Download or read book Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism written by Samir Amin and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2016-07-01 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Out of early twentieth-century Russia came the world’s first significant effort to build a modern revolutionary society. According to Marxist economist Samir Amin, the great upheaval that once produced the Soviet Union has also produced a movement away from capitalism – a long transition that continues even today. In seven concise, provocative chapters, Amin deftly examines the trajectory of Russian capitalism, the Bolshevik Revolution, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the possible future of Russia – and, by extension, the future of socialism itself. Amin manages to combine an analysis of class struggle with geopolitics – each crucial to understanding Russia’s singular and complex political history. He first looks at the development (or lack thereof) of Russian capitalism. He sees Russia’s geopolitical isolation as the reason its capitalist empire developed so differently from Western Europe, and the reason for Russia’s perceived “backwardness.” Yet Russia’s unique capitalism proved to be the rich soil in which the Bolsheviks were able to take power, and Amin covers the rise and fall of the revolutionary Soviet system. Finally, in a powerful chapter on Ukraine and the rise of global fascism, Amin lays out the conditions necessary for Russia to recreate itself, and perhaps again move down the long road to socialism. Samir Amin’s great achievement in this book is not only to explain Russia’s historical tragedies and triumphs, but also to temper our hopes for a quick end to an increasingly insufferable capitalism. This book offers a cornucopia of food for thought, as well as an enlightening means to transcend reductionist arguments about “revolution” so common on the left. Samir Amin’s book – and the actions that could spring from it – are more necessary than ever, if the world is to avoid the barbarism toward which capitalism is hurling humanity.
Download or read book Soviet Tragedy written by Martin Malia and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-06-30 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Soviet Tragedy is an essential coda to the literature of Soviet studies...Insofar as [he] returns the power of ideology to its central place in Soviet history, Malia has made an enormous contribution. He has written the history of a utopian illusion and the tragic consequences it had for the people of the Soviet Union and the world." -- David Remnick, The New York Review of Books "In Martin Malia, the Soviet Union had one of its most acute observers. With this book, it may well have found the cornerstone of its history." -- Francois Furet, author of Interpreting the French Revolution "The Soviet Tragedy offers the most thorough scholarly analysis of the Communist phenomenon that we are likely to get for a long while to come...Malia states that his narrative is intended 'to substantiate the basic argument,' and this is certainly an argumentative book, which drives its thesis home with hammer blows. On this breathtaking journey, Malia is a witty and often brilliantly penetrating guide. He has much wisdom to impart." -- The Times Literary Supplement "This is history at the high level, well deployed factually, but particularly worthwhile in the philosophical and political context -- at once a view and an overview." -- The Washington Post
Download or read book Building Socialism in Bolshevik Russia written by Thomas F. Remington and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2010-11-23 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Remington profiles the Bolshevik project of social transformation and political centralization known as War Communism. He argues that the effort to institute a centrally planned and administered economy shaped the ideology of the regime, the relations between the regime and the working class, and the character of state power.
Download or read book The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia written by Melissa Chakars and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-10 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Buryats are a Mongolian population in Siberian Russia, the largest indigenous minority. The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia presents the dramatic transformation in their everyday lives during the late twentieth century. The book challenges the common notion that the process of modernization during the later Soviet period created a Buryat national assertiveness rather than assimilation or support for the state.
Download or read book A History of Soviet Russia Socialism in one country 1924 1926 written by Edward Hallett Carr and published by . This book was released on 1951 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Socialist Europe and Revolutionary Russia written by Bruno Naarden and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-05-02 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses perceptions and images of Russia held by European socialists from 1848 to the 1920s.
Download or read book Everyday Post Socialism written by Jeremy Morris and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a rich ethnographic account of blue-collar workers’ everyday life in a central Russian industrial town coping with simultaneous decline and the arrival of transnational corporations. Everyday Post-Socialism demonstrates how people manage to remain satisfied, despite the crisis and relative poverty they faced after the fall of socialist projects and the social trends associated with neoliberal transformation. Morris shows the ‘other life’ in today’s Russia which is not present in mainstream academic discourse or even in the media in Russia itself. This book offers co-presence and a direct understanding of how the local community lives a life which is not only bearable, but also preferable and attractive when framed in the categories of ‘habitability’, commitment and engagement, and seen in the light of alternative ideas of worth and specific values. Topics covered include working-class identity, informal economy, gender relations and transnational corporations.
Download or read book Plots against Russia written by Eliot Borenstein and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-15 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this original and timely assessment of cultural expressions of paranoia in contemporary Russia, Eliot Borenstein samples popular fiction, movies, television shows, public political pronouncements, internet discussions, blogs, and religious tracts to build a sense of the deep historical and cultural roots of konspirologiia that run through Russian life. Plots against Russia reveals through dramatic and exciting storytelling that conspiracy and melodrama are entirely equal-opportunity in modern Russia, manifesting themselves among both pro-Putin elites and his political opposition. As Borenstein shows, this paranoid fantasy until recently characterized only the marginal and the irrelevant. Now, through its embodiment in pop culture, the expressions of a conspiratorial worldview are seen everywhere. Plots against Russia is an important contribution to the fields of Russian literary and cultural studies from one of its preeminent voices.
Download or read book Stalin s Russia written by Max Eastman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1940, Stalin’s Russia is a close study of the development of the Stalinist regime and the flaws in socialist doctrine that made it possible. The book examines the contrasts between the "free and equal" society heralded by the Marxist-Leninist programme and the totalitarian state that emerged in its place. It makes use of a wealth of material to cast light on the inner workings of Stalin’s regime. It explores the significance of the Stalin-Hitler pact, and argues that the word "socialism" itself became a liability to any genuine movement of liberation as a result.
Download or read book Living the Revolution written by Andy Willimott and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Living the Revolution offers a pioneering insight into the world of the early Soviet activist. At the heart of this book are a cast of fiery-eyed, bed-headed youths determined to be the change they wanted to see in the world. First banding together in the wake of the October Revolution, seizing hold of urban apartments, youthful enthusiasts tried to offer practical examples of socialist living. Calling themselves 'urban communes', they embraced total equality and shared everything from money to underwear. They actively sought to overturn the traditional family unit, reinvent domesticity, and promote a new collective vision of human interaction. A trend was set: a revolutionary meme that would, in the coming years, allow thousands of would-be revolutionaries and aspiring party members to experiment with the possibilities of socialism. The first definitive account of the urban communes, and the activists that formed them, this volume utilizes newly uncovered archival materials to chart the rise and fall of this revolutionary impulse. Laced with personal detail, it illuminates the thoughts and aspirations of individual activists as the idea of the urban commune grew from an experimental form of living, limited to a handful of participants in Petrograd and Moscow, into a cultural phenomenon that saw tens of thousands of youths form their own domestic units of socialist living by the end of the 1920s. Living the Revolution is a tale of revolutionary aspiration, appropriation, and participation at the ground level. Never officially sanctioned by the party, the urban communes challenge our traditional understanding of the early Soviet state, presenting Soviet ideology as something that could both frame and fire the imagination.
Download or read book Needed by Nobody written by Tova Höjdestrand and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Homelessness became a conspicuous facet of Russian cityscapes only in the 1990s, when the Soviet criminalization of vagrancy and similar offenses was abolished. In spite of the host of social and economic problems confronting Russia in the demise of Soviet power, the social dislocation endured by increasing numbers of people went largely unrecognized by the state. Being homeless carries a special burden in Russia, where a permanent address is the precondition for all civil rights and social benefits and where homelessness is often regarded as a result of laziness and drinking, rather than external factors. In Needed by Nobody, the anthropologist Tova Höjdestrand offers a nuanced portrait of homelessness in St. Petersburg. Based on ethnographic work at railway stations, soup kitchens, and other places where the homeless gather, Höjdestrand describes the material and mental world of this marginalized population. They are, she observes, "not needed" in two senses. The state considers them, in effect, as noncitizens. At the same time they stand outside the traditionally intimate social networks that are the real safety net of life in postsocialist Russia. As a result, they are deprived of the prerequisites for dealing with others in ways that they themselves value as "decent" and "human." Höjdestrand investigates processes of social exclusion as well as the remaining "world of waste": things, tasks, and places that are wanted by nobody else and on which "human leftovers" are forced to survive. In this bleak context, Höjdestrand takes up the intimate worlds of the homeless—their social relationships, dirt and cleanliness, and physical appearance. Her interviews with homeless people show that the indigent have a very good idea of what others think of them and that they are liable to reproduce the stigma that is attached to them even as they attempt to negotiate it. This unique and often moving portrait of life on the margins of society in the new Russia ultimately reveals how human dignity may be retained in the absence of its very preconditions.
Download or read book October written by China Miéville and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2018-05-22 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Multi-award-winning author China Miéville captures the drama of the Russian Revolution in this “engaging retelling of the events that rocked the foundations of the twentieth century” (Village Voice) In February of 1917 Russia was a backwards, autocratic monarchy, mired in an unpopular war; by October, after not one but two revolutions, it had become the world’s first workers’ state, straining to be at the vanguard of global revolution. How did this unimaginable transformation take place? In a panoramic sweep, stretching from St. Petersburg and Moscow to the remotest villages of a sprawling empire, Miéville uncovers the catastrophes, intrigues and inspirations of 1917, in all their passion, drama and strangeness. Intervening in long-standing historical debates, but told with the reader new to the topic especially in mind, here is a breathtaking story of humanity at its greatest and most desperate; of a turning point for civilization that still resonates loudly today.
Download or read book Socialism in Russia written by J. Gooding and published by Springer. This book was released on 2001-12-03 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book asks three fundamental questions about the socialist experiment in twentieth-century Russia: How did Marxist ideas come to be implemented in Russia, a country entirely unsuited to them? Why did the experiment lead to such suffering and upheaval and prove so fruitless? And why did the attempt to return to a proper Marxism/Leninism bring about the rapid collapse of the experiment. In its answers, this book pays special attention to the shadow cast by Lenin throughout the entire Soviet era.
Download or read book Turizm written by Anne E. Gorsuch and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-05 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Soviet Union and the eastern bloc, the idea of "vacation" was never as uncomplicated as throwing some suitcases in the car and heading for the beach. The emphasis was on individual self-improvement within the framework of the collective, an approach manifest in everything from the scheduling of physical exercise to the group tours organized for factory workers, Party cadres, and other segments of society. Like other Soviet-style utopian projects, socialist tourism, which was often heavily laden with rules and prescriptions, was a consciousness-raising project, part of the vast effort to forge new socialist men and women. Turizm is the first book to examine the history of tourism in Russia and eastern Europe from the tsarist period to the age of Soviet and east European mass tourism in the 1960s and 1970s. The contributors to this volume address topics including the roots of socialist tourism, the role of tourism in the making of nations and maintenance of empire, and ways in which the men and women of the "margins of Europe" understood themselves in relation to "Europe." Especially interesting are chapters that show how individuals pursued their own consumerist goals within the framework of collective tourism, obliging the regimes to adapt. Illustrated with period photographs and promotional materials, Turizm will appeal not only to historians of the region but also to anyone with an interest in consumer culture, travel, leisure, and nation-building.
Download or read book Socialism in Russia written by Nodari Simonia and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1994-02-23 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study by Simonia is among the first to present an in-depth analysis of the theory and practical effect of the transition to socialism in Russia. The work consists of two parts: the first deals with the attempt initiated by Lenin to affect a socialist system, the evolution of his theoretical thought, and his search for a model of indirect transition to socialism (through state capitalism); the second analyzes Stalin's direct declaration of state-bureaucratic socialism, his distortion of the ideas of cooperation, state capitalism, and socialist accumulation, and the failure of his communist society. In concluding, Simonia relates Russia's socialist development to its current economic and socio-political problems, providing insights into its tortuous and thorny history.
Download or read book Whither Russia written by Leon Trotsky and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: London edition (Methuen) has title: Towards socialism or capitalism?
Download or read book The Unmaking of Soviet Life written by Caroline Humphrey and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In order to understand today's Russia and former Soviet republics, it is vital to consider their socialist past. Caroline Humphrey, one of anthropology's most highly regarded thinkers on a number of topics including consumption, identity, and ritual, is the ideal guide to the intricacies of post-Soviet culture. The Unmaking of Soviet Life brings together ten of Humphrey's best essays, which cover, geographically, Central Russia, Siberia, and Mongolia; and thematically, the politics of locality, property, and persons.Bridging the strongest of Humphrey's work from 1991 to 2001, the essays do a great deal to demystify the sensational topics of mafia, barter, bribery, and the new shamanism by locating them in the lived experiences of a wide range of subjects. The Unmaking of Soviet Life includes a foreword and introductory paragraphs by Bruce Grant and Nancy Ries that precede each essay.
