist state. Now, almost a hundred years later, few in either America or Russia have heard of the ARA. The Soviet government quickly began to erase the memory of American charity. In America, fanatical anti-communism would eclipse this historic cooperation with the Soviet Union. Smith resurrects the American relief mission from obscurity, taking the reader on an unforgettable journey from the heights of human altruism to the depths of human depravity. The story of the ARA is filled with political intrigue, espionage, the clash of ideologies, violence, adventure, and romance, and features some of the great historical figures of the twentieth century. In a time of cynicism and despair about the world’s ability to confront international crises, The Russian Job is a riveting account of a cooperative effort unmatched before or since.
