Added by: lucius5 | Karma: 1660.85 | Non-Fiction, Other | 27 March 2009
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This lucid account of Russian and Soviet history presents major trends and events from ancient Kievan Rus’ to Vladimir Putin’s presidency of the twenty-first century. Now thoroughly revised and updated, Russia and the Soviet Union does not shy away from controversial topics, including the impact of the Mongol conquest, the paradoxes of Peter the Great, the “inevitability” of the 1917 Revolution, the Stalinist terror, and the Gorbachev reform effort.
Shlapentokh undertakes a dispassionate analysis of the ordinary functioning of the Soviet system from Stalin's death through the Soviet collapse and Russia's first post-communist decade. Without overlooking its repressive character, he treats the USSR as a "normal" system that employed both socialist and nationalist ideologies for the purposes of technological and military modernization, preservation of empire, and expansion of its geopolitical power. Foregoing the projection of Western norms and assumptions, he seeks to achieve a clearer understanding of a civilization that has perplexed its critics and its champions alike.
In late 1999 when Vladimir Putin was named Prime Minister, Russia was a budding democracy. Multiple parties campaigned for seats in the Duma, the nation's parliament. The media criticized the government freely. Eight years later as Putin completes his second term as president of Russia and announces his bid for prime minister, the country is under a repressive regime. Human rights abuses are widespread. The Kremlin is openly hostile to the West. Yet the United States and Europe have been slow to confront the new reality, in effect, helping Russia win what experts are now calling the New Cold War.
A difficult environment with a harsh Arctic climate has made life for the Finns extremely challenging. But they have overcome more than just their environment. Religious divisions that developed between the Catholic and Orthodox churches also divided the country during the Great Schism. Later, the country was a battleground for fighting between the historical powers of Sweden and Russia. Today, Finland is a communications titan, and the country is no longer situated on the fringes of human activity.
Added by: Romadzha | Karma: 827.99 | Non-Fiction, Other | 19 January 2009
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Popular Culture Russia! is designed to offer an introduction to some of the developments in popular culture in the New Russia. This book attempts to chart the development of popular culture in Soviet Russia in broad terms, in order to set the backdrop for a detailed exploration of popular culture under Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin.
Эта книга - введение в массовую культуру Новой России. Попытка обрисовать развитие поп-культуры в Советской России для дальнейшего детального исследования этого явления при Горбачеве, Ельцине и Путине.
