Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More PDF Download

Author: Alexei Yurchak
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400849101
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
Soviet socialism was based on paradoxes that were revealed by the peculiar experience of its collapse. To the people who lived in that system the collapse seemed both completely unexpected and completely unsurprising. At the moment of collapse it suddenly became obvious that Soviet life had always seemed simultaneously eternal and stagnating, vigorous and ailing, bleak and full of promise. Although these characteristics may appear mutually exclusive, in fact they were mutually constitutive. This book explores the paradoxes of Soviet life during the period of "late socialism" (1960s-1980s) through the eyes of the last Soviet generation. Focusing on the major transformation of the 1950s at the level of discourse, ideology, language, and ritual, Alexei Yurchak traces the emergence of multiple unanticipated meanings, communities, relations, ideals, and pursuits that this transformation subsequently enabled. His historical, anthropological, and linguistic analysis draws on rich ethnographic material from Late Socialism and the post-Soviet period. The model of Soviet socialism that emerges provides an alternative to binary accounts that describe that system as a dichotomy of official culture and unofficial culture, the state and the people, public self and private self, truth and lie--and ignore the crucial fact that, for many Soviet citizens, the fundamental values, ideals, and realities of socialism were genuinely important, although they routinely transgressed and reinterpreted the norms and rules of the socialist state.

Author: Serhii Plokhy
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465097928
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 522

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Book Description
The New York Times bestselling author of The Gates of Europe offers “a stirring account of an extraordinary moment” in Russian history (Wall Street Journal) On Christmas Day, 1991, President George H. W. Bush addressed the nation to declare an American victory in the Cold War: earlier that day Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned as the first and last Soviet president. The enshrining of that narrative, one in which the end of the Cold War was linked to the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the triumph of democratic values over communism, took center stage in American public discourse immediately after Bush's speech and has persisted for decades -- with disastrous consequences for American standing in the world. As prize-winning historian Serhii Plokhy reveals in The Last Empire, the collapse of the Soviet Union was anything but the handiwork of the United States. Bush, in fact, was firmly committed to supporting Gorbachev as he attempted to hold together the USSR in the face of growing independence movements in its republics. Drawing on recently declassified documents and original interviews with key participants, Plokhy presents a bold new interpretation of the Soviet Union's final months, providing invaluable insight into the origins of the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the outset of the most dangerous crisis in East-West relations since the end of the Cold War. Winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize Winner of the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize Choice Outstanding Academic Title BBC History Magazine Best History Book of the Year

Author: Svetlana Alexievich
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0399588817
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 518

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A symphonic oral history about the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia, from Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY • LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing “a new kind of literary genre,” describing her work as “a history of emotions—a history of the soul.” Alexievich’s distinctive documentary style, combining extended individual monologues with a collage of voices, records the stories of ordinary women and men who are rarely given the opportunity to speak, whose experiences are often lost in the official histories of the nation. In Secondhand Time, Alexievich chronicles the demise of communism. Everyday Russian citizens recount the past thirty years, showing us what life was like during the fall of the Soviet Union and what it’s like to live in the new Russia left in its wake. Through interviews spanning 1991 to 2012, Alexievich takes us behind the propaganda and contrived media accounts, giving us a panoramic portrait of contemporary Russia and Russians who still carry memories of oppression, terror, famine, massacres—but also of pride in their country, hope for the future, and a belief that everyone was working and fighting together to bring about a utopia. Here is an account of life in the aftermath of an idea so powerful it once dominated a third of the world. A magnificent tapestry of the sorrows and triumphs of the human spirit woven by a master, Secondhand Time tells the stories that together make up the true history of a nation. “Through the voices of those who confided in her,” The Nation writes, “Alexievich tells us about human nature, about our dreams, our choices, about good and evil—in a word, about ourselves.” A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Financial Times, Kirkus Reviews

Author: Conor O'Clery
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610390121
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
The implosion of the Soviet Union was the culmination of a gripping game played out between two men who intensely disliked each other and had different concepts for the future. Mikhail Gorbachev, a sophisticated and urbane reformer, sought to modernize and preserve the USSR; Boris Yeltsin, a coarse and a hard drinking "bulldozer," wished to destroy the union and create a capitalist Russia. The defeat of the August 1991 coup attempt, carried out by hardline communists, shook Gorbachev's authority and was a triumph for Yeltsin. But it took four months of intrigue and double-dealing before the Soviet Union collapsed and the day arrived when Yeltsin could hustle Gorbachev out of the Kremlin, and move in as ruler of Russia. Conor O'Clery has written a unique and truly suspenseful thriller of the day the Soviet Union died. The internal power plays, the shifting alliances, the betrayals, the mysterious three colonels carrying the briefcase with the nuclear codes, and the jockeying to exploit the future are worthy of John Le Carr' or Alan Furst. The Cold War's last act was a magnificent dark drama played out in the shadows of the Kremlin.

Author: J. Robert Kennedy
Publisher: UnderMill Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
"James Acton: A little bit of Jack Bauer and Indiana Jones!" *** FROM USA TODAY & MILLION COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR J. ROBERT KENNEDY *** TO REWRITE THE PAST IS TO CONDEMN THE FUTURE When Archaeology Professor James Acton receives a cryptic message from an old colleague missing for years, he heads to Moscow with his wife, Laura Palmer, to meet the man. What they find isn’t their host, but a terrified graduate student with an entire country’s security apparatus after him. And now them. Their lives are forfeit in a race against time to escape a regime determined to preserve a secret from the past, that if revealed, could fundamentally change Russia’s future. In The Last Soviet, award winning USA Today and million copy bestselling author J. Robert Kennedy once again takes the reader on a tension filled thrill-ride, mixing history and today’s problems, sure to leave you on the edge of your seat until the last page. If you enjoy fast-paced adventures in the style of Dan Brown, Clive Cussler, and James Rollins, then you'll love this thrilling tale of intrigue. Get your copy of The Last Soviet now, and discover the Soviet Union’s most shocking secret, and why today’s corrupt regime will stop at nothing to maintain it… About the James Acton Thrillers: ★★★★★ "James Acton: A little bit of Jack Bauer and Indiana Jones!" Though this book is part of the James Acton Thrillers series, it is written as a standalone novel and can be enjoyed without having read any other installments. ★★★★★ "Non-stop action that is impossible to put down." The James Acton Thrillers series and its spin-offs, the Special Agent Dylan Kane Thrillers and the Delta Force Unleashed Thrillers, have sold over one million copies. If you love non-stop action and intrigue with a healthy dose of humor, try James Acton today! ★★★★★ "A great blend of history and current headlines." USA Today bestselling author J. Robert Kennedy’s novels are ideal for fans of Dan Brown, Clive Cussler, James Rollins, Tom Clancy, and James Patterson, and those who enjoy intense action and intrigue with a healthy dose of humor and a touch of romance. Readers interested in action adventure, archaeological mysteries, historical fiction, men’s adventure, conspiracies and ancient mysteries, will love the James Acton Thrillers. If spies and espionage is your thing, then check out the CIA Special Agent Dylan Kane Thrillers for riveting tradecraft action. And for those who prefer the team approach and Special Forces, check out the Delta Force Unleashed series for exciting military thrills. Or maybe you just feel like a mystery? Check out the Detective Shakespeare Mysteries for dark, intense psychological thrillers. Into the Templars? Then the Templar Detective Thrillers are for you!

Author: David Remnick
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0804173583
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 626

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Book Description
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times From the editor of The New Yorker: a riveting account of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which has become the standard book on the subject. Lenin’s Tomb combines the global vision of the best historical scholarship with the immediacy of eyewitness journalism. Remnick takes us through the tumultuous 75-year period of Communist rule leading up to the collapse and gives us the voices of those who lived through it, from democratic activists to Party members, from anti-Semites to Holocaust survivors, from Gorbachev to Yeltsin to Sakharov. An extraordinary history of an empire undone, Lenin’s Tomb stands as essential reading for our times.

Author: Stewart Parker
Publisher: Trafford Publishing
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
The first serious study of Alexander Lukashenko president of Belarus. Exposes the reality behind the myth of 'Europe's last Dictatorship'.

Author: Vladislav M. Zubok
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300262442
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
A major study of the collapse of the Soviet Union—showing how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms led to its demise “A deeply informed account of how the Soviet Union fell apart.”—Rodric Braithwaite, Financial Times “[A] masterly analysis.”—Joshua Rubenstein, Wall Street Journal In 1945 the Soviet Union controlled half of Europe and was a founding member of the United Nations. By 1991, it had an army four million strong with five thousand nuclear-tipped missiles and was the second biggest producer of oil in the world. But soon afterward the union sank into an economic crisis and was torn apart by nationalist separatism. Its collapse was one of the seismic shifts of the twentieth century. Thirty years on, Vladislav Zubok offers a major reinterpretation of the final years of the USSR, refuting the notion that the breakup of the Soviet order was inevitable. Instead, Zubok reveals how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms, intended to modernize and democratize the Soviet Union, deprived the government of resources and empowered separatism. Collapse sheds new light on Russian democratic populism, the Baltic struggle for independence, the crisis of Soviet finances—and the fragility of authoritarian state power.

Author: Robert Conquest
Publisher: Hoover Press
ISBN: 0817982531
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 564

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Book Description
The historical background, the present position, and the future prospects of both the non-Russian and Russian peoples are considered in their many aspects, as are the maneuvers of the Communist regime to suppress, appease, or make use of them. The future of the Soviet Union, and thus of the world, depends greatly on whether, and how, the Communist leadership, whose own ideology has lost most of its appeal, can adjust to a new surge of national feeling. The authors examine the question from many points of view, in a broad conspectus of political, cultural, economic, demographic, and other approaches.

Author: Wesley T. Huntress, JR.
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1441978984
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
Soviet Robots in the Solar System provides a history of the Soviet robotic lunar and planetary exploration program from its inception, with the attempted launch of a lunar impactor on September 23, 1958, to the last launch in the Russian national scientific space program in the 20th Century, Mars 96, on November 16, 1996. This title makes a unique contribution to understanding the scientific and engineering accomplishments of the Soviet Union’s robotic space exploration enterprise from its infancy to its demise with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The authors provide a comprehensive account of Soviet robotic exploration of the Solar System for both popular space enthusiasts and professionals in the field. Technical details and science results are provided and put into an historical and political perspective in a single volume for the first time. The book is divided into two parts. Part I describes the key players and the key institutions that build and operate the hardware, the rockets that provide access to space, and the spacecraft that carry out the enterprise. Part II is about putting these pieces together to enable space flight and mission campaigns. Part II is written in chronological order beginning with the first launches to the Moon. Each chapter covers a particular period when specific mission campaigns were undertaken during celestially-determined launch windows. Each chapter begins with a short overview of the flight missions that occurred during the time period and the political and historical context for the flight mission campaigns, including what the Americans were doing at the time. The bulk of each chapter is devoted to the scientific and engineering details of that flight campaign. The spacecraft and payloads are examined with as much technical detail as is available today, the progress is described, and a synopsis of the scientific result is given.