Comradely Greetings

”We are the rebels asking for the storm, and believing that truth is only to be found in an endless search ... Two years of prison for Pussy Riot is our tribute to a destiny that gave us sharp ears, allowing us to sound the note A when everyone else is used to hearing G flat.” In an extraordinary exchange of letters, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, imprisoned for taking part in Pussy Riot’s anti-Putin performance, and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek discuss artistic subversion, political activism, and the future of democracy via the ideas of Hegel, Deleuze, Nietzsche, and even Laurie Anderson. Two radicals, one in a Russian forced labor camp, the other writing to her from far outside its walls, show passionately – across linguistic and generational divides – that “there is still a common cause worth fighting for.” Touching, erudite, and worldly, their correspondence unfolds with poetic urgency. In association with Philosophie Magazine.

"We are the rebels asking for the storm, and believing that truth is only to be found in an endless search ... Two years of prison for Pussy Riot is our tribute to a destiny that gave us sharp ears, allowing us to sound the note A when everyone else is used to hearing G flat." In an extraordinary exchange of letters, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, imprisoned for taking part in Pussy Riot's anti-Putin performance, and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek discuss artistic subversion, political activism, and the future of democracy via the ideas of Hegel, Deleuze, Nietzsche, and even Laurie Anderson. Two radicals, one in a Russian forced labor camp, the other writing to her from far outside its walls, show passionately - across linguistic and generational divides - that "there is still a common cause worth fighting for." Touching, erudite, and worldly, their correspondence unfolds with poetic urgency. In association with Philosophie Magazine.

As one of the heroes of the 1917 February Revolution and then Prime Minister at the head of the Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky was passionately, even fanatically, lauded as a leader during his brief political reign. Symbolic artefacts – sculptures, badges and medals - featuring his likeness abounded. Streets were renamed after him, his speeches were quoted on gravestones and literary odes dedicated to him proliferated in the major press. But, by October, Kerensky had been unceremoniously dethroned in the Bolshevik takeover and had fled to Paris and then to the US, where he would remain exiled and removed from his former glory until his death. The breakneck trajectory of his rise and fall and the intensity of his popularity were not merely a symptom of the chaos of those times but offer a window onto a much broader historical phenomenon which did not just begin with Lenin and Stalin – the cult of the leader. In this major new study of the Russian leadership cult, Boris Kolonitskii uses the figure of Kerensky to show how popular engagement with the idea of the leader became a key component of a cultural re-imagining of the political landscape after the fall of the monarchy. A parallel revolution was taking place on the level of creating a resonant political vocabulary where one had not existed before, and it was in the shared exercise of bestowing and dissolving authority that a politicised way of seeing began to emerge. Kolonitskii plots the unfurling of this symbolic revolution by examining the tapestry of images woven by Kerensky and those around him, and, in so doing, exposes his vital role in the development of nascent Soviet political culture. This highly original portrait of a revolutionary sheds new light on the cult of Kerensky that developed around this charismatic leader during the months following the overthrow of the tsar. It will be of value to students and scholars of Russian history and to those interested in political culture.

In 2013, Edward Snowden released a trove of documents revealing the extent of government electronic surveillance. Since then, we have been inundated with reports of vicious malware attacks, election hacking, data breaches, potential cyberwars, fights over Net Neutrality, and fake internet news. Where once discussion of cyberspace was full of hope of incredible potential benefits for humanity and global connection, it has become the domain of fear, anxiety, conflict, and authoritarian impulses. As the cloud of the Net darkens into a storm, are there insights from Christian theology about our online existence? Is the divine present in this phenomenon known as cyberspace? Is it a realm of fear or a realm of hope? In The Cyberdimension, Eric Trozzo engages these questions, seeking not only a theological means of speaking about cyberspace in its ambiguity, but also how the spiritual dimension of life provokes resistance to the reduction of life to what can be calculated. Rather than focusing on the content available online, he looks to the structure of cyberspace itself to find a chastened yet still expectant vision of divinity amidst the political, economic, and social forces at play in the cyber realm.

Few political lives have been as dramatic, or as marked by sudden changes of fortune, as that of Janos Kadar, Hungary's communist leader from 1956 to 1988. A reformist who at first supported Imre Nagy's 1956 attempt to distance his country from Soviet domination, Kadar eventually threw in his lot with the Soviet Union and the repression which followed Hungary's attempt at revolution in 1956. Was he an ambitious, ruthless party functionary or a tragic visionary who sought to preserve a modicum of independence for his country by abandoning its aspirations and his friends? In this, the first biography in English since the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Roger Gough paints a vivid picture of Kadar's personality and career, whilst analysing his significance for Hungary and his place in the history of European communism. "A Good Comrade" is a powerful portrait of a man who dominated Hungarian political life for three decades.

What really happened to Russia following the collapse of the USSR? This book tries to provide some answers by examining aspects of life in St. Petersburg, Russia's second largest city, in the early years of Russia's transformation from a Communist state to a democracy. Rather than offering an account of the political changes that occurred after December 1991, the author uniquely sketches the personal and social dimensions of the "lower depths" of a revolution that produced sweeping changes to the lives of average Russians. Written in an accessible style from the perspective of a historian who lived in St. Petersburg in 1991-92 and subsequent periods, the book brings to life a number of fascinating changes that took place to the state and society. Essays describe changes to the consumer culture and the new landscape of capitalism in St. Petersburg; cultural currents in the city; changing behaviour in public places and the strains placed on the average Petersburger; the lingering tension between old bureaucratic ways and new rules and regulations; and a snapshot of some faces of the younger generation and the ways in which they coped with their new lives.