Bøger i Library of Modern Russia serien

Despite continued interest in the Gulag, academic scholarship has failed to move beyond the strict divide between `criminal' and `political' prisoners.

The first English-language study of the drastic reversal of relations between imperial Russia and their Armenian subjects on the eve of World War I.

A thoroughly researched account of a religious minority in Imperial Russia in the longue duree that will be of use to all scholars of Russian and Orthodox Church history.

Traditionally, the in-fighting within the communist party during the Russian Civil War has been interpreted by historians as a struggle between good and evil, between Trotsky's democratically inclined party versus the later bureaucratic Stalinist version. This the view that Trotsky himself took, the line that R. V. Daniels supported in the 1960s, and which has remained in orthodoxy ever since. This book, in its analysis of the communist party from 1917 to 1922, challenges the simplicity of such dualistic historical arguments. What emerges from Lonergan's meticulous research is a party in constant flux, where conflict and compromise was prioritised ahead of calculation and strategy and where the desperate need to survive drove decisions forward. Indeed, the resultant autocratic structures and draconian resolutions were not merely the result of blind devotion to Lenin; as this book reveals, the unsettled and turbulent party membership in many ways actually pushed the leadership into an increasingly authoritarian stance. Examining the six party congresses that took place during the civil war and drawing from the political and personal archives of various party members, The Communist Party in the Russian Civil War is an exciting, novel, and much-needed re-assessment of the Soviet Union's formative political years.

The first comprehensive study of the Varga Institute from its inception to its collapse, which sheds new light onto the complex formation of Soviet foreign policy.

As the nineteenth century drew to a close and epidemics in western Europe were waning, the deadly cholera vibrio continued to wreak havoc in Russia, outlasting the Romanovs.

Following Stalin's death in 1953, association football clubs, as well as the informal supporter groups and communities which developed around them, were an important way for the diverse citizens of the multinational Soviet Union to express, negotiate and develop their identities, both on individual and collective levels.

In 1991 there were more than 1,000 'Americanists' - experts in US history and politics - working in the Soviet Union.

An inter-disciplinary and innovative exploration of the all-pervasive nature of Stalinism and its afterlife in Russia today.

Thoroughly-researched biography of leading Russian intellectual

How did a regime that promised utopian-style freedom end up delivering terror and tyranny? For some, the Bolsheviks were totalitarian and the descent was inevitable; for others, Stalin was responsible; for others still, this period in Russian history was a microcosm of the Cold War. The Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution reasons that these arguments are too simplistic. Rather, the journey from Bolshevik liberation to totalitarianism was riddled with unsuccessful experiments, compromises, confusion, panic, self-interest and over-optimism. As this book reveals, the emergence (and persistence) of the Bolshevik dictatorship was, in fact, the complicated product of a failed democratic transition.Drawing on long-ignored archival sources and original research, this fascinating volume brings together an international team of leading scholars to reconsider one of the most important and controversial questions of 20th-century history: how to explain the rise of the repressive Stalinist dictatorship.

According to Benedict Anderson, the rapid expansion of print media during the late-1700s popularised national history and standardised national languages, thus helping create nation-states and national identities at the expense of the old empires. Publishing in Tsarist Russia challenges this theory and, by examining the history of Russian publishing through a transnational lens, reveals how the popular press played an important and complex Imperial role, while providing a "soft infrastructure" which the subjects could access to change Imperial order. As this volume convincingly argues, this is because the Russian language at this time was a lingua franca; it crossed borders and boundaries, reaching speakers of varying nationalities. Russian publications, then, were able to effectively operate within the structure of Imperialism but as a public space, they went beyond the control of the Tsar and ethnic Russians. This exciting international team of scholars provide a much-needed, fresh take on the history of Russian publishing and contribute significantly to our understanding of print media, language and empire from the 18th to 20th centuries. Publishing in Tsarist Russia is therefore a vital resource for scholars of Russian history, comparative nationalism, and publishing studies.

How and why does the stage, and those who perform upon it, play such a significant role in the social makeup of modern Russia, Ukraine and Belarus? In New Drama in Russian, Julie Curtis brings together an international team of leading scholars and practitioners to tackle this complex question. New Drama, which draws heavily on techniques of documentary and verbatim writing, is a key means of protest in the Russian-speaking world; since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, theatres, dramatists, and critics have collaborated in using the genre as a lens through which to explore a wide range of topics from human rights and state oppression to sexuality and racism. Yet surprisingly little has been written on this important theatrical movement. New Drama in Russian rectifies this. Through providing analytical surveys of this outspoken transnational genre alongside case-studies of plays and interviews with playwrights, this volume sheds much-needed light on the key issues of performance, politics, and protest in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.Meticulously researched and elegantly argued, this book will be of immense value to scholars of Russian cultural history and post-Soviet literary studies.