As the Soviet Union dissolved, so did the visions of past and future that informed Soviet culture. With Dystopia left behind and Utopia forsaken, where do the writers, artists, and critics who once i
The First Socialist Society is the compelling and often tragic history of what Soviet citizens have lived through from 1917 to the present, told with great sympathy and perception. It ranges over the
This compelling never-before-published account takes the reader into Red Guard and Red Army units, Moscow factories, workers' homes, and to the unfamiliar world of feudal Dagestan. Worker-revoluti
This exciting and psychologically penetrating account of the life and rule of Russia's eighteenth-century tsar-reformer develops an important theme. What happens when the drive for "progress" is linke
Now available in paperback, this timely work offers an authoritative and lively history of the entire spectrum of Soviet politics, from the rise of Lenin and the October Revolution of 1917 to the emer
Winner of the Pulitzer PrizeAgainst the monumental canvas of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and Russia unfolds the magnificent story of Peter the Great, crowned co-tsar at the age of ten.
When Lenin asked, "Who will beat whom?" (Kto kogo?), he had no plan to wage revolutionary class war in culture. Many young Communists thought differently, however. Seeking in the name of the proletari
From 1979 to 1989 a million Soviet troops engaged in a devastating war in Afghanistan that claimed 50,000 casualties?and the youth and humanity of many tens of thousands more. Creating controversy and
This book presents a side of Russian life that is largely unknown to the West - the world of popular culture. By surveying detective and science fiction, popular songs, jokes, box office movie hits, stage, radio and television, Professor Richard Stites introduces the people and cultural products that are household words to Russian people. Spanning the entire twentieth century, the author examines the subcultures that draw upon and enrich Russian popular culture. He explores the relationship between popular culture and the national and social values of the masses, including their heroes and myths, and assesses the phenomenon of the celebrity from the silent screen star to the latest rock music idol. Richard Stites pays particular attention to the dramatic battle between elite and popular culture and to the intervention of revolutions, wars, and the state in the production and control of this culture.
The Reconstruction of Poland, 1914-23 is a significant reappraisal of the political, social and economic problems associated with the rebirth of an independent Polish state. The book spans a chronolog
A critical analysis of the economic reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev, which claims that the Soviet leader did little to counter the nation's overindulgence in heavy industry or to combat a burgeoning
This interpretive essay puts the rise and fall of the Soviet system into global perspective and offers the most inclusive overview available of the course of events from the collapse of the tsarist re
The resurgence of national and historical awareness among the people of what was once the USSR has been nowhere stronger than among the Russians themselves. Some of the larger projects of rediscovery
This is the first comprehensive account of Azerbaijan's rich and tumultuous history up to the present time. The Azerbaijan Republic is situated where ancient Media once stood, a territory invaded and
