A Social History Of Twentieth Century Russia

Our knowledge of modern Russian society has been greatly enriched by the research of recent decades. But while the politics of the period has been exhaustively documented, the social history remains less familiar. Vladimir Andrle's book is the first to draw together the findings and insights of this research to give us a comprehensive view of Russia's social history, starting at a time when the tsarist state seemed unassailable, and ending with the disintegration of the Soviet system.

Russia has had an extraordinary history in the twentieth century. As the first Communist society, the USSR was both an admired model and an object of fear and hatred to the rest of the world. How are we to make sense of this history? A History of Twentieth-Century Russia treats the years from 1917 to 1991 as a single period and analyzes the peculiar mixture of political, economic, and social ingredients that made up the Soviet formula. Under a succession of leaders from Lenin to Gorbachev, various methods were used to conserve and strengthen this compound. At times the emphasis was upon shaking up the ingredients, at others upon stabilization. All this occurred against a background of dictatorship, civil war, forcible industrialization, terror, world war, and the postwar arms race. Communist ideas and practices never fully pervaded the society of the USSR. Yet an impact was made and, as this book expertly documents, Russia since 1991 has encountered difficulties in completely eradicating the legacy of Communism. A History of Twentieth-Century Russia is the first work to use the mass of material that has become available in the documentary collections, memoirs, and archives over the past decade. It is an extraordinarily lucid, masterful account of the most complex and turbulent period in Russia's long history.

World Order in History (1996) argues that historians’ ideas about world order have been influential in transforming nations’ sense of themselves, and it pursues these arguments with particular reference to Russia and the Soviet Union and the Western world.

In this fascinating book Alter Litvin tells us what life was really like for professional Soviet historians from Lenin to Gorbachev, and assesses the efforts made since 1991 to create a more truthful picture of the turbulent Russian past. Passionate yet fair-minded, this is the first account of the subject to appear in English. Designed primarily for the general reader, it contains much fresh material of specialist interest and an ample up-to-date bibliography.

Covering the sweep of Russian history from empire to Soviet Union to post-Soviet state, Russia's Long Twentieth Century is a comprehensive yet accessible textbook that situates modern Russia in the context of world history and encourages students to analyse the ways in which citizens learnt to live within its system and create distinctly Soviet identities from its structures and ideologies. Chronologically organised but moving beyond the traditional Cold War framework, this book covers topics such as the accelerating social, economic and political shifts in the Russian empire before the Revolution of 1905, the construction of the socialist order under Bolshevik government, and the development of a new state structure, political ideology and foreign policy in the decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The authors highlight the polemics and disagreements that energize the field, discussing interpretations from Russian, émigré, and Western historiographies and showing how scholars diverge sharply in their understanding of key events, historical processes, and personalities. Each chapter contains a selection of primary sources and discussion questions, engaging with the voices and experiences of ordinary Soviet citizens and familiarizing students with the techniques of source criticism. Illustrated with images and maps throughout, this book is an essential introduction to twentieth-century Russian history.

An authoritative history of Russia from early Rus' to the reign of Peter the Great.

Donald Treadgoldwas one of the most distinguished Russian historians of his generation. His Twentieth Century Russia, a standard text in colleges and universities for several decades,has been regularly revised and expanded to reflect new events and scholarship. The present revision, by Professor Herbert Ellison, contains a major chapter on the Yeltsin era, and brings the Russian story to the final year of the century.Twice in the twentieth century the collapse of the Russian state and empire has been followed by an effort to build a democracy on the Western model. The first effort succumbed within a few months to Lenin's communist revolution, whose ideas and institutions dominated the history of Russia, and eventually much of the world, during the succeeding seventy-four years. In August 1991, an attempt by Soviet leaders to suppress democratic and nationalist movements unleashed by the Gorbachev reforms, and already victorious in Eastern Europe, precipitated instead an anti-communist revolution under the leadership of Boris Yeltsin.The revolution, and the sweeping transformation that followed, are treated in the new edition, which assesses the aims and scope of the first decade of Russia's second revolution. The transformation included a new constitutional structure, two fully democratic parliamentary elections and a presidential election (with another of each soon to come), a vigorous revival of political parties and political debate, and major questions about Russia's political future. Against the broad background of the Russian experience over a turbulent century, it raises the major questions: What are the prospects for Russian democracy? Why are the communists, following an anti-communist revolution, the most powerful parliamentary party in Russia's new parliament, and what is their impact? Why has the conversion to a market economy proved so difficult and painful, and what are its prospects? How has Russia related to the new states that were once fellow republics of the USSR? Why has the foreign policy of the new Russian democracy moved from a vision of partnership with the US to a reality of conflict and confrontation?Twentieth Century Russia poses these questions, and many more, for the student and the general reader alike, against the fascinating background of Russia's experience before, during and since the era of communist rule, exploring the roots of current developments in the communist and pre-communist past.

This is a definitive new history of Russia from early Rus' to the successor states that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Volume I encompasses developments before the reign of Peter I; volume II covers the 'imperial era', from Peter's time to the fall of the monarchy in March 1917; and volume III continues the story through to the end of the twentieth century. At the core of all three volumes are the Russians, the lands which they have inhabited and the polities that ruled them, while other peoples and territories have also been given generous coverage for the periods when they came under Riurikid, Romanov and Soviet rule. The distinct voices of individual contributors provide a multitude of perspectives on Russia's diverse and controversial millennial history. This first volume of the Cambridge History of Russia covers the period from early ('Kievan') Rus' to the start of Peter the Great's reign in 1689. It surveys the development of Russia through the Mongol invasions to the expansion of the Muscovite state in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and deals with political, social, economic and cultural issues under the Riurikid and early Romanov rulers. The volume is organised on a primarily chronological basis, but a number of general themes are also addressed, including the bases of political legitimacy; law and society; the interactions of Russians and non-Russians; and the relationship of the state with the Orthodox Church. The international team of authors incorporates the latest Russian and Western scholarship and offers an authoritative new account of the formative 'pre-Petrine' period of Russian history, before the process of Europeanisation had made a significant impact on society and culture. Book jacket.