Yugoslavia's Ambassador to the U.S.S.R. in the late 1950s gives an insider's story of Yugoslav-Soviet relations of that time, with much material of interest on the issues and personalities of the day, especially the redoubtable Nikita Sergeievich himself. An abridged version of the Yugoslav edition published in 1977
Since the coming of perestroika in 1985, scholars have had unprecedented access to Russian archives. In Russia: A History, editor Gregory Freeze and twelve other American and European historians have mined these newly opened archives and browsed through the best contemporary scholarship to provide a major reinterpretation of the history of one of the world's great powers.
Here is the first major history of Russia to appear since the fall of the Soviet Union, beginning in the 8th century and ranging across a thousand years to the recently established Commonwealth of Independent States. What emerges is a nation of extremes--of imperial opulence and abject poverty, tyrannical power and subversive resistance, artistic achievement and economic crisis, glittering cities and frozen steppes. The contributors capture a powerful sense of Russia's national destiny of repeated themes and unchanging conditions. We see, for instance, that time and again, all-powerful autocrats like Ivan the Terrible and Stalin employed brutality to eliminate any challenge to their authority. Yet their hold on power was always under attack, threatened by bureaucratic incompetence, pervasive corruption, and resistance from below. Russian rulers have also had to contend with the same immense physical challenges: a huge and widely dispersed population, a perennial dearth of means and men to govern, a primitive infrastructure which, as the authors show, periodically dissolved into times of trouble, as in 1598, 1917, and 1991.
Handsomely illustrated with nearly 170 illustrations, including 12 color plates, this landmark history cuts through the myths that have surrounded Russia to tell the absorbing story of one of the world's most powerful nations.
The classic account of the social, economic, and political dynamics of the first socialist revolution as told by one of its central leaders. Trotsky describes how, under Lenin s leadership, the Bolshevik Party led the working class, peasantry, and oppressed nationalities to overturn the monarchist regime of the landlords and capitalists and bring to power a government of the workers and peasants one that set an example for toilers the world over. Nowhere are those world-shattering events explained with more clarity and insight than in this powerful account. Unabridged edition, 3 vols. in one.
This book is a richly detailed account of the Russian Revolution from the fall of the Tsar in March 1917 to the introduction of the New Economic Policy in March 1921. The author draws on interviews and on other kinds of now unavailable documents to produce a work that remains a unique view of early Soviet Russia.
Chicago is synonymous with great architecture, boasting iconic buildings and a spectacular skyline. But if visitors only looked downtown, they would miss one of the most significant architectural neighborhoods that Chicago has to offer. Just a few miles south of the Loop on the University of Chicago campus, one can find incredible range of historic and contemporary buildings, featuring some of the world’s most forward-thinking architects. Frank Lloyd Wright, Henry Ives Cobb, Eero Saarinen, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Walter Netsch, Ricardo Legorreta, Rafael Viñoly, César Pelli, Helmut Jahn, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, and many more have all left their indelible mark on the Hyde Park campus.
Building Ideas is a photographic exploration of these buildings, showing how the design of everything from libraries to cooling plants contributes to the university's intellectual life, and expands the boundaries of urban planning and architectural norms. Starting with the original gothic quadrangles, the book traces more than a century of the campus’s physical history. With exquisite details and insights from some of the architects themselves, Building Ideas offers an unprecedented look at a vibrant, influential, and endlessly interesting place.
Jay Pridmore is the author or coauthor of many books, including Chicago Architecture and Design, Shanghai: The Architecture of China’s Great Urban Center, and The American Bicycle. He has worked as a journalist in Chicago and has written extensively about architecture. Tom Rossiter is a registered architect and a fellow in the American Institute of Architects. He is an architectural photographer based in Chicago.
Russia today is haunted by deeds that have not been examined and words that have been left unsaid. A serious attempt to understand the meaning of the Communist experience has not been undertaken, and millions of victims of Soviet Communism are all but forgotten. In this book David Satter, a former Moscow correspondent and longtime writer on Russia and the Soviet Union, presents a striking new interpretation of Russia's great historical tragedy, locating its source in Russia's failure fully to appreciate the value of the individual in comparison with the objectives of the state.
Satter explores the moral and spiritual crisis of Russian society. He shows how it is possible for a government to deny the inherent value of its citizens and for the population to agree, and why so many Russians actually mourn the passing of the Soviet regime that denied them fundamental rights. Through a wide-ranging consideration of attitudes toward the living and the dead, the past and the present, the state and the individual, Satter arrives at a distinctive and important new way of understanding the Russian experience.
It is often argued that globalization fosters 'hybridity', as some cultural imports are accepted, while others are 'localized', and others still are rejected outright. Yet we know relatively little about the social processes and mechanisms involved in cultural globalization. This book offers an empirically rich and theoretically compelling analysis of how cultural globalization occurs, including the structural conditions, personal meanings and social interactions associated with various outcomes. Providing a detailed analysis of the experiences of young people from Kazakhstan who lived in the United States temporarily, the author asks, how do return migrants react to cultural differences in America, and what changes do they try to incorporate into their lives back in Kazakhstan? What kinds of negotiations ensue, and what explains their success or failure? In answering these questions, Douglas W. Blum combines insights from sociology and anthropology along with specialized research on globalization, migration and post-Soviet studies.
On April 26, 1986, the worst nuclear reactor accident in history occurred in Chernobyl and contaminated as much as three quarters of Europe. Voices from Chernobyl is the first book to present personal accounts of the tragedy. Journalist Svetlana Alexievich interviewed hundreds of people affected by the meltdown---from innocent citizens to firefighters to those called in to clean up the disaster---and their stories reveal the fear, anger, and uncertainty with which they still live. Comprised of interviews in monologue form, Voices from Chernobyl is a crucially important work, unforgettable in its emotional power and honesty.
You can learn more about the author and Nobel prize winner Svetlana Alexievich in this blog post on CEERES' East from Chicago Blog, which summarizes our 2016 roundtable on the writer.
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 outrage when it was first published in the USSR―it was called by reviewers there a “slanderous piece of fantasy” and part of a “hysterical chorus of malign attacks”―Zinky Boys presents the candid and affecting testimony of the officers and grunts, nurses and prostitutes, mothers, sons, and daughters who describe the war and its lasting effects. What emerges is a story that is shocking in its brutality and revelatory in its similarities to the American experience in Vietnam. The Soviet dead were shipped back in sealed zinc coffins (hence the term “Zinky Boys”), while the state denied the very existence of the conflict. Svetlana Alexievich brings us the truth of the Soviet-Afghan War: the beauty of the country and the savage Army bullying, the killing and the mutilation, the profusion of Western goods, the shame and shattered lives of returned veterans. Zinky Boys offers a unique, harrowing, and unforgettably powerful insight into the realities of war.
You can learn more about the author and Nobel prize winner Svetlana Alexievich in this blog post on CEERES' East from Chicago Blog, which summarizes our 2016 roundtable on the writer.
During two terrifying days and nights in early September 1941, the lives of nearly two thousand men, women, and children were taken savagely by their neighbors in Kulen Vakuf, a small rural community straddling today's border between northwest Bosnia and Croatia. This frenzy--in which victims were butchered with farm tools, drowned in rivers, and thrown into deep vertical caves--was the culmination of a chain of local massacres that began earlier in the summer. In Violence as a Generative Force, Max Bergholz tells the story of the sudden and perplexing descent into this once peaceful multiethnic community into extreme violence. This deeply researched microhistory provides provocative insights into questions of global significance: What causes intercommunal violence? How does such violence between neighbors affect their identities and relations?
Contrary to a widely held view that sees nationalism leading to violence, Bergholz reveals how the upheavals wrought by local killing actually created dramatically new perceptions of ethnicity---of oneself, supposed "brothers," and those perceived as "others." As a consequence, the violence forged new communities, new formed and configurations of power, and new practices of nationalism. The history of this community was marked by an unexpectd explosion of locally-executed violence by the few, which functioned as a generative force in transforming the identities, relations, and lives of the many. The story of this largely unknown Balkan community in 1941 provides a powerful means through which to rethink fundamental assumptions about the interrelationships among ethnicity, nationalism, and violence, both during World War II and more broadly throughout the world.
