The Russian Great Reforms of the 1860s were the last major modernizing effort by the Romanov dynasty. From 1855 to 1861, Grand Duchess Elena, born Princess Charlotte of WA1/4rttemberg (1807-1873), acted as the spokeswoman for the reform-minded circles of Russian society, bringing before her nephew Emperor Alexander II a group of civic-minded experts who formed the core of the committee that prepared the greatest and most complex of the reforms, the abolition of serfdom in Russia. The Grand Duchess's involvement in these crucial events in Russian history highlights the considerable influence aristocratic women had in Russian society, quite unlike women of the same class and status in Western Europe. A study of the Grand Duchess Elena of Russia offers a new understanding of Russian and international events of the time, the Romanovs' role in them, the degree of autonomy enjoyed by high-born women in Russia and the ways in which new ideas gained ground in the nineteenth-century Russian empire. Based on abundant and largely unused archival sources, published documents and literature of the period in French, Russian, German, Italian and English, this is the first book about Grand Duchess Elena and it expertly interweaves the story of a woman's life with that of Imperial Russian high politics.

The Russian Great Reforms of the 1860s were the last major modernizing effort by the Romanov dynasty. From 1855 to 1861, Grand Duchess Elena, born Princess Charlotte of WA1/4rttemberg (1807-1873), acted as the spokeswoman for the reform-minded circles of Russian society, bringing before her nephew Emperor Alexander II a group of civic-minded experts who formed the core of the committee that prepared the greatest and most complex of the reforms, the abolition of serfdom in Russia. The Grand Duchess's involvement in these crucial events in Russian history highlights the considerable influence aristocratic women had in Russian society, quite unlike women of the same class and status in Western Europe. A study of the Grand Duchess Elena of Russia offers a new understanding of Russian and international events of the time, the Romanovs' role in them, the degree of autonomy enjoyed by high-born women in Russia and the ways in which new ideas gained ground in the nineteenth-century Russian empire. Based on abundant and largely unused archival sources, published documents and literature of the period in French, Russian, German, Italian and English, this is the first book about Grand Duchess Elena and it expertly interweaves the story of a woman's life with that of Imperial Russian high politics.

Censorship took many forms in Imperial Russia. First published in 1982, Fighting Words focuses on the most common form: the governmental system that screened written works before or after publication to determine their acceptability. Charles A. Ruud shows that, despite this system, the nineteenth-century Russian Imperial government came to grant far more extensive legal publishing freedoms than most Westerners realize, adopting a more liberal attitude towards the press by permitting it a position recognized by law.

Fighting Words also reveals, however, that the government fell far short of implementing these reforms, thus contributing to the growth of opposition to the Tsarist regime in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first few years of the twentieth. Now back in print with a new introduction by the author, Fighting Words is a classic work offering insight into the press, censorship, and the limits of printed expression in Imperial Russia.