Author: Christopher J. Ward Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press ISBN: 0822971216 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 241
Book Description
Heralded by Soviet propaganda as the "Path to the Future," the Baikal-Amur Mainline Railway (BAM) represented the hopes and dreams of Brezhnev and the Communist Party elite of the late Soviet era. Begun in 1974, and spanning approximately 2,000 miles after twenty-nine years of halting construction, the BAM project was intended to showcase the national unity, determination, skill, technology, and industrial might that Soviet socialism claimed to embody. More pragmatically, the Soviet leadership envisioned the BAM railway as a trade route to the Pacific, where markets for Soviet timber and petroleum would open up, and as an engine for the development of Siberia. Despite these aspirations and the massive commitment of economic resources on its behalf, BAM proved to be a boondoggle-a symbol of late communism's dysfunctionality-and a cruel joke to many ordinary Soviet citizens. In reality, BAM was woefully bereft of quality materials and construction, and victimized by poor planning and an inferior workforce. Today, the railway is fully complete, but remains a symbol of the profligate spending and inefficiency that characterized the Brezhnev years.In Brezhnev's Folly, Christopher J. Ward provides a groundbreaking social history of the BAM railway project. He examines the recruitment of hundreds of thousands of workers from the diverse republics of the USSR and other socialist countries, and his extensive archival research and interviews with numerous project workers provide an inside look at the daily life of the BAM workforce. We see firsthand the disorganization, empty promises, dire living and working conditions, environmental damage, and acts of crime, segregation, and discrimination that constituted daily life during the project's construction. Thus, perhaps, we also see the final irony of BAM: that the most lasting legacy of this misguided effort to build Soviet socialism is to shed historical light on the profound ills afflicting a society in terminal decline.
Author: Susanne Schattenberg Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 0755642104 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 541
Book Description
"Schattenberg has done a service in rescuing the Brezhnev period from obscurity." The Morning Star "[Offers an] unparalleled examination of the Brezhnev papers." Literary Review Leonid Brezhnev was leader of the Soviet Union for eighteen years, a term of leadership second only in length to that of Stalin. He presided over the Brezhnev Doctrine, which accelerated the Cold War, and led the Soviet Union through catastrophic foreign policy decisions such as the invasion of Afghanistan. To many in the West, he is responsible for the stagnation (and to some even collapse) of the Soviet Union. But much of this history has been based on the only two English-language biographies (both published before Brezhnev's death and without access to archival sources) and Brezhnev's own astonishingly untrue memoirs – written for propaganda purposes. Newly translated from German, Schattenberg's magisterial book systematically dismantles the stereotypical and one-dimensional view of Brezhnev as the stagnating Stalinist by drawing on a wealth of archival research and documents not previously studied in English. The Brezhnev that emerges is a complex one, from his early apolitical years, when he dreamed of becoming an actor, through his swift and surprising rise through the Party ranks. From his hitherto misunderstood role in Khrushchev's ousting and appointment as his successor, to his somewhat pro-Western foreign policy aims, deft consolidation and management of power, and ultimate descent into addiction and untimely death. For Schattenberg, this is the story of a flawed and ineffectual idealist - for the West, this biography makes a convincing case that Brezhnev should be reappraised as one of the most interesting and important political figures of the twentieth century.
Author: Dina Fainberg Publisher: Lexington Books ISBN: 1498529941 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 222
Book Description
This volume contributes to a growing reevaluation of the Brezhnev era, helping to shape a new historiography that gives us a much richer and more nuanced picture of the time period than the stagnation paradigm usually assigned to the era. The essays provide a multifaceted prism that reveals a dynamic society with a political and intellectual class that remained committed to the ideological foundations of the state, recognized the challenges that the system faced, and embarked on a creative search for solutions. The chapters focus on developments in politics, society, and culture, as well as the state’s attempts to lead and initiate change, which are mostly glossed over in the stagnation narrative. The volume challenges the assumption that the period as a whole was characterized by rampant cynicism and a decline of faith in the socialist creed and instead points to the persistence of popular engagement with the socialist ideology and the power it continued to wield within the Soviet Union.
Author: Christian Wolmar Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 1465433716 Category : Transportation Languages : en Pages : 445
Book Description
Written by Christian Wolmar, author of the critically acclaimed The Great Railroad Revolution, The Iron Road is a richly illustrated account of the rise of the rails across the world. From the historic moment in September 1830 when the first train ran between Liverpool and Manchester, to the high speed trains bulleting across Asia and Europe, The Iron Road: An Illustrated History of the Railroad looks at how railroads have changed the world. Photographs, maps, paintings, and illustrations bring events and locations to life, adding a unique visual quality to the stories of great invention, feats of mind-boggling engineering, groundbreaking changes in trade and commerce, and tales of adventurers, visionaries, and rogues. The Iron Road is the third title in DK's successful illustrated histories format, which combines text-rich narratives with beautiful visual design.
Author: Kate Pride Brown Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 019066097X Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 249
Book Description
"Civil society" is a loaded concept in Russia; during the Soviet period, the voices that heralded civil society were the same ones that demanded the Union's dissolution. So, for the Kremlin, civil society is not the guarantor of democracy, but a force that has the power to end governments. This book looks at how civil society negotiates power on a global stage, under Russia's authoritarian regime, and in a particularly isolated and remote part of the world: within environmental activism around Lake Baikal in Siberia. More than a mile deep, Lake Baikal is the oldest, deepest, and most voluminous lake on the Earth, and home to thousands of endemic species. It is also ecologically unique in that it is oxygenated to its maximum depth and supports life even at the lake floor -- a phenomenon occurring nowhere else on the planet. The lake is not just a natural wonder, but home to a strong environmentalist community that works tirelessly to protect the lake from human harm. Environmentalism at Baikal began in the late 1950s, eventually igniting the first national protest in the USSR. They have remained active in some form ever since, across the years of chaos, instability, and crisis, from the opening of Russia to the forces of globalization to the authoritarianism of Putin in the present. This book examines the struggle of Baikal environmentalists to develop a new understanding of civil society under conditions of globalization and authoritarianism. Through extended, historically-informed ethnographic analysis, Kate Pride Brown argues that civil society is engaged with political and economic elites in a dynamic struggle within a field of power. Understanding the field of power helps to explain a number of contradictions. For example, why does civil society seem to both bolster democracy and threaten it? Why do capitalist corporations and environmental organizations form partnerships despite their general hostility toward each other? And why has democracy proven to be so elusive in Russia? The field of power posits new answers to these questions, as Baikal environmental activists struggle to protect and save their Sacred Sea.
Author: Alan D. Roe Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190914564 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 352
Book Description
Since the early twentieth century, nations around the world have set aside protected areas for tourism, recreation, scenery, wildlife, and habitat conservation. In Russia, biologists and geographers had been intrigued with the idea of establishing national parks before the Revolution, but instead persuaded the government successfully to establish nature reserves (zapovedniki) for scientific research during the USSR's first decades. However, as the state pushed scientists to make zapovedniki more useful during the 1930s, some of the system's staunchest defenders started supporting tourism in them. In Into Russian Nature, Alan D. Roe offers the first history of the Russian national park movement. In the decades after World War II, the USSR experienced a tourism boom and faced a chronic shortage of tourism facilities. During these years, Soviet scientists took active part in Western-dominated international environmental protection organizations and enthusiastically promoted parks for the USSR as a means to expand recreational opportunities and reconcile environmental protection and economic development goals. In turn, they hoped they would bring international respect to Soviet nature protection efforts and help instill in Russian/Soviet citizens a love for the country's nature and a desire to protect it. By the end of the millennium, Russia had established thirty-five parks to protect iconic landscapes in places such as Lake Baikal. Meanwhile, national park opponents presented them as an unaffordable luxury during a time of economic struggle, especially after the USSR's collapse. Despite unprecedented collaboration with international organizations, Russian national parks received little governmental support as they became mired in land-use conflicts with local populations. Exploring parks from European Russia to Siberia and the Far East, Into Russian Nature narrates efforts, often frustrated by the state, to protect Russia's vast and unique physical landscape.
Author: Aaron T. Hale-Dorrell Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190644699 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 264
Book Description
Corn Crusade: Khrushchev's Farming Revolution in the Post-Stalin Soviet Union is the first history of Nikita Khrushchev's venture to cover the Soviet Union in corn, a crop common globally but hitherto rare in his country. Lasting from 1953 until 1964, this crusade was an emblematic component of his efforts to resolve agrarian crises inherited from Joseph Stalin. Using policies and propaganda to pressure farms to expand corn plantings tenfold, Khrushchev expected the resulting bounty to feed not people, but the livestock necessary to produce the meat and dairy products required to make good on his frequent pledges that the Soviet Union was soon to "catch up to and surpass America." This promised to enrich citizens' hitherto monotonous diets and score a victory in the Cold War, which was partly recast as a "peaceful competition" between communism and capitalism. Khrushchev's former comrades derided corn as one of his "harebrained schemes" when ousting him in October 1964. Echoing them, scholars have ridiculed it as an "irrational obsession," blaming the failure on climatic conditions. Corn Crusade brings a more complex and revealing history to light. Borrowing technologies from the United States, Khrushchev expected farms in the Soviet Union to increase productivity because he believed that innovations developed under capitalism promised greater returns under socialism. These technologies generated results in many economic, social, and climatic contexts after World War II but fell short in the Soviet Union. Attempting to make agriculture more productive and ameliorate exploitative labor practices established in the 1930s, Khrushchev achieved only partial reform of rural economic life. Enjoying authority over formal policy, Khrushchev stood atop an undisciplined hierarchy of bureaucracies, local authorities, and farmworkers. Weighing competing incentives, they flouted his authority by doing enough to avoid penalties, but too little to produce even modest harvests of corn, let alone the bumper crops the leader envisioned.
Author: Artemy M. Kalinovsky Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1134700725 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 613
Book Description
This new Handbook offers a wide-ranging overview of current scholarship on the Cold War, with essays from many leading scholars. The field of Cold War history has consistently been one of the most vibrant in the field of international studies. Recent scholarship has added to our understanding of familiar Cold War events, such as the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis and superpower détente, and shed new light on the importance of ideology, race, modernization, and transnational movements. The Routledge Handbook of the Cold War draws on the wealth of new Cold War scholarship, bringing together essays on a diverse range of topics such as geopolitics, military power and technology and strategy. The chapters also address the importance of non-state actors, such as scientists, human rights activists and the Catholic Church, and examine the importance of development, foreign aid and overseas assistance. The volume is organised into nine parts: Part I: The Early Cold War Part II: Cracks in the Bloc Part III: Decolonization, Imperialism and its Consequences Part IV: The Cold War in the Third World Part V: The Era of Detente Part VI: Human Rights and Non-State Actors Part VII: Nuclear Weapons, Technology and Intelligence Part VIII: Psychological Warfare, Propaganda and Cold War Culture Part IX: The End of the Cold War This new Handbook will be of great interest to all students of Cold War history, international history, foreign policy, security studies and IR in general.
Author: Melissa Chakars Publisher: Central European University Press ISBN: 9633860148 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 322
Book Description
The Buryats are a Mongolian population in Siberian Russia, the largest indigenous minority. The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia presents the dramatic transformation in their everyday lives during the late twentieth century. The book challenges the common notion that the process of modernization during the later Soviet period created a Buryat national assertiveness rather than assimilation or support for the state.
Author: Julia Herzberg Publisher: Berghahn Books ISBN: 1785339877 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 330
Book Description
The history of the Cold War has focused overwhelmingly on statecraft and military power, an approach that has naturally placed Moscow and Washington center stage. Meanwhile, regions such as Alaska, the polar landscapes, and the cold areas of the Soviet periphery have received little attention. However, such environments were of no small importance during the Cold War: in addition to their symbolic significance, they also had direct implications for everything from military strategy to natural resource management. Through histories of these extremely cold environments, this volume makes a novel intervention in Cold War historiography, one whose global and transnational approach undermines the simple opposition of “East” and “West.”
Author: Christopher J. Ward
Author: Susanne Schattenberg
Author: Dina Fainberg
Author: Christian Wolmar
Author: Kate Pride Brown
Author: Alan D. Roe
Author: Aaron T. Hale-Dorrell
Author: Artemy M. Kalinovsky
Author: Melissa Chakars
Author: Julia Herzberg