The Russia Reader

by Barker, Adele Marie

• ISBN13: 9780822346487
• ISBN10: 0822346486
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-06-21
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

Letters recording the reactions of ordinary Russians to the Revolution as events unfolded in 1917, an account of the day-to-day scramble to make a living after the end of the Soviet Union, and excerpts from a sixteenth-century manual instructing elite Muscovites on proper household management-The Russia Readerbrings these and many other selections together in this introduction to the history, culture, and politics of the worldrs"s largest country, from the earliest written accounts of the Russian people to today. Conveying the texture of everyday life alongside experiences of epic historical events, the book is filled with the voices of men and women, rulers and revolutionaries, peasants, soldiers, literary figures, eacute;migreacute;s, journalists, and scholars. Most of the selections are by Russians, and thirty are translated into English for the first time.Illustrated with maps, paintings, photographs, posters, and cartoons,The Russia Readerincorporates song lyrics, jokes, anecdotes, and folktales, as well as poems, essays, and fiction by writers including Akhmatova, Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, and Tolstoi. Transcripts from the show trials of major Party figures and an account of how staff at the Lenin Library in Moscow were instructed to interact with foreigners are among the many selections based on personal memoirs and archival materials only recently made available to the public. From a tenth-century emissaryrs"s description of his encounters in Kyivan Rusrs", to a scientistrs"s recollections of her life in a new research city built from scratch in Siberia during the 1950s, to a novelistrs"s depiction of the decadence of the "New Russians" in the 2000s,The Russia Readeris an extraordinary introduction to a vast and varied country.

Author Biography

Adele Barker is professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at the University of Arizona. Bruce Grant is Associate Professor of Anthropology at New York University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xi
General Introduction	p. 1
Icons and Archetypes
The Scythians	p. 13
On Russian Distinctiveness and Universality	p. 16
To Russia (March 1854)	p. 20
Moscow and Petersburg: 1842	p. 22
ôGreat Russiansö and ôLittle Russians,ö	p. 31
Bathing the Russian Way, From Folklore to the Songs of Vladimir Vysotskii	p. 40
A Cosmopolitan Project	p. 47
From Kyiv through Muscovy
The Igor Tale	p. 61
The Russian Primary Chronicle	p. 66
Slavic Byzantium	p. 70
Russia through Arabian Eyes	p. 75
Rules for Russian Households	p. 80
My Early Life	p. 85
Reform to Revolution
The Bronze Horseman	p. 97
Peter's Social Reforms	p. 101
Love and Conquest, The Correspondence of Catherine II and Grigory Potemkin	p. 110
The War of 1812	p. 115
Description of the Clergy in Rural Russia	p. 120
Emancipating the Serfs	p. 125
Classic Russian Cooking	p. 128
The Challenged Gentry	p. 134
Dear Nicky, Dear Sunny, The Correspondence of Nicholas II Empress Aleksandra	p. 140
Far Pavilions: Siberia
Russia's Conquest of Siberia	p. 151
Sibiriaks	p. 158
Exile by Administrative Process	p. 162
Science Everywhere	p. 168
The Big Problems of Little Peoples	p. 174
At the Source	p. 186
A Changing Countryside
The Dacha	p. 201
Work Done ôOut of Respect,ö	p. 207
The Mushroom Hunt	p. 213
Progress and Prosperity	p. 218
Svetloyar: In a Wild and Holy Place	p. 222
Searching for Icons	p. 237
The Village of Posady	p. 243
Near Pavilions: The Caucasus
The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus	p. 257
Mtsyri	p. 263
Sandro of Chegem	p. 270
Chechnya-A Brief Explanation	p. 281
Evening Prayers	p. 293
Revolution
The Communist Manifesto	p. 305
The Background of Revolution	p. 310
Revolution and the Front	p. 319
Letters from the Front	p. 326
The Withering Away of the State	p. 331
Voices of Revolution, 1917	p. 336
Gedali	p. 339
Two Years among the Peasants in Tambov Province	p. 343
Building a New World from Old
Make Way for Winged Eros	p. 351
The Bathhouse	p. 362
We: Variant of a Manifesto	p. 365
The Travels of My Brother Aleksei to the Land of Peasant Utopia	p. 370
Learning to Labor	p. 378
Stalin's Forgotten Zion	p. 388
Rising Stalinism
Lenin's ôLast Testament,ö	p. 401
The Body and the Shrine	p. 405
Soviet Literature: The Richest in Ideas	p. 413
Swell the Harvest, Shock Brigade of Composers and Poets	p. 417
Dizzy with Success	p. 419
The War against the Peasantry, 1929-30	p. 422
Collectivization 1931	p. 426
Anna's Story	p. 431
The Proletariat's Underground Paradise	p. 436
The Great Terror
Bukharin 1936	p. 447
Mass Attack on the Watershed	p. 453
Requiem	p. 456
Memories and Biographies of the Leningrad Terror	p. 465
Revelations from the Russian Archives	p. 471
Labor Camp Socialism	p. 475
Spies and Murderers in the Guise of Physicians and Scientists	p. 483
The War Years
June 1941: The Enemy Will Be Destroyed	p. 493
Magnificent Stubbornness	p. 497
Wait for Me, Konstantin Simonov	p. 508
Smolensk Roads, Konstantin Simonov	p. 510
The Blockade Diary of A. I. Vinokurov	p. 513
The Diary of a Red Army Soldier	p. 518
Tragic Numbers: The Lives Taken by the War	p. 520
The Paradox of Nostalgia for the Front	p. 523
The Thaw
March 5th, 1953	p. 537
The Secret Speech	p. 540
The Defense of a Prison-Camp Official	p. 545
Who Lives Better?	p. 551
When Did You Open Your Eyes?	p. 559
The Last Trolley	p. 567
Russians Abroad, Near and Far
Russian Harbin	p. 573
China	p. 586
From Harbin, Home	p. 588
On the Banks of the Seine	p. 593
108th Street	p. 599
Life under Advanced Socialism
Communal Living in Russia: Stories and Thoughts	p. 615
Trial of a Young Poet: The Case of Joseph Brodsky	p. 621
The Most Well-Read Country in the World	p. 627
International Relations at the Lenin Library	p. 633
Moscow Circles	p. 639
The Soviet Middle Class	p. 650
Anecdotes of the Times	p. 658
Partisans of the Full Moon	p. 661
Things Fall Apart
The Most Responsible Phase of Perestroika	p. 667
Causes of the Collapse of the USSR	p. 673
Our Fairy-Tale Life	p. 684
Getting By	p. 692
Building a New World
Burying the Bones	p. 701
Pyramids and Prophets	p. 706
My Precious Capital	p. 714
Fade to Red?	p. 721
Casual	p. 729
Anecdotes about New Russians	p. 734
Return to the Motherland	p. 735
Suggestions for Further Reading	p. 743
Acknowledgment of Copyrights and Sources	p. 753
Index	p. 765
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