Product Description

Product Description
"THE RUSSIAN'S WORLD is a unique achievement, which presents carefully selected portions of the Russian lexicon within a broad cultural context. It explains aspects of Russian culture and of Russian life (in short, "the Russian's world") in a lively and engaging manner and contains information that is of value to students of Russian language, literature, history, and culture of all levels, from those just past the beginner stage to the most advanced, and with every interest, be it nineteenth-century literature or contemporary society."

Excerpt from the Special Achievement Award conferred upon the second edition of THE RUSSIAN'S WORLD by the Publications Committee of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL) in December 1993. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Russian Culture and more...
This book is very helpful. It contains hidden cultural "realias" which you won't find in any other books. Strongly recommend to students!

Good Textbook Source
This was a required book for a Russian class at SUNY Brockport.It was in good condition and delivered in a timely fashion.

Essential for Student or Traveler
This book can be used by students at any level form beginner to advanced as well as by tourists or other travelers to Russia who don't speak the language, but want to understand the people.The author touches on sensitive issues while remaining relatively non-judgemental, which is unusual and refreshing to find.

Prosto zamechatelnaya knizhka
It cannot be easy to describe an entire country, its People, its culture and its customs, in 400-odd pages. Nonetheless, that is exactly what Ms. Gerhart has done here.

She covers not only the basics, the "everything you want to know about Russia" -- she delights her readers by covering several things they may not have realized they wanted to know. For instance, the intelligentsia ordinarily shies away from discussing slang and "mat", perhaps thinking it beneath them. Yet Ms. Gerhart recognizes that, as a practical matter, this is something that simply has to be covered for people visiting or living in real-world Russia. You may not want to use bad words yourself, but you certainly want to know when the gentlemen in the flat-top haircuts and leather coats, walking towards you outside the metro station, are using them towards you... So in a completely proper and not at all vulgar manner, she tells you everything you really need to know about cursing in Russian -- along with a clear injunction to "not try this at home" yourself.

Personally, my favorite part of the book was her discussion of tools used in woodworking, a hobby of mine. I found the translations of these words, not commonly needed by a tourist in Russia, invaluable when I went on a short shopping spree seeking locally forged axes and chisels in podmoskovia. This section may not be for everyone, but it is demonstrative of a point I wish to make about the book as a whole: While not everything in the book may interest everyone, everyone who reads the book will find something that interests them -- perhaps something they never expected to find there.

a really wonderful book!
I have the 1974 paperback edition, and I can't give it enough praise.It's simply awesome!It gives a unique insight into the customs of Russian people as related to their history, their land, and their language.In the preface, the author states that her goal is to "explain in what physical ways the Russian world differs from [the American], both the given world of nature and the world of objects the Russian and his forbears have created to cope with it."In this she has succeeded beautifully.In many ways, everyday Russian life is powerfully affected by environment and tradition.Here is everything you need to know before you go.One of my travel tourguide books claims that many American visitors are "ultimately disappointed" by Russia.This is because they do not experience the *real* Russia, nor even know what to expect.If you are planning a vacation trip, read this book first and your visit will be much enhanced.If you stay there with Russian friends and associates, this book will enable you to understand and appreciate their quite different customs.And if you are learning Russian, this book gives a fascinating insight into the relationship between the language and the people who speak it. ... Read more

Product Description
Dr. Zhushchikovskaya is a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Far Eastern Division, Vladivostok. This is an original work of synthesis, expressly written for an international audience and not previously published in Russian. Before the research of quite recent years, the Incipient Jomon pottery vessels of Japan had clear claim to the distinction of being ofirst in the world,o with an age of about 13,000 radiocarbon years, or close to 15,000 calendar years ago. Now many comparably early dates have appeared in the Russian Far East as well, and impressive though currently less well-documented dates for early pottery are also appearing in China, Korea, and other countries. The present work shows that it may be quite some time now before any question of ofirsto can be resolved, as continuing discoveries show quite comparably early pottery appearing over an increasingly broad front in eastern Asia. Obviously there were processes at work that were general in scope, and certainly not accidental. Zhushchikovskaya goes to the heart of this matter with her synthesis of the current evidence from the Russian Far East, which pays close attention to the environmental circumstances in which early pottery appears. Equally, she pays close attention to the properties of raw materials and the mechanics of shaping and firing. Ethnographic observations on aboriginal pottery-making and other craft processes contribute importantly as well. ZhushchikovskayaAes account of the earliest pottery is only the beginning of her work. In later chapters she goes on to trace the development of the early Russian traditions down through additional millennia of environmental and cultural change to the Iron Age, addressing the relations of pottery-making to socio-economic structures, and the range of structures reflected in pottery-making itself. Her concluding discussion sums up the implications of particular Russian evidence for understanding the role that the study of pottery-making plays in archaeologistsAe efforts to trace cultural continuities and discontinuities, periodization, tempo of cultural development, cultural contacts, and migrations. This book will be of interest to a broad cross-section of readers: those interested in the history, technology, and functions of pottery; those who will appreciate the attention it pays to ecology, context and process in the innovation and diversification of traditions; those who seek to expand the utility of pottery as a tool in archaeological synthesis and interpretation; and those who pursue specific interests in the cultural history of eastern Asia. It also offers the international community an interesting window on some of the ways in which Russian archaeologists conceptualize their subject matter. ... Read more

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Kishinevsky tells the stores of three generations of women who immigrated to the United States from Russia and satellite states, inviting the reader into their reality and presenting their worldviews, attitudes and perspectives through powerful and exciting life stories.She interviewed five triads of immigrant women (retired grandmothers, midlife mothers and teenage daughters).Her analysis of these powerful pieces yields unexpected conclusions about the strength of family ties and intergenerational influences that continue to shape the worldview of young Russian-Americans.The book is written from a multicultural perspective exploring such general issues as acculturation, assimilation and psychological adjustment of immigrants as it applies to the Russian immigrants. ... Read more

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In this unique book Brian Horowitz, Sizeler Family Chair Professor at Tulane University, articulates what is hidden in plain view: namely that many Jews in late-tsarist Russia were in love with its culture. Although they despised its government, large numbers of Jews eagerly joined Russian culture as members of the Russian cultural elite and participants in a distinct Russian-Jewish intelligentsia. Examining a broad range of figures and ideas at the heart of Jewish life during the revolutionary era at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, Brian Horowitz casts radically new portraits of such central intellectuals as Shimon Ansky, Simon Dubnov, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Lev Shestov, Nikolai Berdyaev, and Mikhail Gershenzon, while reviving for the reader such forgotten heroes as Shimon Frug, Lev Levanda, Leib Jaffe, and Mikhail Morgulis. In the book Horowitz treats a broad panorama of subjects, encompassing legal studies, Jewish historiography, Jewish literature, Russian-Jewish relations, liberal politics, and Zionism. ... Read more

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Michael Kennedy develops a theoretical conception of Soviet-type societies by analyzing Solidarity's significance on three levels. First, he explains the background to and nature of the conflict between Solidarity and the authorities by examining the relation between the distribution of power and movement strategies. Second, he considers the implications of Solidarity's struggle for the theory of the Soviet-type system's reproduction and transformation by offering a critique and synthesis of relevant theories of class and civil society. Third, he examines the internal constitution of Solidarity in terms of gender and, in particular, cross-class alliances. He argues that because engineers and physicians were dependent on the self-organized working class in this conflict between civil society and state, professional projects had to be recast in visions suitable to the alliance. In a concluding chapter, he explores the implications of his analysis both for understanding perestroika in the Soviet Union and more generally for reformulating a critical sociology of Soviet-type societies. ... Read more

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This book, based on extensive original research, examines the changes resulting from transformation at the local level in the former Czechoslovakia. ... Read more