Product Description
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

Product Description
Isaiah Berlin’s response to the Soviet Union was central to his identity, both personally and intellectually. Born a Russian subject in Riga in 1909, he spoke Russian as a child and witnessed both revolutions in St. Petersburg in 1917, emigrating to the West in 1921. He first returned to Russia in 1945, when he met the writers Anna Akhmatova and Boris Pasternak. These formative encounters helped shape his later work, especially his defense of political freedom and his studies of pre-Soviet Russian thinkers.

Never before collected, Berlin’s writings about the USSR include his accounts of his famous meetings with Russian writers shortly after the Second World War; the celebrated 1945 Foreign Office memorandum on the state of the arts under Stalin; his account of Stalin’s manipulative ‘artificial dialectic’; portraits of Osip Mandel´shtam and Boris Pasternak; his survey of Soviet Russian culture written after a visit in 1956; a postscript stimulated by the events of 1989; and more. This collection includes essays that have never been published before, as well as works that are not widely known because they were published under pseudonyms to protect relatives living in Russia.

The contents of this book were discussed at a seminar in Oxford in 2003, held under the auspices of the Brookings Institution. Berlin’s editor, Henry Hardy, had prepared the essays for collective publication and here recounts their history. In his foreword, Brookings president Strobe Talbott, an expert on the Soviet Union, relates the essays to Berlin’s other work. The Soviet Mind will assume its rightful place among Berlin’s works and will prove invaluable for policymakers, students, and those interested in Russian politics, past, present and future. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

exquisite
If we can compare books with haute couture in fashion I would say this little book is definitely a most elegant collection of essays on Russian culture i feel proud to belong. ... Read more

Product Description
Like earlier editions, the new "From Nyet to Da" illuminates the dynamics of traditional Russian culture in the framework of contemporary events. With a new preface, a completely rewritten 'Whither Russia' chapter and updates and revisions throughout, "From Nyet to Da" enlightens readers about virtually every aspect of Russian life, covering social and interpersonal skills as well as the underlying cultural assumptions and values of the Russian people. Business executives, educators, students, governmental or non-governmental officials will gain new insights from this sympathetic yet even-handed treatment of the Russian people. Richmond has a talent for objective, clear and balanced writing. He weaves Russian cultural behavior with historical reference and modern-day anecdotes in such a way as to make learning about these fascinating and passionate people an enjoyable experience.Five major sections help to define the Russian culture: 'Geography and Culture' places Russian culture in the framework of the geographic and historical forces that have shaped it; 'Culture and Character' describes the Russian personality; 'State and Society' explains the post-Soviet socio-political system; 'Personal Encounters' identifies key behavior patterns a visitor will encounter; and, 'Negotiating with Russians' provides a guide to negotiating a joint venture or a contract. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Informative
I purchased this book to learn more about Russian culture.I am currently enrolled in a Russian language course this summer, that will also focus on the cultural aspects of Russia.This book was informative and I especially appreciated the historical accounts.I do believe that an American's perspective is always going to be a tad bit biased and negative in regards to Russia, so I do not consider this book the "bible" so to speak on Russia.That said I realize the author acquired much experience in regards to Russian relations and business dealings.I would like to have read a little more about the personal relationships, one on one, with Russians.

I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn more about Russia.

Great beginning for understanding Russia
Of course a single book can't adequately prepare anyone for the experience that is Russia but this book is a good place to start. This book was required reading for a course prior to traveling to St. Petersburg, Russia and it effectively provides insights into the cultural mind and thought of Russians, and Russia in general, which most history books do not. My experiences in Russia echoed many of the themes in this book

My only issue is that a bit too much of the material is drawn from Soviet times and Russia today - especially for those under 30 - is a very different place.

Mostly acurate, but too gloomy
I am a first generation Russian immigrant - grew up in Russia and Ukraine and came to US at the age of 23 in 2003. I bought this book to find some articulations of what I have experienced, I need it for one of my classes in grad school.

I started reading last night and almost got all the way through, what I can tell you at this point is - the author seems credible. I was offended by some of the things and some I feel were exaggerated... Overall, most of it sounds true for describing my grandparents, younger generations are a lot more westernized, living in a fast-paced world where everyone has to work for themselves and stay afloat in the global economy. If you are planning a trip to Russia, definitely read the book and you'll be more relaxed once you get there. Expect the worst, but hope for the best! :)

I also bought The Russian Way because they offered me a deal if I buy both, which is a great disappointment. From Nyet to Da is a lot more informed and experience based than The Russian Way, has a better tone and is a lot more interesting to read ... Read more

Product Description
Perestroika and the end of the Soviet Union transformed every aspect of life in Russia, and as hope began to give way to pessimism, popular culture came to reflect the anxiety and despair felt by more and more Russians. Free from censorship for the first time in Russia's history, the popular culture industry (publishing, film, and television) began to disseminate works that featured increasingly explicit images and descriptions of sex and violence.

In Overkill, Eliot Borenstein explores this lurid and often-disturbing cultural landscape in close, imaginative readings of such works as You're Just a Slut, My Dear! (Ty prosto shliukha, dorogaia!), a novel about sexual slavery and illegal organ harvesting; the Nympho trilogy of books featuring a Chechen-fighting sex addict; and the Mad Dog and Antikiller series of books and films recounting, respectively, the exploits of the Russian Rambo and an assassin killing in the cause of justice. Borenstein argues that the popular cultural products consumed in the post-perestroika era were more than just diversions; they allowed Russians to indulge their despair over economic woes and everyday threats. At the same time, they built a notion of nationalism or heroism that could be maintained even under the most miserable of social conditions, when consumers felt most powerless.

For Borenstein, the myriad depictions of deviance in pornographic and also detectiv fiction, with their patently excessive and appalling details of social and moral decay, represented the popular culture industry's response to the otherwise unimaginable scale of Russia's national collapse. "The full sense of collapse," he writes, "required a panoptic view that only the media and culture industry were eager to provide, amalgamating national collapse into one master narrative that would then be readily available to most individuals as a framework for understanding their own suffering and their own fears." ... Read more

Product Description

"Joanna Hubbs has found the trace of Baba Yaga and the rusalki and Moist Mother Earth and other fascinating feminine myths in Russian culture, and has added richly to the growing interest in popular culture." -- New York Times Book Review

"... brave... fascinating... immensely enjoyable... " -- Times Higher Education Supplement

"... a stimulating and original study... vivid and readable." -- Russian Review

"An immensely stimulating, beautifully written work of scholarship." -- Francine du Plessix Gray

"Joanna Hubbs has provided scholars... with a wealth of significant interpretive material to inform if not reform views of both Russian and women's cultures." -- Journal of American Folklore

A ground-breaking interpretation of Russian culture from prehistory to the present, dealing with the feminine myth as a central cultural force.

Customer Reviews (4)

Interesting but error- filled
I got this book to learn about the pagan cults of Russia prior to the Christian conversion. While the basic information is interesting-- who the gods were and what their associations were, the book is filled with opinions that are not substantiated with any footnotes to back them up. (She does have some footnotes, but a LOT of conjecture.) She has a clear feminist slant, which is not particularly a bad thing, but it seems ahistorical particularly in the context of the 10th century-- can we really say that at the time the chuch was seen as misogynistic when we consider how society was set up? That seems like a modern construct being written into history...
It is often unclear if she is referring to medieval or modern concepts or rituals with certain gods/ goddesses and her discussion of the Vladimir Icon is erronious: the Vladimir Icon is NOT the same as the Kazanskaja for starters.
This all being said, take it with a grain of salt and only read it for the absolute basics. Anything beyond that is probably unsubstantiated opinion or ahistorical re-writing of history.

Good, but has some alarming errors... Not sure what to think
I am interested in world mythology, and Slavic is one of my favorites. It is a shame that there is so few good books in English on the subject, so when I saw this one I was very excited. However, I am on page 30 right now, and already I noticed some glaring mythological errors. Among them was a statement that Thor hung from Yggdrasil on p.19 (it was Odin, not Thor, that hung from Yggdrasil), that Dazhdbog is Svarog's father on p.17 (it is the other way around!), and that Adonis is Cybele's lover on p.29 (Cybele's lover was Attis, and though the story of Aphrodite & Adonis is similar to that of Cybele & Attis, they come from different cultures and feature different characters).

At first I wondered if she was writing about some obscure versions of these myths that I never encountered, then I thought perhaps the errors about Mediterranean and Norse mythology could be due to her specialty in Slavic myth, but when she got even Slavic myth wrong I could not come up with any excuses. Because of this I am not sure how reliable the rest of her information is. Nevertheless it is a valuable resource since there are few books on Slavic myth out there - just read with a grain of salt...

Excellent resource for Mother goddess/Russian myth studies
I found Joanna Hubb's text to be very informative and enlightening.Its contents are academic, prolific and detailed down to the definitions of Russian origins.The chapter on Baba Yaga has the greatest, most factual collection of resources available on the subject.Anyone interested in Russian mythology, the foundation of the Russian goddess religions, and the critical analysis of the female divinities, this is a must for your collection.

Class Required Text
This was a required text for my Russian Lit and Culture class.It's not bad, but I don't know that I would have purchased or sought it out by myself.I particularly enjoyed Chapter 4 as it addressed the issue of Byzantine Christianity attempting to overtake the role of mother in the home.It would be useful to feminist anthropological studies. ... Read more

Product Description
Barbara Walker examines the Russian literary circle, a feature of Russian intellectual and cultural life from tsarist times into the early Soviet period, through the life story of one of its liveliest and most adored figures, the poet Maximilian Voloshin (1877–1932). From 1911 until his death, Voloshin led a circle in the Crimean village of Koktebel’ that was a haven for such literary luminaries as Marina Tsvetaeva, Nikolai Gumilev, and Osip Mandelstam. Drawing upon the anthropological theories of Victor Turner, Walker depicts the literary circle of late Imperial Russia as a contradictory mix of idealism and "communitas," on the one hand, and traditional Russian patterns of patronage and networking, on the other. While detailing the colorful history of Voloshinov’s circle in the pre- and postrevolutionary decades, the book demonstrates that the literary circle and its leaders played a key role in integrating the intelligentsia into the emerging ethos of the Soviet state. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume makes a valuable contribution to debates on the nature of civil society in post-communist countries by providing detailed case-studies of the relationship between education and civic culture. A team of specialists provide a comprehensive examination of everyday patterns of civic culture; the linkage between education and national identity, ethnicity; gender and religion; the experience and attitudes of youth; and attempts to render education systems better suited to the demands of post-communist society. ... Read more

Product Description
This text is the study of the aesthetic similarities between the French Parnassians, a 19th century group of poets led by Theophile Gautier, and the Russian Acmeist poets, including Osip Mandelstam and Anna Akhmatova, who were active in the second decade of the 20th century. The Acmeists shared with the Parnassians a classical sensibility, an aspiration to state-of-the-art verbal craftsmanship, and a keen interest in the three dimensional, physical world. Their love of plastic beauty as embodied in painting, sculpture, and architecture found natural release in verse about works of art. The book shows how Acmeist texts document aspects of Russian Modernist culture while continuing the Parnassian tradition of poetry inspired by visual art. ... Read more

Product Description
Soviet literature in general and Soviet children's literature in particular have often been labeled by Western and post-Soviet Russian scholars and critics as propaganda. Below the surface, however, Soviet children's literature and culture allowed its creators greater experimental and creative freedom than did the socialist realist culture for adults. This volume explores the importance of children's culture, from literature to comics to theater to film, in the formation of Soviet social identity and in connection with broader Russian culture, history, and society. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Concise, well-illustrated work on Russian Icons
"Russian Icons" by Vladimir Ivanov is an excellent summary, chronologically arranged, of the history of Russian Icons. Not only is it well illustrated, it gives a nice overview of the history of Russian icons. What impressed me the most about this book was its lovely photographs of the icons.They capture the spirit of the paintings.They are also high-quality photographs, not blurred or smudged. It is a work which is both useful to a stranger to the subject and an expert. ... Read more

Product Description
The phraseology of any language is storehouse of centuries-old popular wisdom and the saved up experience. From history and cognitive cultural science we know, that though the nations are various among themselves, nevertheless many universal categories are common. In this case it is possible to draw a conclusion that also in phraseology should prevail mostly universal categories, not national-specific ones. But is it so, actually? Many scientists argue that idioms initially have certain cultural-national specificity. Probably it not absolutely so, because in the situation when all phraseological units of language are cultural-specific there would be no opportunity to investigate their cultural similarities and distinctions. In the present work the attempt of study of the concept du?a in Russian, its significance for the culture and the ways of use of this concept in the language, in particular, in the domain of phraseology, was undertaken; for the phraseology reflects metalinguistic reality, and first of all, the elements of material and spiritual culture of a nation. ... Read more

Product Description

In the midst of the violent, revolutionary turmoil that accompanied the last decade of tsarist rule in the Russian Empire, many Jews came to reject what they regarded as the apocalyptic and utopian prophecies of political dreamers and religious fanatics, preferring instead to focus on the promotion of cultural development in the present. Jewish Public Culture in the Late Russian Empire examines the cultural identities that Jews were creating and disseminating through voluntary associations such as libraries, drama circles, literary clubs, historical societies, and even fire brigades. Jeffrey Veidlinger explores the venues in which prominent cultural figures -- including Sholem Aleichem, Mendele Moykher Sforim, and Simon Dubnov -- interacted with the general Jewish public, encouraging Jewish expression within Russia's multicultural society. By highlighting the cultural experiences shared by Jews of diverse social backgrounds -- from seamstresses to parliamentarians -- and in disparate geographic locales -- from Ukrainian shtetls to Polish metropolises -- the book revises traditional views of Jewish society in the late Russian Empire.

Product Description

Customer Reviews (3)

A fascinating read!
While I'm not an historian or a musician, I found Dr. Loeffler's book captivating.He is able to write a scholarly work that is understandable and intriguing for broad audiences.I recommend this book wholeheartedly, with a well-deserved 5-stars.

an academic book for all readers
If you are looking for a smart, intellectual read that is accessible and damn interesting, this is it.
I am neither a musician or Jewish historian, but I was drawn to this book after reading the review in Tablet. Dr. Loeffler explores modern Jewish identity in a totally unconventional fashion -- through the lens of Jewish music. The book hits on several universal themes of identity formation, the most significant of which is the age-old effort to determine "where exactly Jews fit in" cosmopolitan, assimilated modern society.Loeffler challenges notions of "hava nagila" as the end-all of Jewish music and identity.My only criticism is the price -- this book is priced like an academic text, but it reads more like a book in the New Yorker's review section.Kudos to Yale for putting out such a reader-friendly and interesting text, and kudos to Dr. Loeffler.

fascinating and scholarly in a very engaging way
I really enjoyed this book - Loeffler shares his informative and well-researched material in a readable manner that even a non-academic like me can relish. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume brings together two classic works on the culture of the Russian people which have been long out of print. Gorer's Great Russian Culture and Mead's Soviet Attitudes towards Authority: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Problems of Soviet Character were among the first attempts by anthropologists to analyze Russian society.They were influential both for several generations of anthropologists and in shaping American governmental attitudes toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War period. Additionally they offer fascinating insights into the early anthropological use of psychological data to analyze cultural patterns. Read as part of the history of the anthropology of complex contemporary societies, they are as fascinating for their more questionable conclusions as for their accurate characterizations of Russian life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Many thanks to the publisher for this great work
The publisher (Berghahn Books) has done us a tremendous service by republishing these three classic works on Russia in one volume. I had been looking for them for some time and was amazed to see this new edition. They still arouse controversy because of the famous "swaddling hypothesis" stating that Russian psychology is related to specific child-rearing practices. This should not deter anyone from owning this classic work. There is so much more here about Russian life and culture--and from a period when no one was writing anything at all. The introduction by Sergei Arutiunov is also extremely interesting. Altogether a classy and essential publication. Now that we are getting to know Russia again, foreign policy types and students of Slavic culture should most certainly read this. Send a copy to Colin Powell for Christmas! ... Read more