Books

Offers New Perspectives on Local and Western Opposition to State Socialism and the Cold War Order

This book discerns Soviet leaders’ views of the United States and sees them in relation to foreign policy statements and actions.

Thomas Remington views the methods used by the Communist Party in official communications to Soviet society during the 1970s and 1980s.

Aronson refutes the widely-held belief that the anti-Jewish pogroms of 1881 in Russia were supported by the Czar, or those within his inner circle. He instead looks to social, economic and political forces of the time, and recounts the fateful events of this year in great detail.

Winner of the 2009 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought

An insider’s look at the Soviet dissident movement—the intellectuals who, during the Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras, dared to challenge an oppressive system and demand the rights guaranteed by the Soviet constitution. Fired from their jobs, hunted by the KGB, “tried,” and imprisoned, Alexeyeva and other activists, through their dedication and sacrifices, focused international attention on thuman rights in the USSR.

In the early nineteenth century Serb scholar Vuk Karadzic collected and published now classic transcriptions of Balkan oral poetry. This edition, by taking great care to preserve the unique meter and rhythm at the heart of Serbian oral poetry as well as the idiom of the original singers, offers the most complete and authoritative translations ever assembled in English.

Kenneth Straus contemplates the question: Was there social support for the Stalin regime among the Soviet working class during the 1930s, and if so, why? In his well-researched answer he analyzes the daily lives of Soviet workers, and compares the ideologies of western and Soviet thought.

A highly original study of the Putilov Works—the most famous industrial conglomerate in the Russian Empire during the late 19th century, and a major challenge to conventional wisdom on the nature of the Russian economy in the years before the Bolshevik revolution.

Models of Nature studies the early and turbulent years of the Soviet conservation movement from the October Revolution to the mid-1930s—Lenin’s rule to the rise of Stalin. This new edition includes an afterword by the author that reflects upon the study’s impact and discusses advances in the field since the book was first published.

In this interdisciplinary and controversial work, Igal Halfin takes an original and provocative stance on Marxist theory, and attempts to break down the divisions between history, philosophy, and literary theory.

This collection of essays dedicated to recovering the local aspects of Soviet history is sure to force a major reevaluation of the nation’s first thirty-five years.

Matthew Payne details the building and impact of the Turkestano-Siberian Railroad, one of the major construction projects of Stalin’s first Five Year Plan.

Choi Chatterjee analyzes both Bolshevik attitudes towards women and the invented state rituals surrounding Women’s Day to demonstrate the ways these celebrations helped construct gender notions in the Soviet Union.

Katherine Jolluck tells the story of thousands of Polish women exiled to the Soviet Union in 1939-41, and examines the ways in which their efforts to maintain their identities as respectable women and patriotic Poles helped them survive.

Curative Powers combines post-colonial theory with ethnographic research to reconstruct how the Soviet government used medicine and public health policy to transform the society, politics, and culture of its outlying regions, specifically Kazakhstan.

Winner of the 2003 Heldt Prize from the Association for Women in Slavic Studies.