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This collection of essays examines the politicization and the politics of the Jewish people in the Russian empire during the late tsarist period. The focal point is the Russian revolution of 1905, when the political mobilization of the Jewish youth took on massive proportions, producing a cohort of radicalized activists - committed to socialism, nationalism, or both - who would exert an extraordinary influence on Jewish history in the twentieth-century in Eastern Europe, the United States, and Palestine. Frankel describes the dynamics of 1905 and the leading role of the intelligentsia as revolutionaries, ideologues, and observers. But, elsewhere, he also looks backwards to the emergent stage of modern Jewish politics in both Russia and the West and forward to the part played by the veterans of 1905 in Palestine and the United States. ... Read more

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Is cognition language-based? How reliable a guide to memory are people's narratives about themselves? What connects the "social recalling" studied by anthropologists to the "autobiographical memory" studied by psychologists? A collection of 12 closely linked essays by one of anthropology's most original theorists consider these fundamental questions and more. ... Read more

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'Mir Russky' is an intermediate- to advanced-level textbook which explores highly interesting and significant aspects of contemporary Russian life using modern literary texts, texts written specifically for the book, paintings, and newspapers and magazine articles. The textbook clarifies and explains Russian thought and cultural practices, while furthering the development of communicative ability and grammatical accuracy in the intermediate/advanced student of Russian.

Mir Russky contains 12 lessons which are richly illustrated with color and black and white photos, plus drawings. It has an extensive vocabulary section for the main texts as well as appendices. Includes tables and inflectional endings, grammatical charts, extensive info on verb forms, usage and governance. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Excellent textbook for Upper-Intermediate and Advanced Students of Russian
Mir Russkikh textbook is for upper-intermediate and advanced students of the Russian language.It provides a great insight into modern Russian life and cultural practices: everyday life, literature, art, mass media, etc.If you are looking to vastly expand vocabulary, further deepen your knowledge of Russian grammar and develop communication skills, this textbook is for you.

Russian is not for Everyone!!
To complain that an Intermediate Russian coursebook contains too much grammar and too much vocabulary is not realistic since Russian requires a very trained mind, eye and feel. This book states its limits and its promisises up front, sort of saying that: if this is too hard for you, maybe you should use the Face to Face book before this one. Nothing hidden and also good advice for some, should they take it.
This book is very good at presenting information on customs and ideas and also sharp in its presentation of grammar, giving the learner much to learn and master as well as wonderful enrichment of a learner's attainment of a new level of learning.
Do I recommend this book? You bet!! I have used it and have found what I learned extremely helpful in my current study, which is now advanced.

Beyond intermediate.
I've taken 2 years of college Russian and consider myself fairly knowledgable, but this book is a bit beyond my abilities.The passages in the text are often crammed full of new vocab to learn and in between lessons is more grammer.The book does give you a huge insight to Russian culture, but it's not that great if you want to learn the language itself.I wish there was another text like the Nachalo series.

Good content but A little hard to read
My class is using this book for a third year Russian course. The book has a lot of great stories and exercises, but often it is difficult to read the book with the vast amount new vocabulary for a student to remember. The dictionary in the back does not have alot of basic words that the student may have forgotten since the second year of study. An additional dictionary is recommended. I often have to refer to my dictionary while doing homework. But I really learned a great deal about the Russian culture from the readings. ... Read more

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Between 1917 and 1921, as revolution convulsed Russia, Jewish intellectuals and writers across the crumbling empire threw themselves into the pursuit of a “Jewish renaissance.” At the heart of their program lay a radically new vision of Jewish culture predicated not on religion but on art and secular individuality, national in scope yet cosmopolitan in content, framed by a fierce devotion to Hebrew or Yiddish yet obsessed with importing and participating in the shared culture of Europe and the world. These cultural warriors sought to recast themselves and other Jews not only as a modern nation but as a nation of moderns.

Kenneth Moss offers the first comprehensive look at this fascinating moment in Jewish and Russian history. He examines what these numerous would-be cultural revolutionaries, such as El Lissitzky and Haim Nahman Bialik, meant by a new Jewish culture, and details their fierce disagreements but also their shared assumptions about what culture was and why it was so important. In close readings of Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian texts, he traces how they sought to realize their ideals in practice as writers, artists, and thinkers in the burgeoning cultural centers of Moscow, Kiev, and Odessa. And he reveals what happened to them and their ideals as the Bolsheviks consolidated their hold over cultural life.

Here is a brilliant, revisionist argument about the nature of cultural nationalism, the relationship between nationalism and socialism as ideological systems, and culture itself, the axis around which the encounter between Jews and European modernity has pivoted over the past century.

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This book embraces the political, intellectual, social and cultural history of Soviet Russia. Providing a useful perspective of Putin’s Russia, and with a strong historical and religious background, the book:

• looks at the changing features of the Soviet ideology from Lenin to Stalin, and the moral universe of Stalin's time
• explores the history of the moral thinking of the dissident intelligentsia
• examines the moral dimension of Soviet dissent amongst dissidents of both religious and secular persuasions, and includes biographical material
• explores the ethical assumptions of the perestroika era, firstly amongst Communist leaders, and then in the emerging democratic and national forces.

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Koriak have been described as a nomadic people, migrating with the reindeer through rugged terrain. Their autonomy and mobility are salient cultural features that ethnographers and state administrators have found equally fascinating and menacing. Tundra Passages describes how this indigenous people in the Russian Far East have experienced, interpreted, and struggled with the changing conditions of life on the periphery of post-Soviet Russia. Rethmann portrays the lives of Koriak women in the locales of Tymlat and Ossora in northern Kamchatka, within a wider framework of sexuality, state power, and marginalization, which she sees as central to the Koriak experience of everyday life. Using gender as a lens through which to examine wider issues of history, disempowerment, and marginalization, she explores the interpretations and strategies employed by Koriak women and men to ameliorate the austere effects of political and socioeconomic disorder. Rethmann's innovative work combines historical and ethnographic descriptions of Koriak life, narration, and practices of gender and history.With the demise of the Soviet Union, scholars have begun an active discussion of the political processes that affect marginalized and indigenous peoples in Russia. This work contributes to this discussion by revealing the tensions and potentially contradictory strategies of indigenous people within a world shaken by change, uncertainty, and disorder. ... Read more

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One common explanation for the failure of democracy to take root in Russia more quickly and more thoroughly than it has points to inherited cultural values that predispose Russian citizens to favor an autocratic type of governance. Ellen Carnaghan takes aim at this cultural-determinist thesis in her study of Russian attitudes, based on intensive interviews with more than sixty citizens from all walks of life and a variety of political orientations.

What she finds is that, rather than being influenced by an antidemocratic and anticapitalist ideology, these ordinary citizens view the economic and political system in Russia today very critically because it simply does not function well for them in meeting their everyday needs. They long for order not because they eschew democracy and free markets in any fundamental way, but because they experience them currently as chaotic and unpredictable, leading to constant frustration. As a result, there is reason to be optimistic about further progress in democratization: it depends on improving the functioning of existing institutions, not transforming deep-rooted cultural norms.

In the Conclusion, Carnaghan applies her argument to elucidating the reasons why Russians have responded favorably to what Westerners see as moves in an antidemocratic direction by Vladimir Putin's government. ... Read more

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This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature. ... Read more

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The Bronze Night(? Estonian: Pronksioo ), also known as the April Unrest (? Estonian: Aprillirahutused ) and April Events refer to the riots and controversy surrounding the 2007 relocation of the ? Bronze Soldier of Tallinn, the Soviet World War II memorial in Tallinn, Estonia. Many ? Estonians considered the Bronze Soldier in the city centre a symbol of Soviet occupation and repression. At the same time the monument has significant symbolic value to Estonia's community of mostly ethnic Russian post-World War II immigrants, symbolising not only Soviet victory over ? Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic War, but also their claim to rights in Estonia. ... Read more

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Recent political changes in Central Asia, where the United States is replacing Russia as the dominant power, are having a profound effect on Russian speakers in the region. These people, formerly perceived as progressive and engaging with Europe, are now confronted by the erasure of their literary, musical, cinematic and journalistic culture, as local ethnic and American cultures become much stronger. This book examines the predicament of Russian culture in Central Asia, looking at literature, language, cinema, music, and religion. It argues that the Soviet past was much more complex than the simplified, polarized rhetoric of the Cold War period allows, and also that the present situation, in which politicians from the former Soviet regime often continue in power, is equally complex.