Contemporary Russian

Drawing together episodes of rich atmosphere, this novel is as deep and brooding as the Paris nights that serve as its backdrop. Russian writer Gaito Gazdanov arrived in Paris, as so many did, between the wars and would go on, with this fourth novel, to give readers a crisp rendering of a living city changing beneath its people’s feet. Night Roads is loosely based on the author’s experiences as a cab driver in those disorienting, often brutal years, and the narrator moves from episode to episode, holding court with many but sharing his mind with only a few. His companions are drawn straight out of the Parisian past: the legendary courtesan Jeanne Raldi, now in her later days, and an alcoholic philosopher who goes by the name of Plato. Along the way, the driver picks up other characters, such as the dull thinker who takes on the question of the meaning of life only to be driven insane. The dark humor of that young man’s failure against the narrator’s authentic, personal explorations of the same subject is captured in this first English translation. With his trademark émigré eye, Gazdanov pairs humor with cruelty, sharpening the bite of both.

In the realm of political discourse there is a distinct gap in understanding between Russia and the West. To an outsider, the ideas that animate the actions of Russia's ruling elite, opposition, and civil society - from the motivations driving Russia's political actors to the class structure and international and domestic constraints that shape Russia's political thinking - remain shrouded in mystery. Contrary to the view that a bleak discursive uniformity reigns in Vladimir Putin's Russia, Political Ideologies in Contemporary Russia shows that the country is engaging in serious theoretical debates across a wide spectrum of modern ideologies including liberalism, nationalism, feminism, and multiculturalism. Elena Chebankova argues that the nation is fragmented and the state seeks to balance the various ideological movements to ensure that none dominates. She shows that each of the main ideological trends is far from uniform, but the major opposition is between liberalism and traditionalism. The pluralistic picture she describes contests many current portrayals of Russia as an authoritarian or even totalitarian state. Offering an alternative to the Western lens through which to view global politics, Political Ideologies in Contemporary Russia is a major contribution to our understanding of this world power.

The position of Russia has always been difficult. In spite of the Revolution in 1917, the legal, economic, social and political inequalities between men and women have remained severe. For more than seventy years the official propaganda of the Soviet system deliberately concealed from the public, in the West as well as the East, the actual position of women, presenting it in rose-colored hues and proclaiming that, under socialism, the issue of the position of women in society had been resolved once and for all. However, the opposite was true: women increasingly suffered from overt and covert discrimination. In fact, the discrepancy between the official and actual positioning of working women became so acute that it led to serious social problems. The democratic reforms of the mid-1980s brought some positive changes at last; for the first time, the "women's issue" was recognized as an urgent socio-political problem requiring serious investigation and practical measures. The authors of this collection of original essays, most of whom are social scientists at the Moscow Academy of Science, examine those aspects of life of women in Russia today which aremost pressing, not least those arising from the multi-ethnic composition of the Russian Federation that comprises more than one hundred different nationalities and in which women constitute fifty-three per cent of the population.

Edited by Vladmir Arkhipov. Foreword by Susan B. Glasser.

This volume is the first comprehensive study of the “conservative turn” in Russia under Putin. Its fifteen chapters, written by renowned specialists in the field, provide a focused examination of what Russian conservatism is and how it works. The book features in-depth discussions of the historical dimensions of conservatism, the contemporary international context, the theoretical conceptualization of conservatism, and empirical case studies. Among various issues covered by the volume are the geopolitical and religious dimensions of conservatism and the conservative perspective on Russian history and the politics of memory. The authors show that conservative ideology condenses and reworks a number of discussions about Russia’s identity and its place in the world. Contributors include: Katharina Bluhm, Per-Arne Bodin, Alicja Curanović, Ekaterina Grishaeva, Caroline Hill, Irina Karlsohn, Marlene Laruelle, Mikhail N. Lukianov, Kåre Johan Mjør, Alexander Pavlov, Susanna Rabow-Edling, Andrey Shishkov, Victor Shnirelman, Mikhail Suslov, and Dmitry Uzlaner

The author discusses how Russian art has evolved from icon painting through to Socialist Realism. He examines the work of approximately 50 contemporary artists, all of whom are living and working in the Soviet Union and conveys a general view of life in the USSR.

Vladimir Putin’s return to the Kremlin for a fourth presidential term in 2018 has seen Russian democracy weaken further and Russia’s relations with the West deteriorate seriously. Yet, within Russia, Putin’s position remains unchallenged and his foreign policy battles have received widespread public support. But is Putin as safe as his approval ratings lead us to believe? And how secure is the regime that he heads? In this new book, Neil Robinson places contemporary Russian politics in historical perspective to argue that Putin’s regime has not overcome the problems that underpinned the momentous changes in twentieth-century Russian history when the country veered from tsarism to Soviet rule to post-communist chaos. The first part of the book, outlining why crises have been perennial problems for Russia, is followed by an exploration of contemporary Russian political institutions and policy to show how Putin has stabilised Russian politics. But, while Putin’s achievements as a politician have been considerable in strengthening his personal position, they have not dealt successfully with the enduring problem of the Russian state’s functionality. Like other Russian rulers, Putin has been much better at establishing a political system that supports his rule than he has at building up a state that can deliver material wealth and protection to the Russian people. As a result, Robinson argues, Russia has been and remains vulnerable to political crisis and regime change.

This book consists of the work of twenty-three poets, living in Russia and abroad and writing during the period since 1975. It is the first dual-language anthology in many years.