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This book embraces the political, intellectual, social and cultural history of Soviet Russia. Providing a useful perspective of Putin’s Russia, and with a strong historical and religious background, the book: looks at the changing features of the Soviet ideology from Lenin to Stalin, and the moral universe of Stalin's time explores the history of the moral thinking of the dissident intelligentsia examines the moral dimension of Soviet dissent amongst dissidents of both religious and secular persuasions, and includes biographical material explores the ethical assumptions of the perestroika era, firstly amongst Communist leaders, and then in the emerging democratic and national forces.
Written Here, Published There offers a new perspective on the role of underground literature in the Cold War and challenges us to recognize gaps in the Iron Curtain. The book identifies a transnational undertaking that reinforced détente, dialogue, and cultural transfer, and thus counterbalanced the persistent belief in Europe's irreversible division. It analyzes a cultural practice that attracted extensive attention during the Cold War but has largely been ignored in recent scholarship: tamizdat, or the unauthorized migration of underground literature across the Iron Curtain. Through this cultural practice, I offer a new reading of Cold War Europe's history . Investigating the transfer of underground literature from the 'Other Europe' to Western Europe, the United States, and back illuminates the intertwined fabrics of Cold War literary cultures. Perceiving tamizdat as both a literary and a social phenomenon, the book focuses on how individuals participated in this border-crossing activity and used secretive channels to guarantee the free flow of literature.
A major new contribution to understanding the transition of Soviet society from Stalinism to a more humane model of socialism.
Time after time, people turn to music when coping with traumatic life events. Music can help process emotions, interpret memories, and create a sense of collective identity. In Performing Pain, author Maria Cizmic focuses on the late 20th century in Eastern Europe as she uncovers music's relationships to trauma and grief. The 1970s and 1980s witnessed a cultural preoccupation in this region with the meanings of historical suffering, particularly surrounding the Second World War and the Stalinist era. Journalists, historians, writers, artists, and filmmakers frequently negotiated themes related to pain and memory, truth and history, morality and spirituality during glasnost and the years leading up to it. Performing Pain considers how works by composers Alfred Schnittke, Galina Ustvolskaya, Arvo Part, and Henryk Gorecki musically address contemporary concerns regarding history and suffering through composition, performance, and reception.Taking theoretical cues from psychology, sociology, and literary and cultural studies, Cizmic offers a set of hermeneutic essays that demonstrate the ways in which people employ music in order to make sense of historical traumas and losses. Seemingly postmodern compositional choices--such as quotation, fragmentation, and stasis--create musical analogies to psychological and emotional responses to trauma and grief, and the physical realities of their embodied performance focus attention on the ethics of pain and representation. Furthermore, as film music, these works participate in contemporary debates regarding memory and trauma. A comprehensive and innovative study, Performing Pain will fascinate scholars interested in the music of Eastern Europe and in aesthetic articulations of suffering.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, both the Russian state and Russia's Muslim communities have struggled to find a new modus vivendi in a rapidly changing domestic and international socio-political context. At the same time as Islamic religious belief and practice have flourished, the state has become increasingly concerned about the security implications of this religious revival, reflecting and responding to a more general international concern over radicalised political Islam. This book examines contemporary developments in Russian politics, how they impact on Russia's Muslim communities, how these communities are helping to shape the Russian state, and what insights this provides to the nature and identity of the Russian state both in its inward and outward projection. The book provides an up-to-date and broad-ranging analysis of the opportunities and challenges confronting contemporary Muslim communities in Russia that is not confined in scope to Chechnya or the North Caucasus, and which goes beyond simplistic characterisations of Muslims as a 'threat'. Instead, it engages with the role of political Islam in Russia in a nuanced way, sensitive to regional and confessional differences, highlighting Islam's impact on domestic and foreign policy and investigating sources of both radicalisation and de-radicalisation.
In the wake of the disastrous Crimean War, the Russian autocracy completely renovated its most basic social, political and economic systems by emancipating some 23 million privately-owned serfs. This had enormous consequences for all aspects of Russian life, and profound effects on the course of Russian history. This book examines the emancipation of the serfs, focusing on the mechanisms used to enact the reforms and the implications for Russian politics and society in the long term. Because the autocracy lacked the necessary resources for the reform, it created new institutions with real powers and autonomy, particularly the mirovoi posrednik, or 'peace arbitrator'. The results of this strategy differed in practice from the authorities’ original intentions. The new institutions invigorated Russian political life, introduced norms that challenged centuries-old customs and traditions, and fostered a nascent civil society, allowing Russia to follow the basic trajectory of Western European socio-political development.
Medushevsky examines constitutionalism in Russia from Tsarist times to the present. He traces the different attitudes to constitutionalism in political thought, and in practice, at different periods, showing how the balance between authoritarianism and liberalism has shifted. In addition, he discusses the importance of constitutional developments for societies in transition, and concludes that post-communist constitutional development in Russia is still far from complete. As an empirical resource, Russian Constitutionalism takes a longer historical view than other books on this topic, and it also goes further than this in its interpretive approach, providing a greater understanding of Russian constitutionalism.
This is the first book to explore the phenomenon of glamour and celebrity in contemporary Russian culture, ranging across media forms, disciplinary boundaries and modes of inquiry, with particular emphasis on the media personality. Considering both general tendencies and individual celebrities, it examines the internal dynamics of the institutions involved in the production, marketing and maintenance of celebrities, and the context and imperatives which drive Russian society’s fascination with glamour and celebrity.
The revolutionary movements in late tsarist Russia inspired a reaction by groups on the right. Although these groups were ostensibly defending the status quo, they were in fact, as this book argues, very radical in many ways. This book discusses these radical rightist groups, showing how they developed considerable popular appeal across the whole Russian Empire, securing support from a wide cross-section of society. The book considers the nature and organisation of the groups, their ideologies and polices on particular issues and how they changed over time. The book concludes by examining how and why the groups lost momentum and support in the years immediately before the First World War, and briefly explores how far present day rightist groups in Russia are connected to this earlier movement.
This book examines the transformation of the state in Central and Eastern Europe since the end of communism and adoption of market oriented reform in the early 1990s, exploring the impact of globalization and economic liberalization on the region’s states, societies and political economy. It compares the different policies and national strategies adopted by key Central and Eastern European states, including the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia, showing how initial internally oriented strategies of market reform, privileging domestic sources of investment, had by the late 1990s given way to externally oriented strategies emphasising the promotion of competitiveness by attracting foreign investment. It explores the reasons behind this convergence, considering the influence of internal and external forces, and the roles of interests, institutions and ideas. It argues that internationalization of the state is forged in the processes through which domestic groups linked to transnational capital attain domestic influence necessary to shape state policy and strategy. These groups — the comprador service sector in particular — constitute and organize political, social and institutional support of the competition state in the region. Overall, this book not only provides a detailed account of the political economy of post-communist transformation in Central and Eastern Europe, but also the processes by which states adapt to the forces of globalization.