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Taking the achievements, ambiguities, and legacies of World War II
as a point of departure, The Shadow of War: The Soviet Union and
Russia, 1941 to the Present offers a fresh new approach to modern
Soviet and Russian history. * Presents one of the only histories of
the Soviet Union and Russia that begins with World War II and goes
beyond the Soviet collapse through to the early twenty-first
century * Innovative thematic arrangement and approach allows for
insights that are missed in chronological histories * Draws on a
wide range of sources and the very latest research on post-Soviet
history, a rapidly developing field * Supported by further reading,
bibliography, maps and illustrations.
The Soviet Union at its height occupied one sixth of the world's
land mass, encompassed fifteen republics, and stretched across
eleven different time zones. More than twice the size of the United
States, it was the great threat of the Cold War until it suddenly
collapsed in 1991. Now, almost twenty years after the dissolution
of this vast empire, what are we to make of its existence? Was it a
heroic experiment, an unmitigated disaster, or a viable if flawed
response to the modern world? Taking a fresh approach to the study
of the Soviet Union, this Very Short Introduction blends political
history with an investigation into Soviet society and culture from
1917 to 1991. Stephen Lovell examines aspects of patriotism,
political violence, poverty, and ideology, and provides answers to
some of the big questions about the Soviet experience. Throughout,
the book takes a refreshing thematic approach to the history of the
Soviet Union and it provides an up-to-date consideration of the
Soviet Union's impact and what we have learnt since its end.
About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and
style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of
life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the
newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about
the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from
philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.
The dacha is a sometimes beloved, sometimes scorned Russian
dwelling. Alexander Pushkin summered in one; Joseph Stalin lived in
one for the last twenty years of his life; and contemporary Russian
families still escape the city to spend time in them. Stephen
Lovell's generously illustrated book is the first social and
cultural history of the dacha. Lovell traces the dwelling's origins
as a villa for the court elite in the early eighteenth century
through its nineteenth-century role as the emblem of a middle-class
lifestyle, its place under communist rule, and its post-Soviet
incarnation.A fascinating work rich in detail, Summerfolk explores
the ways in which Russia's turbulent past has shaped the function
of the dacha and attitudes toward it. The book also demonstrates
the crucial role that the dacha has played in the development of
Russia's two most important cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, by
providing residents with a refuge from the squalid and crowded
metropolis. Like the suburbs in other nations, the dacha form of
settlement served to alleviate social anxieties about urban growth.
Lovell shows that the dacha is defined less by its physical
location"usually one or two hours" distance from a large city yet
apart from the rural hinterland-than by the routines, values, and
ideologies of its inhabitants.Drawing on sources as diverse as
architectural pattern books, memoirs, paintings, fiction, and
newspapers, he examines how dachniki ("summerfolk") have freed
themselves from the workplace, cultivated domestic space, and
created informal yet intense intellectual communities. He also
reflects on the disdain that many Russians have felt toward the
dacha, and their association of its lifestyle with physical
idleness, private property, and unproductive use of the land.
Russian attitudes toward the dacha are, Lovell asserts, constantly
evolving. The word "dacha" has evoked both delight in and hostility
to leisure. It has implied both the rejection of agricultural labor
and, more recently, a return to the soil. In Summerfolk, the dacha
is a unique vantage point from which to observe the Russian social
landscape and Russian life in the private sphere.
In the Russian modernist era, literature threw itself open to
influences from other art forms, most particularly the visual arts.
Collaborations between writers, artists, designers, and theatre and
cinema directors took place more intensively and productively than
ever before or since. Equally striking was the incursion of spatial
and visual motifs and structures into verbal texts. Verbal and
visual principles of creation joined forces in an attempt to
transform and surpass life through art. Yet willed transcendence of
the boundaries between art forms gave rise to confrontation and
creative tension as well as to harmonious co-operation. This
collection of essays by leading British, American and Russian
scholars, first published in 2000, draws on a rich variety of
material - from Dostoevskii to Siniavskii, from writers' doodles to
cabarets, from well-known modernists such as Akhmatova, Malevich,
Platonov and Olesha to less well-known figures - to demonstrate the
creative power and dynamism of Russian culture 'on the boundaries'.
The enormously complex changes triggered by the collapse of
communism in Eastern Europe were nowhere more ambiguous than in the
heartland of the Soviet bloc, Russia itself. Here the population
was divided on all the most fundamental questions of post-communist
transition: economic reforms, the Communist Party, the borders of
the state, even the definition of the Russian 'nation' itself.
Russians also faced plummeting living standards and chronic
uncertainty. In a matter of months, Russia was apparently demoted
from 'evil empire' to despondent poor relation of the prosperous
West. Yet the country also seemed alarmingly open to all manner of
political outcomes. Russia deserves our attention now as much as
ever, because it raises so many of the big questions about how
societies operate in the modern world.
The dacha is a sometimes beloved, sometimes scorned Russian
dwelling. Alexander Pushkin summered in one; Joseph Stalin lived in
one for the last twenty years of his life; and contemporary Russian
families still escape the city to spend time in them. Stephen
Lovell's generously illustrated book is the first social and
cultural history of the dacha. Lovell traces the dwelling's origins
as a villa for the court elite in the early eighteenth century
through its nineteenth-century role as the emblem of a middle-class
lifestyle, its place under communist rule, and its post-Soviet
incarnation. A fascinating work rich in detail, Summerfolk explores
the ways in which Russia's turbulent past has shaped the function
of the dacha and attitudes toward it. The book also demonstrates
the crucial role that the dacha has played in the development of
Russia's two most important cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, by
providing residents with a refuge from the squalid and crowded
metropolis. Like the suburbs in other nations, the dacha form of
settlement served to alleviate social anxieties about urban growth.
Lovell shows that the dacha is defined less by its physical
location"usually one or two hours" distance from a large city yet
apart from the rural hinterland than by the routines, values, and
ideologies of its inhabitants. Drawing on sources as diverse as
architectural pattern books, memoirs, paintings, fiction, and
newspapers, he examines how dachniki ("summerfolk") have freed
themselves from the workplace, cultivated domestic space, and
created informal yet intense intellectual communities. He also
reflects on the disdain that many Russians have felt toward the
dacha, and their association of its lifestyle with physical
idleness, private property, and unproductive use of the land.
Russian attitudes toward the dacha are, Lovell asserts, constantly
evolving. The word "dacha" has evoked both delight in and hostility
to leisure. It has implied both the rejection of agricultural labor
and, more recently, a return to the soil. In Summerfolk, the dacha
is a unique vantage point from which to observe the Russian social
landscape and Russian life in the private sphere."
In the Russian modernist era, literature threw itself open to
influences from other art forms, most particularly the visual arts.
Collaborations between writers, artists, designers, and theatre and
cinema directors took place more intensively and productively than
ever before or since. Equally striking was the incursion of spatial
and visual motifs and structures into verbal texts. Verbal and
visual principles of creation joined forces in an attempt to
transform and surpass life through art. Yet willed transcendence of
the boundaries between art forms gave rise to confrontation and
creative tension as well as to harmonious co-operation. This
collection of essays by leading British, American and Russian
scholars, first published in 2000, draws on a rich variety of
material - from Dostoevskii to Siniavskii, from writers' doodles to
cabarets, from well-known modernists such as Akhmatova, Malevich,
Platonov and Olesha to less well-known figures - to demonstrate the
creative power and dynamism of Russian culture 'on the boundaries'.
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