Download or read book The Cambridge History of Communism written by Norman Naimark and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-21 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second volume of The Cambridge History of Communism explores the rise of Communist states and movements after World War II. Leading experts analyze archival sources from formerly Communist states to re-examine the limits to Moscow's control of its satellites; the de-Stalinization of 1956; Communist reform movements; the rise and fall of the Sino-Soviet alliance; the growth of Communism in Asia, Africa and Latin America; and the effects of the Sino-Soviet split on world Communism. Chapters explore the cultures of Communism in the United States, Western Europe and China, and the conflicts engendered by nationalism and the continued need for support from Moscow. With the danger of a new Cold War developing between former and current Communist states and the West, this account of the roots, development and dissolution of the socialist bloc is essential reading.

Download or read book A Little Corner of Freedom written by Douglas R. Weiner and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1999-02-26 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While researching Russia's historical efforts to protect nature, Douglas Weiner unearthed unexpected findings: a trail of documents that raised fundamental questions about the Soviet political system. These surprising documents attested to the unlikely survival of a critical-minded, scientist-led movement through the Stalin years and beyond. It appeared that, within scientific societies, alternative visions of land use, resrouce exploitation, habitat protection, and development were sustained and even publicly advocated. In sharp contrast to known Soviet practices, these scientific societies prided themselves on their traditions of free elections, foreign contacts, and a pre-revolutionary heritage. Weiner portrays nature protection activists not as do-or-die resisters to the system, nor as inoffensive do-gooders. Rather, they took advantage of an unpoliced realm of speech and activity and of the patronage by middle-level Soviet officials to struggle for a softer path to development. In the process, they defended independent social and professional identities in the face of a system that sought to impose official models of behavior, ethics, and identity for all. Written in a lively style, this absorbing story tells for the first time how organized participation in nature protection provided an arena for affirming and perpetuating self-generated social identities in the USSR and preserving a counterculture whose legacy survives today.

Download or read book European Russian Space Cooperation written by Brian Harvey and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-04-10 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of European-Russian collaboration in space is little known and its importance all too often understated. Because France was the principal interlocutor between these nations, such cooperation did not receive the attention it deserved in English-language literature. This book rectifies that history, showing how Russia and Europe forged a successful partnership that has continued to the present day. Space writer Brian Harvey provides an in-depth picture of how this European-Russian relationship evolved and what factors—scientific, political and industrial—propelled it over the decades. The history begins in the cold war period with the first collaborative ventures between the Soviet Union and European countries, primarily France, followed later by Germany and other European countries. Next, the chapters turn to the missions when European astronauts flew to Russian space stations, the Soyuz rocket made a new home in European territory in the South American jungle and science missions were flown to study deep space. Their climax is the joint mission to explore Mars, called ExoMars, which has already sent a mission to Mars. Through this close examination of these European-Russian efforts, readers will appreciate an altogether new perspective on the history of space exploration, no longer defined by competition, but rather by collaboration and cooperation.

Download or read book Russia in Decline written by S. Enders Wimbush and published by . This book was released on 2017-03 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russia is in precipitous decline, which is unlikely to be reversed. This conclusion, based on the research of Russian and American experts, constitutes the bottom line of The Jamestown Foundation's project, Russia in Decline. Moreover, the tempo of Russia's decay is accelerating across virtually every fragment of its politics, economy, society and military, which renders Russia a poor candidate to survive globalization, let alone claim the mantle of a Great Power. This small volume details why Russia's spiraling into decline and disarray should keep strategists awake at night. It should also alert foreign policy, security and military planners, for whom Russia's decline will necessarily become the leitmotif of informed planning.

Download or read book The Caucasus Under Soviet Rule written by Alex Marshall and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-09-13 with total page 855 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Caucasus is a strategically and economically important region in contemporary global affairs. Western interest in the Caucasus has grown rapidly since 1991, fuelled by the admixture of oil politics, great power rivalry, ethnic separatism and terrorism that characterizes the region. However, until now there has been little understanding of how these issues came to assume the importance they have today. This book argues that understanding the Soviet legacy in the region is critical to analysing both the new states of the Transcaucasus and the autonomous territories of the North Caucasus. It examines the impact of Soviet rule on the Caucasus, focusing in particular on the period from 1917 to 1955. Important questions covered include how the Soviet Union created ‘nations’ out of the diverse peoples of the North Caucasus; the true nature of the 1917 revolution; the role and effects of forced migration in the region; how over time the constituent nationalities of the region came to re-define themselves; and how Islamic radicalism came to assume the importance it continues to hold today. A cauldron of war, revolution, and foreign interventions - from the British and Ottoman Turks to the oil-hungry armies of Hitler’s Third Reich - the Caucasus and the policies and actors it produced (not least Stalin, Sergo Ordzhonikidze and Anastas Mikoyan) both shaped the Soviet experiment in the twentieth century and appear set to continue to shape the geopolitics of the twenty-first. Making unprecedented use of memoirs, archives and published sources, this book is an invaluable aid for scholars, political analysts and journalists alike to understanding one of the most important borderlands of the modern world.

Download or read book St Petersburg and the Russian Court 1703 1761 written by P. Keenan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-06-24 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on the city of St Petersburg, the capital of the Russian empire from the early eighteenth century until the fall of the Romanov dynasty in 1917. It uses the Russian court as a prism through which to view the various cultural changes that were introduced in the city during the eighteenth century.

Download or read book Naming Infinity written by Loren Graham and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-31 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1913, Russian imperial marines stormed an Orthodox monastery at Mt. Athos, Greece, to haul off monks engaged in a dangerously heretical practice known as Name Worshipping. Exiled to remote Russian outposts, the monks and their mystical movement went underground. Ultimately, they came across Russian intellectuals who embraced Name Worshipping—and who would achieve one of the biggest mathematical breakthroughs of the twentieth century, going beyond recent French achievements. Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor take us on an exciting mathematical mystery tour as they unravel a bizarre tale of political struggles, psychological crises, sexual complexities, and ethical dilemmas. At the core of this book is the contest between French and Russian mathematicians who sought new answers to one of the oldest puzzles in math: the nature of infinity. The French school chased rationalist solutions. The Russian mathematicians, notably Dmitri Egorov and Nikolai Luzin—who founded the famous Moscow School of Mathematics—were inspired by mystical insights attained during Name Worshipping. Their religious practice appears to have opened to them visions into the infinite—and led to the founding of descriptive set theory. The men and women of the leading French and Russian mathematical schools are central characters in this absorbing tale that could not be told until now. Naming Infinity is a poignant human interest story that raises provocative questions about science and religion, intuition and creativity.

Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema written by Peter Rollberg and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-07-20 with total page 891 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russian and Soviet cinema occupies a unique place in the history of world cinema. Legendary filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Dziga Vertov, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Sergei Paradjanov have created oeuvres that are being screened and studied all over the world. The Soviet film industry was different from others because its main criterion of success was not profit, but the ideological and aesthetic effect on the viewer. Another important feature is Soviet cinema’s multinational (Eurasian) character: while Russian cinema was the largest, other national cinemas such as Georgian, Kazakh, and Ukrainian played a decisive role for Soviet cinema as a whole. The Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema provides a rich tapestry of factual information, together with detailed critical assessments of individual artistic accomplishments. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema contains a chronology, an introduction, and a bibliography. The dictionary section has over 600 cross-referenced entries on directors, performers, cinematographers, composers, designers, producers, and studios. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Russian and Soviet Cinema.

Download or read book Khrushchev Lied written by Grover Furr and published by Erythros Press & Media. This book was released on 2011 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Khrushchev Lied: The Evidence That Every “Revelation” of Stalin’s (and Beria’s) “Crimes” in Nikita Khrushchev’s Infamous “Secret Speech” to the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on February 25, 1956, is Provably False / Grover C. Furr; translations by Grover C. Furr

Download or read book A Long Walk To Church written by Nathaniel Davis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-08 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making use of the formerly secret archives of the Soviet government, interviews, and first-hand personal experiences, Nathaniel Davis describes how the Russian Orthodox Church hung on the brink of institutional extinction twice in the past sixty-five years. In 1939, only a few score widely scattered priests were still functioning openly. Ironically, Hitler's invasion and Stalin's reaction to it rescued the church -- and parishes reopened, new clergy and bishops were consecrated, a patriarch was elected, and seminaries and convents were reinstituted. However, after Stalin's death, Khrushchev resumed the onslaught against religion. Davis reveals that the erosion of church strength between 1948 and 1988 was greater than previously known and it was none too soon when the Soviet government changed policy in anticipation of the millennium of Russia's conversion to Christianity. More recently, the collapse of communism has created a mixture of dizzying opportunity and daunting trouble for Russian Orthodoxy. The newly revised and updated edition addresses the tumultuous events of recent years, including schisms in Ukraine, Estonia, and Moldova, and confrontations between church traditionalists, conservatives and reformers. The author also covers battles against Greek-Catholics, Roman Catholics, Protestant evangelists, and pagans in the south and east, the canonization of the last Czar, the church's financial crisis, and hard data on the slowing Russian orthodox recovery and growth. Institutional rebuilding and moral leadership now beckon between promise and possibility.

Download or read book The Road to Unfreedom written by Timothy Snyder and published by Crown. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of On Tyranny comes a stunning new chronicle of the rise of authoritarianism from Russia to Europe and America. “A brilliant analysis of our time.”—Karl Ove Knausgaard, The New Yorker With the end of the Cold War, the victory of liberal democracy seemed final. Observers declared the end of history, confident in a peaceful, globalized future. This faith was misplaced. Authoritarianism returned to Russia, as Vladimir Putin found fascist ideas that could be used to justify rule by the wealthy. In the 2010s, it has spread from east to west, aided by Russian warfare in Ukraine and cyberwar in Europe and the United States. Russia found allies among nationalists, oligarchs, and radicals everywhere, and its drive to dissolve Western institutions, states, and values found resonance within the West itself. The rise of populism, the British vote against the EU, and the election of Donald Trump were all Russian goals, but their achievement reveals the vulnerability of Western societies. In this forceful and unsparing work of contemporary history, based on vast research as well as personal reporting, Snyder goes beyond the headlines to expose the true nature of the threat to democracy and law. To understand the challenge is to see, and perhaps renew, the fundamental political virtues offered by tradition and demanded by the future. By revealing the stark choices before us--between equality or oligarchy, individuality or totality, truth and falsehood--Snyder restores our understanding of the basis of our way of life, offering a way forward in a time of terrible uncertainty.

Download or read book The Russian Military Today and Tomorrow written by Stephen J. Blank and published by . This book was released on 2013-08-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Eurasianism and the European Far Right written by Marlene Laruelle and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-07-01 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2014 Ukrainian crisis has highlighted the pro-Russia stances of some European countries, such as Hungary and Greece, and of some European parties, mostly on the far-right of the political spectrum. They see themselves as victims of the EU “technocracy” and liberal moral values, and look for new allies to denounce the current “mainstream” and its austerity measures. These groups found new and unexpected allies in Russia. As seen from the Kremlin, those who denounce Brussels and its submission to U.S. interests are potential allies of a newly re-assertive Russia that sees itself as the torchbearer of conservative values. Predating the Kremlin’s networks, the European connections of Alexander Dugin, the fascist geopolitician and proponent of neo-Eurasianism, paved the way for a new pan-European illiberal ideology based on an updated reinterpretation of fascism. Although Dugin and the European far-right belong to the same ideological world and can be seen as two sides of the same coin, the alliance between Putin’s regime and the European far-right is more a marriage of convenience than one of true love. This unique book examines the European far-right’s connections with Russia and untangles this puzzle by tracing the ideological origins and individual paths that have materialized in this permanent dialogue between Russia and Europe.

Download or read book Russian Messianism written by Peter J. S. Duncan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-11 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique work will be of great interest to those engaged in politics and Russian studies, as well as professionals dealing with Russia.

Download or read book The Perversion Of Knowledge written by Dr. Vadim J. Birstein and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2009-09-09 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Soviet years, Russian science was touted as one of the greatest successes of the regime. Russian science was considered to be equal, if not superior, to that of the wealthy western nations. The Perversion of Knowledge, a history of Soviet science that focuses on its control by the KGB and the Communist Party, reveals the dark side of this glittering achievement. Based on the author's firsthand experience as a Soviet scientist, and drawing on extensive Russian language sources not easily available to the Western reader, the book includes shocking new information on biomedical experimentation on humans as well as an examination of the pernicious effects of Trofim Lysenko's pseudo-biology. Also included are many poignant case histories of those who collaborated and those who managed to resist, focusing on the moral choices and consequences. The text is accompanied by the author's own translations of key archival materials, making this work an essential resource for all those with a serious interest in Russian history.

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 Selling Russia s Treasures written by N. I︠U︡ Semenova and published by Abbeville Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selling Russia's Treasures documents one of the great cultural dramas of the twentieth century: the sale, by a cash-hungry Soviet government, of the artistic treasures accumulated by the Russian aristocracy over the centuries and nationalized after the October 1917 revolution. An astonishing variety of objects, from icons and illuminated manuscripts to Fabergé eggs and Old Master paintings, entered the collections of wealthy Westerners like Andrew Mellon and Armand Hammer in the 1920s and 30s. Written by the leading experts in the field and long regarded as the definitive book on the subject, the original Russian edition of Selling Russia's Treasures is sought after scholars and laymen alike. Now, for the first time, it is made available in English, in a revised and expanded edition that includes a new chapter on the secret files of the Hermitage, previously considered lost, as well as new research on the sale of religious art, and of twentieth-century French masterworks from the Museum of New Western Art. Numerous color plates reunite long-dispersed works in a virtual museum that illustrates the powerful blow inflicted on Russia's cultural heritage by these secretive sales, and rare photographs and archival documents help bring this buried history to light.