The 1st Russian Show

The First Russian Art Exhibition (Erste Russische Kunstausstellung), which opened at the Galerie van Diemen in Berlin on October 15, 1922, and later travelled to Amsterdam, introduced a broad Western audience to the most recent artistic developments in Russia. The extensive show – more than a thousand works, including paintings, graphic works, sculptures, stage designs, architectural models, and works of porcelain – was remarkably inclusive in its scope, which ranged from traditional figurative painting to the latest constructions of the Russian avant-garde. Coming on the heels of the Treaty of Rapallo, the exhibition was a first cultural step towards bilateral relations between two young and yet internationally isolated new states – the Weimar Republic and the Russian Soviet Republic. Moving away from the narrow focus on the avant-garde, the volume presents new research that examines the exhibition's broader historical scope and cultural implications. The reception of the exhibition within artistic circles in Germany, Europe, the United States, and Japan in the 1920s is addressed, as well as the disposition of many of the works exhibited. The combination of longer, thematic essays and short features, along with reproductions of newly identified works and a selection of unpublished archival materials make this book valuable to both a scholarly and a general readership.

When this was originally published in 1959 it was the first full-length biography of Alexander Radishchev published outside Russia and was based on hitherto unpublished material, memoir literature and Radishchev’s own writings. Radishchev occupies a notable position in the history of European social thought, as the first writer to apply the criteria of the Western Age of Reason to conditions in Tsarist Russia. Sentenced to death on the orders of Catherine the Great and subsequently exiled in Siberia, Radishchev stands out as the first great figure of the Russian radical intelligentsia and the first literary victim of Tsarist official intolerance.

This book looks at the different ways in which Russian historians and authors have thought about their country’s first Antarctic expedition (1819-21) over the past 200 years. It considers the effects their discussions have had on Russia’s Antarctic policy and may yet have on Antarctica itself. In particular, it examines the Soviet decision in 1949, in line with the cultural policies of late Stalinism, to revise the traditional view of the expedition in order to claim that it was Russian seamen that first sighted the Antarctic mainland in January 1820; this claim remains the official position in Russia today. The author illustrates, however, that the case for such a claim has never been established, and that attempts to make it damaged the work of successive Russian historians. Providing a timely assessment of Russian historiography of the Bellingshausen expedition and examining the connections between the priority claim and national policy goals, this book represents an important contribution to the history of the Antarctic.

Presenting original research from a number of well-known international specialists, this book is a detailed investigation of the development of mass media in Russia since the end of Communism and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This book provides a multi-faceted picture of the many complex processes taking place in the field of contemporary Russian media and popular culture. Russian social and cultural life today is strongly individualised and consumers are offered innumerable alternatives; but at the same time options are limited by the new technologies of control which are a key feature of Russian capitalism. Based on extensive original research by scholars in both Russia itself and in Finland, the book discusses new developments in the media industry and assesses a wide range of social and cultural changes, many of which are related to, and to an extent generated by, the media. The book argues that the Russian mass media industry, whilst facing the challenges of globalization, serves several purposes including making a profit, reinforcing patriotic discourse and popularizing liberalized lifestyles. Topics include changing social identities, new lifestyles, ideas of "glamour" and "professional values". Overall, the book demonstrates that the media in Russia is far from homogenous, and that, as in the West, despite new technologies of control, media audiences are being offered a new kind of pluralism which is profoundly influencing Russia's cultural, social and political landscape.