Download or read book Moscow 1937 written by Karl Schlögel and published by Polity. This book was released on 2014-02-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moscow, 1937: the soviet metropolis at the zenith of Stalin’s dictatorship. A society utterly wrecked by a hurricane of violence. In this compelling book, the renowned historian Karl Schlögel reconstructs with meticulous care the process through which, month by month, the terrorism of a state-of-emergency regime spiraled into the ‘Great Terror’ during which 1 ½ million human beings lost their lives within a single year. He revisits the sites of show trials and executions and, by also consulting numerous sources from the time, he provides a masterful panorama of these key events in Russian history. He shows how, in the shadow of the reign of terror, the regime around Stalin also aimed to construct a new society. Based on countless documents, Schlögel’s historical masterpiece vividly presents an age in which the boundaries separating the dream and the terror dissolve, and enables us to experience the fear that was felt by people subjected to totalitarian rule. This rich and absorbing account of the Soviet purges will be essential reading for all students of Russia and for any readers interested in one of the most dramatic and disturbing events of modern history.
Download or read book Stalin s School written by Larry E. Holmes and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2010-11-23 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A different kind of history, Stalin’s School brings a unique human dimension to the Soviet Union of the 1930s and a new understanding of Stalinism as a cultural and psychological phenomenon. From 1931 to 1937, School No. 25 was the most famous and most lavishly appointed school in the Soviet Union—instructing the children of such prominent parents as Joseph Stalin, head of the Communist Party, Viacheslav Molotov, head of the Soviet State, and Paul Robeson, American actor and singer. Relying on published records, materials in eleven archives, accounts left by visiting foreigners—including the prominent American educator George Counts—and thirty six interviews with surviving pupils from the 1930s, Holmes brings the school to life. The school's administrators, teachers, pupils, friends, and foes become companions as well as objects of this study as we walk the schools halls, enter its classrooms, eavesdrop on feuding officials who debate its fate, and learn something of what the school and the period meant for its youth. Photographs of the school's teachers and students, and reproductions of the students' notebooks, drawings, and watercolors add personality to this compelling story. Holmes uses the experience of School No. 25 as a microcosm and mirror of Stalinism, illuminating the interplay of state and society in decision making, and providing an opportunity to examine Stalinism from ideological, cultural, and psychological perspectives. While placing the school's history in the context of the coercion, corruption and repression of the 1930s, Holmes challenges the prevailing view that state and public spectacle on the one hand, and society and private life, on the other, were contrasting entities. School No. 25 molded these elements into an organic whole. In the intimate setting of Stalin's School, the degree of acceptance of Stalinism transcends historians' customary reference to the fear or privilege a Soviet citizen experienced. In a mutually reinforcing way, forced compliance and voluntary choice moved individual teachers and pupils to accept a structured environment both at school and in society as the means to a powerful, prosperous, and just Soviet Union.
Download or read book Moscow 1937 written by Karl Schlögel and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-01-08 with total page 1048 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moscow, 1937: the soviet metropolis at the zenith of Stalin’s dictatorship. A society utterly wrecked by a hurricane of violence. In this compelling book, the renowned historian Karl Schlögel reconstructs with meticulous care the process through which, month by month, the terrorism of a state-of-emergency regime spiraled into the ‘Great Terror’ during which 1 1⁄2 million human beings lost their lives within a single year. He revisits the sites of show trials and executions and, by also consulting numerous sources from the time, he provides a masterful panorama of these key events in Russian history. He shows how, in the shadow of the reign of terror, the regime around Stalin also aimed to construct a new society. Based on countless documents, Schlögel’s historical masterpiece vividly presents an age in which the boundaries separating the dream and the terror dissolve, and enables us to experience the fear that was felt by people subjected to totalitarian rule. This rich and absorbing account of the Soviet purges will be essential reading for all students of Russia and for any readers interested in one of the most dramatic and disturbing events of modern history.
Download or read book 1937 written by Vadim Zakharovich Rogovin and published by Mehring Books. This book was released on 1998 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first major study by a Russian Marxist Historian of the Stalinist purges which are often collectively reffered to by the year they reached their greatest intensity: 1937. Rogovin shows that the purges were aimed at the physical annihilation of the growing socialist opposition to Stalin's bureaucratic regime. Focused on Leon Trotsky and his thousands of supporters, the purges were a blow against the October Revolution, its leaders and its heritage.
Download or read book Stalin s Terror of 1937 1938 written by Vadim Zakharovich Rogovin and published by Mehring Books. This book was released on 2009 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the bloodiest period of the Stalinist repression of political opposition in the Soviet Union, debunking the myth that the Great Purges were merely the product of Stalin's paranoia and had no overriding political logic. Through a meticulous examination of original sources, including archival documents only made available for research in the 1990s, Professor Vadim Rogovin argues that the ferocity of the mass repression was directly proportional to the intensity of resistance to Stalin within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), particularly the opposition inspired by and associated with the exiled Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky. Far from Trotsky being a politically isolated figure, as both Stalinist and anti-communist historians have claimed, there was substantial sympathy for his criticism of the Stalin regime in the ranks and even in the leadership of the CPSU, and support for his demands for inner-party democracy, greater social equality and an international orientation to the Bolshevik goal of world revolution. It was this political fact, as Rogovin demonstrates, that accounts for the purge reaching so deeply into the party apparatus, the military, the Komsomol youth movement, and the broader layers of the population. Rogovin bases his analysis on scrupulous research, quoting from newly translated or unpublished documents, including memoirs, meeting minutes, newspaper articles and trial transcripts. He documents the reaction of different social layers to the purges, including workers, peasants, non-party intellectuals and the CPSU rank-and-file. This book includes rarely published photographs of the prison camps, documenting the lives of those labeled by Stalin;enemies of the people. Chronologically, this volume takes up where its predecessor, 1937: Stalin's Year of Terror , left off, with the June 1937 plenum of the Central Committee that followed the purging of the Soviet military command and the execution of Marshal Tukhachevsky and other leading generals. It analyzes such critical events as the Bukharin-Rykov trial, last of the infamous show trials; the massacre of Trotskyists in the Vorkuta slave-labor camp; and the assassination by Stalinist agents of Leon Sedov, Trotsky's son, and other oppositionists outside the Soviet Union. It concludes with an examination of how the purges transformed the CPSU and Soviet society as a whole.
Download or read book The Red International of Labour Unions RILU 1920 1937 written by Reiner Tosstorff and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-09-07 with total page 936 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on extensive archive research, this first comprehensive history of the Red International of Labour Unions looks at the contribution of communism to the international trade union movement in the interwar years.
Download or read book The Scent of Empires written by Karl Schlögel and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can a drop of perfume tell the story of the twentieth century? Can a smell bear the traces of history? What can we learn about the history of the twentieth century by examining the fate of perfumes? In this remarkable book, Karl Schlögel unravels the interconnected histories of two of the world’s most celebrated perfumes. In tsarist Russia, two French perfumers – Ernest Beaux and Auguste Michel – developed related fragrances honouring Catherine the Great for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. During the Russian Revolution and Civil War, Beaux fled Russia and took the formula for his perfume with him to France, where he sought to adapt it to his new French circumstances. He presented Coco Chanel with a series of ten fragrance samples in his laboratory and, after smelling each, she chose number five – the scent that would later go by the name Chanel No. 5. Meanwhile, as the perfume industry was being revived in Soviet Russia, Auguste Michel used his original fragrance to create Red Moscow for the tenth anniversary of the Revolution. Piecing together the intertwined histories of these two famous perfumes, which shared a common origin, Schlögel tells a surprising story of power, intrigue and betrayal that offers an altogether unique perspective on the turbulent events and high politics of the twentieth century. This brilliant account of perfume and politics in twentieth-century Europe will be of interest to a wide general readership.
Download or read book Between Hollywood and Moscow written by Stephen Gundle and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2000-12-04 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVA study of the cultural policies of the Italian communist party following the collapse of fascismand the struggle with popular consumer culture that led to its demise in 1991./div
Download or read book Alexander Shlyapnikov 1885 1937 written by Barbara Allen and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-01-08 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Alexander Shlyapnikov, 1885-1937: Life of an Old Bolshevik, Barbara Allen recounts the political formation and positions of Russian Communist and trade unionist, Alexander Shlyapnikov. As leader of the Workers’ Opposition (1919–21), Shlyapnikov called for trade unions to realise workers’ mastery over the economy. Despite defeat, he continued to advocate distinct views on the Soviet socialist project that provide a counterpoint to Stalin’s vision. Arrested during the Great Terror, he refused to confess to charges he thought illogical and unsupported by evidence. Unlike the standard historical and literary depiction of the Old Bolshevik, Shlyapnikov contested Stalin's and the NKVD's construct of the ideal party member. Allen conducted extensive research in archives of the Soviet Communist party and secret police. Listen to SRB Podcast's episode on Alexander Shlyapnikov: An Old Working Class Bolshevik featuring Barbara Allen.
Download or read book Stalin s Witnesses written by Julius Wachtel and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vilna, the Russian Empire, 1905. En route to deliver a secret pamphlet entrusted to him by his elder brothers, a young boy falls into the clutches of the Czar's secret police. Another decade will pass before the Crown gives way, not to liberally-minded revolutionaries like Vladimir Romm, the boy now a young man, but to the pitiless disciples of an embittered lawyer named Lenin. For the next three-quarters of a century, Marxism in its cruelest form will rule over Russia. Returning to Vilna during the winter of 1918 for the first time since his youth, Romm finds it occupied by Polish troops. He takes charge of a Communist militia and leads the Red Army to a small yet significant win for the fledgling Soviet state. As World War I yields to an uneasy peace, Romm joins Soviet intelligence. He is posted under various guises to Germany, France, Japan and Geneva. In 1934 Romm is named Izvestia's inaugural correspondent to Washington where he is given orders to bring key Americans to the Soviet side. But as his career reaches its zenith, Romm is suddenly recalled, arrested and forced to serve with four others as 'witnesses' at the notorious 1937 Moscow show trial. "Stalin's Witnesses" is a novel. While it sticks closely to the historical record, the witnesses speak in their own voices, guiding our journey through a tangle of fascinating events to tease out the underlying truths. It's their story, and it helped set the stage for our own.
Download or read book The Great Terror written by Robert Conquest and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2008 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The definitive work on Stalin's purges, the author's The Great Terror was universally acclaimed when it first appeared in 1968. Provides accounts of on everything form the three great 'Moscow Trials' to methods of obtaining confessions, the purge of writers and other members of the intelligentsia, on life in the labor camps, and many other key matters. On the fortieth anniversary of thew first edition, it is remarkable how many of the most disturbing conclusions have born up under the light of fresh evidence." --
Download or read book Building Stalinism written by Cynthia A. Ruder and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-01-30 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today the 80-mile-long Moscow Canal is a source of leisure for Muscovites, a conduit for tourists and provides the city with more than 60% of its potable water. Yet the past looms heavy over these quotidian activities: the canal was built by Gulag inmates at the height of Stalinism and thousands died in the process. In this wide-ranging book, Cynthia Ruder argues that the construction of the canal physically manifests Stalinist ideology and that the vertical, horizontal, underwater, ideological, artistic and metaphorical spaces created by it resonate with the desire of the state to dominate all space within and outside the Soviet Union. Ruder draws on theoretical constructs from cultural geography and spatial studies to interpret and contextualise a variety of structural and cultural products dedicated to, and in praise of, this signature Stalinist construction project. Approached through an extensive range of archival sources, personal interviews and contemporary documentary materials these include a diverse body of artefacts - from waterways, structures, paintings, sculptures, literary and documentary works, and the Gulag itself. Building Stalinism concludes by analysing current efforts to reclaim the legacy of the canal as a memorial space that ensures that those who suffered and died building it are remembered. This is essential reading for all scholars working on the all-pervasive nature of Stalinism and its complex afterlife in Russia today.
Download or read book Opposing Jim Crow written by Meredith L. Roman and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2019-12 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before the Nazis came to power in Germany, Soviet officials labeled the United States the most racist country in the world. Photographs, children's stories, films, newspaper articles, political education campaigns, and court proceedings exposed the hypocrisy of America's racial democracy. In contrast, the Soviets represented the USSR itself as a superior society where racism was absent and identified African Americans as valued allies in resisting an imminent imperialist war against the first workers' state. Meredith L. Roman's Opposing Jim Crow examines the period between 1928 and 1937, when the promotion of antiracism by party and trade union officials in Moscow became a priority policy. Soviet leaders stood to gain considerable propagandistic value at home and abroad by drawing attention to U.S. racism, their actions simultaneously directed attention to the routine violation of human rights that African Americans suffered as citizens of the United States. Soviet policy also challenged the prevailing white supremacist notion that blacks were biologically inferior and thus unworthy of equality with whites. African Americans of various political and socioeconomic backgrounds became indispensable contributors to Soviet antiracism and helped officials in Moscow challenge the United States' claim to be the world's beacon of democracy and freedom.
Download or read book Bori Gu risseurs de l me Healers of the soul written by Caroline Alida and published by 5Continents. This book was released on 2010 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book of exquisite duotone photographs looks at the Bori, a West African shamanist cult centered on possession by the spirits of ancestors. Its followers, priests (also known as Bori), and assistants are clairvoyants or faith healers. They perform ecstatic ritual dances to conjure up djinns--spirits--to protect society and its individual members from evil. Faith healers (Boka) employ traditional plants to heal the sick. Caroline Alida's black-and-white portraits of the Bori and the objects used in their ritual practices were taken in dim natural light, imbuing the photos with a contemplative atmosphere.
Download or read book Stalin s Architect written by Deyan Sudjic and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-06-14 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Boris Iofan—designer of the iconic but unbuilt Palace of the Soviets—whose buildings came to define the language of Soviet architecture. What would an architect do for the chance to build the tallest building in the world? What would he sacrifice to stay alive in the midst of Stalin’s murderous purges? This is the first major publication on the remarkable life and career of Boris Iofan (1891–1976), state architect to Joseph Stalin. Iofan’s story is an insight into the troubled relationship of all successful architects with power. A gifted designer and a committed Communist, Iofan became the Soviet Union’s most celebrated architect after Alexei Rykov, Lenin’s successor, persuaded him to return to Moscow from Rome with his aristocratic wife, Olga Sasso-Ruffo. Iofan was at the heart of political life in the Soviet Union and his work is key to understanding its official culture. When Stalin’s henchmen crushed the architectural avant-garde, it was Iofan who created the new national style, from the grand projects he realized—including the House on the Embankment, a megastructure of 505 homes for the Soviet elite—to even more ambitious unbuilt projects, in particular the Palace of the Soviets, a baroque Stalinist dream whose image was reproduced throughout the Soviet Union. His career took him to New York and Paris, and to the destroyed city of Stalingrad. He was a friend of Frank Lloyd Wright; a rival of Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Erich Mendelsohn; and an enemy of Hitler’s architect Albert Speer, whose Nazi pavilion faced Iofan’s Soviet one at the Paris Expo in 1937. He kept silent when Stalin executed his friends, including Rykov; he also sacrificed his own talent by following the dictator’s instructions to the letter in creating the regime’s landmarks. Generously illustrated, with a wide range of previously unpublished material, this book is an exploration of architecture as an instrument of statecraft. It is an insight into the key moments of 20th-century politics and culture from a unique perspective, and the personal story of a remarkable individual who witnessed many of the most dramatic turning points of modern history.
Download or read book Moscow in the Making written by Ernest Simon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-08-07 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, published in 1937, reported on a four week visit to Moscow in 1936 to study the making of Moscow as a showpiece Soviet capital. At its core was the 1935 General Plan for the Reconstruction of Moscow but the book was a study of planning in the Soviet rather than the Western sense. Thus it covered many aspects of the city’s social and economic life including industry and finance, education and housing production as well as governance and town planning. Much first hand detail is included, based on the visit and the authors’ meetings with Soviet officials and citizens that illustrate various points, usually in praise. The book made a significant contribution towards the growing arguments in 1930s Britain and other parts of the Anglophone world for a bolder, more comprehensive and more state-led approach to planning. In turn these arguments had an important impact in shaping the policies adopted in the 1940s.
Download or read book The House of Government written by Yuri Slezkine and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-07 with total page 1128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the epic story of an enormous apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destruction The House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment. Written in the tradition of Tolstoy's War and Peace, Grossman’s Life and Fate, and Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, Yuri Slezkine’s gripping narrative tells the true story of the residents of an enormous Moscow apartment building where top Communist officials and their families lived before they were destroyed in Stalin’s purges. A vivid account of the personal and public lives of Bolshevik true believers, the book begins with their conversion to Communism and ends with their children’s loss of faith and the fall of the Soviet Union. Completed in 1931, the House of Government, later known as the House on the Embankment, was located across the Moscow River from the Kremlin. The largest residential building in Europe, it combined 505 furnished apartments with public spaces that included everything from a movie theater and a library to a tennis court and a shooting range. Slezkine tells the chilling story of how the building’s residents lived in their apartments and ruled the Soviet state until some eight hundred of them were evicted from the House and led, one by one, to prison or their deaths. Drawing on letters, diaries, and interviews, and featuring hundreds of rare photographs, The House of Government weaves together biography, literary criticism, architectural history, and fascinating new theories of revolutions, millennial prophecies, and reigns of terror. The result is an unforgettable human saga of a building that, like the Soviet Union itself, became a haunted house, forever disturbed by the ghosts of the disappeared.
