In The Shadow Of Revolution

Asked shortly after the revolution about how she viewed the new government, Tatiana Varsher replied, "With the wide-open eyes of a historian." Her countrywoman, Zinaida Zhemchuzhnaia, expressed a similar need to take note: "I want to write about the way those events were perceived and reflected in the humble and distant corner of Russia that was the Cossack town of Korenovskaia." What these women witnessed and experienced, and what they were moved to describe, is part of the extraordinary portrait of life in revolutionary Russia presented in this book. A collection of life stories of Russian women in the first half of the twentieth century, In the Shadow of Revolution brings together the testimony of Soviet citizens and émigrés, intellectuals of aristocratic birth and Soviet milkmaids, housewives and engineers, Bolshevik activists and dedicated opponents of the Soviet regime. In literary memoirs, oral interviews, personal dossiers, public speeches, and letters to the editor, these women document their diverse experience of the upheavals that reshaped Russia in the first half of this century. As is characteristic of twentieth-century Russian women's autobiographies, these life stories take their structure not so much from private events like childbirth or marriage as from great public events. Accordingly the collection is structured around the events these women see as touchstones: the Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War of 1918-20; the switch to the New Economic Policy in the 1920s and collectivization; and the Stalinist society of the 1930s, including the Great Terror. Edited by two preeminent historians of Russia and the Soviet Union, the volume includes introductions that investigate the social historical context of these women's lives as well as the structure of their autobiographical narratives.

"David Bell wrote the essays in this collection over the course of more than fifteen years, each in response to a new book or political event and published in the New Republic, New York Review of Books, or London Review of Books. Their common thread is France and French history, of which Bell is one of the world's acknowledged experts. Shadows of Revolution is divided into seven sections: The Longue Duree; From the Old Regime to the Revolution; The Revolution; Napoleon Bonaparte; The Nineteenth Century; Vichy; and Parallels: Past and Present. Bell argues that so much of French (and European) history revolves around and returns to the French Revolution of 1789 to 1799. So much happened in so short a time that Chateaubriand later claimed that many centuries had crammed themselves into a single quarter-century. Bell's other main focus is World War Two and the French Vichy regime. He has followed the long and painful process by which the French have come to terms with their collaboration with Nazi Germany, including the creation of monuments to the Holocaust, exhibitions devoted to Vichy and the fate of the French Jews, and the speech that President Jacques Chirac gave in 1995, finally recognizing French responsibility for the deportation of Jews to the death camps. In its way, each of the essays in this collection--Bell's first book of the kind--reflects upon the ways that political and cultural patterns first set in the age of the Revolution continue to resonate, not just in France, but throughout the world"--

An authoritative and comprehensive history of post-revolutionary Mexico by two of the country’s leading intellectuals. Héctor Aguilar Camín and Lorenzo Meyer set out to fill a void in the literature on Mexican history: the lack of a single text to cover the history of Mexico during the twentieth century. In the Shadow of the Mexican Revolution, covers the Mexican Revolution itself, the gradual consolidation of institutions, the Cárdenas regime, the “Mexican economic miracle” and its subsequent collapse, and the recent transition toward a new historical period. The authors explore Mexico’s turbulent recent history as it becomes increasingly intertwined with that of the United States. First published in Spanish as A la sombra de la Revolución Mexicana, this English-language edition offers US readers an intelligent and accessible study of their neighbor to the south.

Turkey stands at the crossroads of the Middle East--caught between the West and ISIS, Syria and Russia, and governed by an increasingly forceful leader. Acclaimed writer Kaya Genc has been covering his country for the past decade. In Under the Shadow he meets activists from both sides of Turkey's political divide: Gezi park protestors who fought tear gas and batons to transform their country's future, and supporters of Erdogan's conservative vision who are no less passionate in their activism. He talks to artists and authors to ask whether the New Turkey is a good place to for them to live and work. He interviews censored journalists and conservative writers both angered by what has been going on in their country.He meets Turkey's Wall Street types who take to the streets despite the enormity of what they can lose as well as the young Islamic entrepreneurs who drive Turkey's economy.While talking to Turkey's angry young people Genc weaves in historical stories, visions and mythologies, showing how Turkey's progressives and conservatives take their ideological roots from two political movements born in the Ottoman Empire: the Young Turks and the Young Ottomans, two groups of intellectuals who were united in their determination to make their country more democratic. He shows a divided society coming to terms with the 21st Century, and in doing so, gets to the heart of the compelling conflicts between history and modernity in the Middle East.

Why did the most unruly proletariat of the Twentieth Century come to tolerate the ascendancy of a political and economic system that, by every conceivable measure, proved antagonistic to working-class interests? Revolution and Counterrevolution is at the center of the ongoing discussion about class identities, the Russian Revolution, and early Soviet industrial relations. Based on exhaustive research in four factory-specific archives, it is unquestionably the most thorough investigation to date on working-class life during the revolutionary era. Focusing on class conflict and workers' frequently changing response to management and state labor policies, the study also meticulously reconstructs everyday life: from leisure activities to domestic issues, the changing role of women, and popular religious belief. Its unparalleled immersion in an exceptional variety of sources at the factory level and its direct engagement with the major interpretive questions about the formation of the Stalinist system will force scholars to re-evaluate long-held assumptions about early Soviet society.

At the turn of the century, the Russian economy was growing by about 10% annually and its population had reached 150 million. By 1920 the country was in desperate financial straits and more than 20 million Russians had died. And by 1950, a third of the globe had embraced communism. The triumph of Communism sets a profound puzzle. How did the Bolsheviks win power and then cling to it amid the chaos they had created? Traditional histories remain a captive to Marxist ideas about class struggle. Analysing never before used files from the Tsarist military archives, McMeekin argues that war is the answer. The revolutionaries were aided at nearly every step by Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland who sought to benefit - politically and economically - from the changes overtaking the country. To make sense of Russia's careening path the essential question is not Lenin's "who, whom?", but who benefits?

"Amelia Weinreb takes readers deep inside the everyday life of middle-class Cubans - arguably the majority of citizens on the island. Un-theorized and under-described, it is a group that is portrayed honestly, accurately, and empathetically. The political and economic systems of Cuba in the post-Soviet period pose ongoing challenges to ordinary Cubans as they struggle in the waning years of the Castro regime. Weinreb demonstrates that the major reason they have been ignored in the scholarly literature is because remaining obscure is one of their strategies for coping with these challenges. Weinreb has made repeated visits to the island, frequently living in local communities along with her family. Thus her ethnography of this 'shadow public' is based upon traditional participant-observer methodology. Her experiences - from the clothesline, the back bedroom, the kitchen table, and the living room sofa - allow her an unprecedented opportunity to bring to outside readers the reality of daily life in Cuba, and she includes an epilogue that addresses citizen and consumer changes that have taken place since Raúl Castro became president in February 2008." -- Publisher's description.

An authoritative and comprehensive history of post-revolutionary Mexico by two of the country’s leading intellectuals. Héctor Aguilar Camín and Lorenzo Meyer set out to fill a void in the literature on Mexican history: the lack of a single text to cover the history of Mexico during the twentieth century. In the Shadow of the Mexican Revolution, covers the Mexican Revolution itself, the gradual consolidation of institutions, the Cárdenas regime, the “Mexican economic miracle” and its subsequent collapse, and the recent transition toward a new historical period. The authors explore Mexico’s turbulent recent history as it becomes increasingly intertwined with that of the United States. First published in Spanish as A la sombra de la Revolución Mexicana, this English-language edition offers US readers an intelligent and accessible study of their neighbor to the south.