Amazing insight to the soviet era government that can only be offered by russian citizens!

Dostoyevsky is usually regarded as one of the finest novelists who ever lived. Literary modernism, existentialism, and various schools of psychology, theology, and literary criticism have been profoundly shaped by his ideas. His works are often called prophetic because he so accurately predicted how Russia's revolutionaries would behave if they came to power. In his time he was also renowned for his activity as a journalist.

In 1876-77 Dostoyevsky devoted his energies to Dnevnik pisatelya, which he was now able to bring out in the form he had originally intended. A one-man journal, for which Dostoyevsky served as editor, publisher, and sole contributor, the Diary represented an attempt to initiate a new literary genre. Issue by monthly issue, the Diary created complex thematic resonances among diverse kinds of material: short stories, plans for possible stories, autobiographical essays, sketches that seem to lie on the boundary between fiction and journalism, psychological analyses of sensational crimes, literary criticism, and political commentary. The Diary proved immensely popular and financially rewarding, but as an aesthetic experiment it was less successful, probably because Dostoyevsky, after a few intricate issues, seemed unable to maintain his complex design. Instead, he was drawn into expressing his political views, which, during these two years, became increasingly extreme. Specifically, Dostoyevsky came to believe that western Europe was about to collapse, after which Russia and the Russian Orthodox church would create the kingdom of God on earth and so fulfill the promise of the Book of Revelation. In a series of anti-Catholic articles, he equated the Roman Catholic church with the socialists because both are concerned with earthly rule and maintain (Dostoyevsky believed) an essentially materialist view of human nature. He reached his moral nadir with a number of anti-Semitic articles.

Because Dostoyevsky was unable to maintain his aesthetic design for the Diary, its most famous sections are usually known from anthologies and so are separated from the context in which they were designed to fit. These sections include four of his best short stories--"Krotkaya" ("The Meek One"), "Son smeshnogo cheloveka" ("The Dream of a Ridiculous Man"), "Malchik u Khrista na elke" ("The Heavenly Christmas Tree"), and "Bobok"--as well as a number of autobiographical and semifictional sketches, including "Muzhik Marey" ("The Peasant Marey"), "Stoletnaya" ("A Hundred-Year-Old Woman"), and a satire, "Spiritizm. Nechto o chertyakh Chrezychaynaya khitrost chertey, esli tolko eto cherti" ("Spiritualism. Something about Devils. The Extraordinary Cleverness of Devils, If Only These Are Devils"). These are some rare stories indeed...

This book is a long awaited,definitive treatment of the AEF intervention in Siberia at the end of WWI. Well written and authoritative, the work is especially relevant to our times, given the state of Russian-American relations. Military readers will recognize in this tale an excellent early example of what has become an increasingly important role for our armed forces to day; strategic deployment of military force where US interests are at stake but no actual declaration of war exists. Between War and Peace is a "must read" for those with an interest in international diplomacy, war powers, the presidency, and military history. Highly recommended.

Since most studies of Russian industrialization tend to examine the capitalist system as a whole and downplay the role of individual firms, Jonathan Grant's Big Business in Russia fills an important niche. Originating from his Ph.D. dissertation (University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1995), this in-depth study of the St. Petersburg-based Putilov Company, Imperial Russia's largest arms manufacturer, advances our understanding of Russian industrial history at the micro level. The few specialists who have explored business activity in Imperial Russia have focused either on firms established by foreigners or non-industrial firms (e.g. banking, publishing, or insurance). Grant, now an assistant professor of modern Russian history at Florida State University in Tallahassee, poses the question: "Did Russian businessmen conduct their affairs in a unique way based on an essentially different understanding of the market and state, or did they pursue strategies for growth that would have been intelligible to their contemporaries in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States?" (p. 1). Grant concludes that Putilov's market behavior did not differ from that of the key Western arms manufacturers such as Krupp, Skoda, Vickers, and Scneider-Creusot. Thus, Grant maintains, Russian business behavior was not "deviant." The board of directors at the Putilov Company followed expansionist strategies as aggressive as any of its Western counterparts, hesitating neither to jettison old product lines, nor to invent new ones based on market forecasts. Hence Grant's study shows that the state's role in the Putilov Company-still extant today as the Kirovsky Zavod--has been exaggerated.
The book is divided into seven chronological chapters: 1) "The Rise and Fall of a Rail Manufacturing Giant: N. I. Putilov and the Putilov Company, 1868-1885;" 2) "Engineering Growth: Locomotives, Artillery, and Diversification Strategies, 1885-1900;" 3)"The Russian Krupp: Putilov and the Artillery Business, 1900-1907; 4) "Banks, Boards, and Naval Expansion: The Question of Bank Dominance, 1907-1914;" 5) "Putilov at War, 1914-1917; 6) "Conclusion: Between State and Market;" and 7) "Epilogue: Putilov's Successors." Grant's Introduction skillfully reviews the scholarly literature on Russian industrial history.
Because the Putilov factory had experiences typical of other industrial enterprises in Late Imperial Russia, Grant's choice of a case study is ideal. Originally purchased and owned by Nikolai Ivanovich Putilov (1817-1880), the factory was dependent on the tsarist state, then sold out to foreign investors whence it became a joint-stock company (p. 4).
Grant's wide use of foreign archival documents contributes to the book's uniqueness. He draws extensively on the Putilov factory's correspondence with banks and government offices from the Russian State Historical Archive (RGIA) in St. Petersburg, as well as its correspondence with the tsarist army and navy from the Russian State Archive of the Navy in St. Petersburg and from the Russian State Military-Historical Archive in Moscow. For the discussion of Putilov's armaments production in Chapters Two and Three, Grant used the records of the Main Artillery Administration (Glavnoe Artilleriiskoe Upravleniye), as well as British Admiralty intelligence reports located in the British Public Record Office (Kew, Surrey, United Kingdom). In addition, he found the company's published annual account books, housed at the Moscow-based Lenin Library, to be largely reliable, despite rumors by a Soviet scholar that they may have been falsified (p. 15).
While Grant defends admirably his argument about the Putilov Company, one wishes he had extended it a bit farther. If "the image of Russia as fundamentally exceptional in its economic development should be discarded," and if Russian capitalists before the Bolshevik Revolution were just as astute as their Western counterparts, what made Soviet Russia so vulnerable to the mythology of Marxist economic and political theory?
In any case, serious graduate students interested in Russian and European business history should read Big Business in Russia: The Putilov Company in conjunction with other key works such as Susan McCaffray's The Politics of Industrialization in Tsarist Russia: The Association of Southern Coal and Steel Producers, 1874-1914 (Northern Illinois University Press, 1996); Thomas C. Owen's Entrepreneurship in the Russian Empire, 1861-1914 (M.E. Sharpe, 1996); and Ruth A. Roosa's and Thomas Owen's Russian Industrialists in an Era of Revolution: the Association of Industry and Trade, 1906-1917 (M.E. Sharpe, 1997).---Johanna Granville, Ph.D., Stanford University

If you're one of those people fascinated by the Soviet Union in the 1930s your mind will be blown by this quite fabulous book. Like virtually no other work I've read on the subject it brings home quite how anarchic life was for many people and how the ludicrously inhuman way in which the Soviet Union was run helped crush the population's soul. Anyone interested enough in this topic to probe further should also read "An American Engineer in Stalin's Russia", which is almost as good as this work. Andreev-Khomiakov's greatest talent is his ability to wriggle right into the psyches of the opposers and the opposed to produce a graphic explanation of what was so wrong with the Soviet Union in the 1930s. He also produces enough anecdotes to show how some people can retain their most human qualities at a time when everyone around them is descending into brutality. I say again -- this is a quite extraordinary work. Buy it now!

_The Rise of the Extreme Right in Russia_ gives an accounting of some of the far right wing and semi-fascist movements in modern Russia and traces their development from their historical origins before the advent of communism. Russia as a nation has been besieged by totalitarian governments, revolution, and communist tyranny for the last hundred years. However, with the breakup of the old Soviet Union, a void has been created, and this void may be filled by certain political movements of the extreme right. Tracing their origins back to the Russian Whites, the Black Hundreds, and the tsarist loyalists, modern day Russian right wing nationalists have sought to restore Russia as a nation by returning it to its historical (or mythical) past and tradition. Many of these groups hold to certain conspiratorial beliefs involving the Antichrist and the infamous _Protocols of the Elders of Zion_ as well as certain conspiracies involving Freemasonry and the Jews (referred to as "Zhidomasonstvo", i.e. "Jewmasonry"). In addition, many on the Russian right and far right consider the Orthodox Church to be a saving force for Russia adhering to a fundamentalism which rejects other Christian beliefs especially Catholicism. Authors such as Dostoevsky (who expressed nationalist beliefs at one time in his career) and Solzhenitsyn (who expressed nationalist beliefs and anti-communism but with more of a liberal bent) have played an important role in the development of the Russian right. Many on the Russian right embrace pastoralism and the peasantry as opposed to industrialization, the free market, and liberalism. Some on the far right fringe have in fact returned to paganism and rejected even Orthodox Christianity as being too tinged with Semitism. In fact, a certain famous text (believed to be a forgery) referred to as the _Book of Vlas_ which relates tales of Russia's mythical (Aryan) past plays an important part among some on the right wing fringe. Communism occupies a precarious position among those on the right and far right in Russia. Some have embraced a form of nationalist Bolshevism, adhering to standards imposed by Joseph Stalin. Others have argued for a return to monarchism or for a Cossack revival. Among certain members of the far right in Russia, a certain hatred of all outside and alien influences (particularly but not exclusively Judaic ones) is very prevalent. In addition, many on the right in Russia have an innate distrust of America and Americanism (some even going as far as supporting Iraq in the Gulf War). Some on the right have attempted to incorporate ideas from certain thinkers of the "New Right" in France, such as Alain de Benoist, or even the Italian intellectual Julius Evola (who wrote the famous text _Revolt Against the Modern World_). While Nazism is generally considered to be yet another conspiracy against the Russian people, some on the far right have embraced certain ideas of the Nazi intellectuals and have published the writings of Hitler, Goebbels, and Rosenberg in their journals. Two of the more famous political movements among the far right in Russia include the right wing group Pamyat (meaning "memory") led by Dmitri Vasiliev, and that of the liberal-democrat party of nationalists led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Many of these groups accuse Gorbachev and Yelstin of capitulating to alien forces (especially the Jews) and to Americanism and argue for an "iron hand" in politics, centralizing government, and the maintaining of the military and the KGB. Some have turned towards the Orient as a promised land (hoping to incorporate features of Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Chinese thought), while others have sought their restoration in the ideologies of fascism or the "New Right" or even hope for a Cossack revival. This book gives an excellent introduction to the right wing forces in Russia and their growth and development. Although marred by a somewhat overly liberal bias, the author gives an excellent and thorough history and explanation of these movements which have attempted to find a satisfiable solution for the Russian people in a post-communist age.

Chekhov's a master.

Even here, the shortest of stories, is as powerful as his most popular plays. And while the story shares similar themes and environs; the lonely country estate, a beautiful orchard, family angst, malaise, boredom, nature, madness, creativity and the interesting-and invigorating-visitor who comes to stay, there's even more here.

Call it the supernatural, insomnia-induced hallucination or the madness & joy of creative genius, Chekhov stumbled onto something new here. A column of smoke, a dark tornado, a monk robed in black. Our protagonist, Andrey Kovrin, tells Tanya Pesotskaya, the estate-owner's daughter, about the black monk, imparting him as a legend, a story "not distinguished for its clarity." Andrey soon thereafter meets the monk, who comes first as a force of nature, later preceded by violins and singing. As deep as Andrey's conversations with the monk later come to be, the surrounding tale of Andrey and the estate-owner's daughter is classic Chekhov and stands on its own, x-file or no x-file.

I loved this story. Hope you like it too.

The Blind Musician is an excellent story, aimed at a younger audience, but possessing the depth to make it a good read for all ages. The protagonist, born blind, is incredibly sensitive to the world around him but lacks the language of the sighted to express it. This expression is finally achieved through his remaining primary sense - sound - and the world unfolds before him. In hardcover, the exquisite artwork makes it a beautiful gift for a sighted child or for anyone who appreciates the many ways the world can be 'seen'.

This is an excellent account of the blockade of Leningrad. It allows the reader inside the lives of Elena Kochina and her family as they struggle with survival, and presents a frightening example of how personal relationships, even those between husbands and wives and parents and children, can break down in the midst of such terrible deprivation. I highly recommend this book and consider it an excellent source for undergraduate history classes. It is a short, primary source, and students seem to relate well to it.

Alexander Litvinenko is a 20-year veteran of the Russian military, achieving the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and serving in the KGB Department for the Analysis of Criminal Organizations, only to be arrested for disclosing a number of illegal orders he'd received and imprisoned. He escaped from Russia and received political asylum in Britain in May 2001. Yuri Felshtinsky studied history at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute and immigrated to America in 1978 where he obtained a doctorate in history from Rutgers. Felshtinsky is a recognized expert on Soviet Affairs and the other of several books on Russian history and politics. In Blowing Up Russia: Terror From Within, Litvinenko and Felshtinsky collaborate to reveal a scathing accusation of the Russian special services, holding them responsible for acts of terror, kidnappings, contract killings, and efforts to steer Russia back to being a dictatorship. Blowing Up Russia also strenuously denounces the war in Chechnya for its deleterious toll on human life and freedom. A sobering, persuasively charged account, Blowing Up Russia is an essential text for Soviet Studies academic reference collections, and should be mandatory reading for anyone having political, cultural, or economic dealings with present-day Russia.