Subject: History / Europe / Russia & the Former Soviet Union

Subject: History / Europe / Russia & the Former Soviet Union

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From Darkness To Light

|9780822957041|Class, Consciousness, & Salvation In Revolutionary|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.| Igal Halfin| Russian and East European Studies| History / Europe / Russia & the Former Soviet Union History / General

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Provincial Landscapes

|9780822941644|Local Dimensions of Soviet Power, 1917–1953|The closed nature of the Soviet Union, combined with the WestÆs intellectual paradigm of Communist totalitarianism prior to the 1970s, have led to a one-dimensional view of Soviet history, both in Russia and the West. The opening of former Soviet archives allows historians to explore a broad array of critical issues at the local level. Provincial Landscapes is the first publication to begin filling this enormous gap in scholarship on the Soviet Union, pointing the way to additional work that will certainly force major reevaluations of the nationÆs history.Focusing on the years between the Revolution…

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Stalin’s Railroad

|9780822985938|Turksib and the Building of Socialism| The Turkestano-Siberian Railroad, or Turksib, was one of the great construction projects of the Soviet Union’s First Five-Year Plan. As the major icon to ending the economic “backwardness” of the USSR’s minority republics, it stood apart from similar efforts as one of the most potent metaphors for the creation of a unified socialist nation. Built between December 1926 and January 1931 by nearly 50,000 workers and at a cost of more 161 million rubles, Turksib embodied the Bolsheviks’ commitment to end ethnic inequality and promote cultural revolution in one the far-flung corners of the…

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Celebrating Women

|9780822961109|Gender Festival Culture & Bolshevik Ideology 1910-1939| The first International Women’s Day was celebrated in Copenhagen in 1910 and adopted by the Bolsheviks in 1913 as a means to popularize their political program among factory women in Russia. By 1918, Women’s Day had joined May Day and the anniversary of the October Revolution as the most important national holidays on the calendar. Choi Chatterjee analyzes both Bolshevik attitudes towards women and invented state rituals surrounding Women’s Day in Russia and the early Soviet Union to demonstrate the ways in which these celebrations were a strategic form of cultural practice that…

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Exile and Identity

|9780822959502|Polish Women in the Soviet Union during World War II| Using firsthand, personal accounts, and focusing on the experiences of women, Katherine R. Jolluck relates and examines the experiences of thousands of civilians deported to the USSR following the Soviet annexation of eastern Poland in 1939. Upon arrival in remote areas of the Soviet Union, they were deposited in prisons, labor camps, special settlements, and collective farms, and subjected to tremendous hardships and oppressive conditions. In 1942, some 115,000 Polish citizens—only a portion of those initially exiled from their homeland—were evacuated to Iran. There they were asked to complete extensive…

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