Studies Of The Slavic Peoples Cultures

The acceptance of Christianity in the tenth century is the most significant cultural event in the history of modern Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. A vast reservoir of cultural concepts, expressions, and iconographic images has developed within the Eastern Orthodox tradition, and now Slavic specialists, theologians, historians, and literary scholars can turn to a collection which examines the majestic sweep of a thousand years of Slavic Christianity. This three-volume collection brings together essays from two international conferences. The present volume explores the history and influence of Christianization from the tenth to the seventeenth century. Volume II will examine cultural history from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and Volume III will examine literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The acceptance of Christianity in the tenth century is the most significant cultural event in the history of modern Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. A vast reservoir of cultural concepts, expressions, and iconographic images has developed within the Eastern Orthodox tradition, and now Slavic specialists, theologians, historians, and literary scholars can turn to a collection which examines the majestic sweep of a thousand years of Slavic Christianity. This three-volume collection brings together essays from two international conferences. The present volume explores the history and influence of Christianization from the tenth to the seventeenth century. Volume II will examine cultural history from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and Volume III will examine literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

"The Slavs is a book of original conception and wide scope: it covers over a thousand years of history, from the eighth century to the present day. The Slav peoples, inhabiting the eastern fringes of Europe, were latecomers to civilization. They developed as separate nations, and although they have now been brought together under a single ideology, this relative uniformity makes a strong contrast with the diversity and tumult of the past. The Eastern Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians), the Poles, the Czechs and Slovaks, the Croats and Slovenes, the Bulgars and Macedonians -- each of these groups followed a path of its own. Eventful and often tragic, Slav history in all periods is fascinatingly strange. In most Slavic countries, the Middle Ages have dovetailed directly with the modern world. Serfdom did not disappear from Russia until the mid-nineteenth century. Economic development was late. But change, when it came, was stupendously rapid: the switch to capitalism took place far more quickly than in the West, and the new social forms it brought with it turned out to be mushroom growths. After two world wars and the revolution of 1917, the social and economic structure of the twentieth-century Slav world is still in the process of radical transformation. The author has successfully disentangled the confusion of nationalities, languages and religions in Slavic history. The author presents a vivid, evocative picture -- both of remote periods, in all their charm and naiveté, and of the present day, which he treats in an unusually objective spirit."--Dust jacket.

This 2006 book documents developments in the countries of eastern Europe, including the rise of authoritarian tendencies in Russia and Belarus, as well as the victory of the democratic 'Orange Revolution' in Ukraine, and poses important questions about the origins of the East Slavic nations and the essential similarities or differences between their cultures. It traces the origins of the modern Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian nations by focusing on pre-modern forms of group identity among the Eastern Slavs. It also challenges attempts to 'nationalize' the Rus' past on behalf of existing national projects, laying the groundwork for understanding of the pre-modern history of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The book covers the period from the Christianization of Kyivan Rus' in the tenth century to the reign of Peter I and his eighteenth-century successors, by which time the idea of nationalism had begun to influence the thinking of East Slavic elites.

A collection of articles on Slavic history, literature, linguistics and chronology. Includes articles on Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Balkan states, each with bibliographies of English and western European sources.