Author: Sergei Pushkarev Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1000311228 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 201
Book Description
This book reflects the author's abiding scholarly quest to illustrate how elements of freedom and self-government play important roles in the history of nations, even during the darkest periods of their history.
Author: Terence Emmons Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 0521234166 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 467
Book Description
The essays in this 1982 volume result from a conference held at Stanford University in 1978, assembled to assess the overall character and significance of the prerevolutionary Russian experiment with the principle and practice of local self-government, the zemstvo, over half of its existence, 1864-1918. The unifying theme of the collection is the rejection of the liberal myth of the zemstvo as an instrument of social integration. The chapters focus on the substantive elements of conflict and tension that existed within the zemstvos, especially between the institutions' two principal groups: the landed gentry, who dominated the zemstvo, and the peasants, who constituted the majority of the population and were intended to the beneficiaries of most of the economic and cultural programs, yet had little part in their formation. Based on the contributors' extensive knowledge of their respective subjects, many of them provide information from previously unpublished materials in Soviet and American archives.
Author: Frederick S. Starr Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400871255 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 401
Book Description
The turbulent period of renewal and innovation that followed Russia's crushing defeat in the Crimea has been interpreted, historically, in terms of the emancipation of the serfs and the evolution of the gentry class. But, contends Frederick Starr, such an approach underestimates the breadth and intensity of the impulse for local reforms per se. After tracing the ideological sources of the reform, Mr. Starr examines in detail the legislative process by which administrative decentralization and public self-government were instituted. Originally published in 1972. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author: Anton A. Fedyashin Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres ISBN: 0299284336 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 294
Book Description
With its rocky transition to democracy, post-Soviet Russia has made observers wonder whether a moderating liberalism could ever succeed in such a land of extremes. But in Liberals under Autocracy, Anton A. Fedyashin looks back at the vibrant Russian liberalism that flourished in the country’s late imperial era, chronicling its contributions to the evolution of Russia’s rich literary culture, socioeconomic thinking, and civil society. For five decades prior to the revolutions of 1917, The Herald of Europe (Vestnik Evropy) was the flagship journal of Russian liberalism, garnering a large readership. The journal articulated a distinctively Russian liberal agenda, one that encouraged social and economic modernization and civic participation through local self-government units (zemstvos) that defended individual rights and interests—especially those of the peasantry—in the face of increasing industrialization. Through the efforts of four men who turned The Herald into a cultural nexus in the imperial capital of St. Petersburg, the publication catalyzed the growing influence of journal culture and its formative effects on Russian politics and society. Challenging deep-seated assumptions about Russia’s intellectual history, Fedyashin’s work casts the country’s nascent liberalism as a distinctly Russian blend of self-governance, populism, and other national, cultural traditions. As such, the book stands as a contribution to the growing literature on imperial Russia's nonrevolutionary, intellectual movements that emphasized the role of local politics in both successful modernization and the evolution of civil society in an extraparliamentary environment.
Author: Oleg Kharkhordin Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 067497672X Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 321
Book Description
If Marxism was the apparent loser in the Cold War, it cannot be said that liberalism was the winner, at least not in Russia. Oleg Kharkhordin is not surprised that institutions of liberal democracy failed to take root following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In Republicanism in Russia, he suggests that Russians can find a path to freedom by looking instead to the classical tradition of republican self-government and civic engagement already familiar from their history. Republicanism has had a steadfast presence in Russia, in spite of tsarist and communist hostility. Originating in the ancient world, especially with Cicero, it continued by way of Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Tocqueville, and more recently Arendt. While it has not always been easy for Russians to read or write classical republican philosophy, much less implement it, republican ideas have long flowered in Russian literature and are part of a common understanding of freedom, dignity, and what constitutes a worthy life. Contemporary Russian republicanism can be seen in movements defending architectural and cultural heritage, municipal participatory budgeting experiments, and shared governance in academic institutions. Drawing on recent empirical research, Kharkhordin elaborates a theory of res publica different from the communal life inherited from the communist period, one that opens up the possibility for a genuine public life in Russia. By embracing the indigenous Russian reception of the classical republican tradition, Kharkhordin argues, today’s Russians can sever their country’s dependence on the residual mechanisms of the communist past and realize a new vision for freedom.
Author: Elena A. Kremyanskaya Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing ISBN: 1443869708 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 230
Book Description
Russian Constitutional Law is one of the first publications to offer profound analyses of the main institutions of the Constitutional Law of the Russian Federation in English. The authors, representing the Constitutional Law Chair of the Moscow State Institute for International Relations (MGIMO-University), cover the most important and basic categories of Constitutional Law in Russia: namely, the Constitution; the Status of the Individual; Federalism; the Electoral System; Federal Bodies (the...
Author: Cameron Ross Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 113407557X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 323
Book Description
With articles by a high quality set of contributors, including Richard Sakwa, Darrell Slider and Vladimir Gel’man, this book explores the increasingly authoritarian character of Putin’s rule, especially in his second term since 2004.
Author: Vladimir Putin Publisher: PublicAffairs ISBN: 0786723270 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 242
Book Description
Who is this Vladimir Putin? Who is this man who suddenly--overnight and without warning--was handed the reigns of power to one of the most complex, formidable, and volatile countries in the world? How can we trust him if we don't know him? First Person is an intimate, candid portrait of the man who holds the future of Russia in his grip. An extraordinary compilation of over 24 hours of in-depth interviews and remarkable photographs, it delves deep into Putin's KGB past and explores his meteoric rise to power. No Russian leader has ever subjected himself to this kind of public examination of his life and views. Both as a spy and as a virtual political unknown until selected by Boris Yeltsin to be Prime Minister, Putin has been regarded as man of mystery. Now, the curtain lifts to reveal a remarkable life of struggles and successes. Putin's life story is of major importance to the world.
Author: Daniel Treisman Publisher: Brookings Institution Press ISBN: 0815732449 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
Corruption, fake news, and the "informational autocracy" sustaining Putin in power After fading into the background for many years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia suddenly has emerged as a new threat—at least in the minds of many Westerners. But Western assumptions about Russia, and in particular about political decision-making in Russia, tend to be out of date or just plain wrong. Under the leadership of Vladimir Putin since 2000, Russia is neither a somewhat reduced version of the Soviet Union nor a classic police state. Corruption is prevalent at all levels of government and business, but Russia's leaders pursue broader and more complex goals than one would expect in a typical kleptocracy, such as those in many developing countries. Nor does Russia fit the standard political science model of a "competitive authoritarian" regime; its parliament, political parties, and other political bodies are neither fakes to fool the West nor forums for bargaining among the elites. The result of a two-year collaboration between top Russian experts and Western political scholars, Autocracy explores the complex roles of Russia's presidency, security services, parliament, media and other actors. The authors argue that Putin has created an “informational autocracy,” which relies more on media manipulation than on the comprehensive repression of traditional dictatorships. The fake news, hackers, and trolls that featured in Russia’s foreign policy during the 2016 U.S. presidential election are also favored tools of Putin’s domestic regime—along with internet restrictions, state television, and copious in-house surveys. While these tactics have been successful in the short run, the regime that depends on them already shows signs of age: over-centralization, a narrowing of information flows, and a reliance on informal fixers to bypass the bureaucracy. The regime's challenge will be to continue to block social modernization without undermining the leadership’s own capabilities.
Author: Yuri Slezkine Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400888174 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 1123
Book Description
On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the epic story of an enormous apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destruction The House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment. Written in the tradition of Tolstoy's War and Peace, Grossman’s Life and Fate, and Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, Yuri Slezkine’s gripping narrative tells the true story of the residents of an enormous Moscow apartment building where top Communist officials and their families lived before they were destroyed in Stalin’s purges. A vivid account of the personal and public lives of Bolshevik true believers, the book begins with their conversion to Communism and ends with their children’s loss of faith and the fall of the Soviet Union. Completed in 1931, the House of Government, later known as the House on the Embankment, was located across the Moscow River from the Kremlin. The largest residential building in Europe, it combined 505 furnished apartments with public spaces that included everything from a movie theater and a library to a tennis court and a shooting range. Slezkine tells the chilling story of how the building’s residents lived in their apartments and ruled the Soviet state until some eight hundred of them were evicted from the House and led, one by one, to prison or their deaths. Drawing on letters, diaries, and interviews, and featuring hundreds of rare photographs, The House of Government weaves together biography, literary criticism, architectural history, and fascinating new theories of revolutions, millennial prophecies, and reigns of terror. The result is an unforgettable human saga of a building that, like the Soviet Union itself, became a haunted house, forever disturbed by the ghosts of the disappeared.
Author: Sergei Pushkarev
Author: Terence Emmons
Author: Frederick S. Starr
Author: Anton A. Fedyashin
Author: Oleg Kharkhordin
Author: Elena A. Kremyanskaya
Author: Cameron Ross
Author: Vladimir Putin
Author: Daniel Treisman
Author: Yuri Slezkine