Russian Literature and Empire

Russian Literature and Empire
Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Total Pages : 374
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780521444439
ISBN-13 : 0521444438
Rating : 4/5 (39 Downloads)

Synopsis Russian Literature and Empire by : Susan Layton

Provides a synthesising study of Russian writing about the Caucasus during the 19th-century age of empire-building.

Empire

Empire
Author :
Publisher : Yale University Press
Total Pages : 536
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0300097263
ISBN-13 : 9780300097269
Rating : 4/5 (63 Downloads)

Synopsis Empire by : D. C. B. Lieven

Focusing on the Tsarist and Soviet empires of Russia, Lieven reveals the nature and meaning of all empires throughout history. He examines factors that mold the shape of the empires, including geography and culture, and compares the Russian empires with other imperial states, from ancient China and Rome to the present-day United States. Illustrations.

Russian Subjects

Russian Subjects
Author :
Publisher : Northwestern University Press
Total Pages : 468
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0810115255
ISBN-13 : 9780810115255
Rating : 4/5 (55 Downloads)

Synopsis Russian Subjects by : Monika Greenleaf

This collection of essays resituates poetic works by Derzhavin, Krylov, Batisushkov, Pushkin, Girboedov, Lermontov, Baratynsky and Pavlova, within the force fields of contradicoty cultural pressures, as are the once best-selling prose narratives of Narezhnyi, Karamzin, Viazemsky and others.

Imperial Knowledge

Imperial Knowledge
Author :
Publisher : Praeger
Total Pages : 256
Release :
ISBN-10 : UOM:39015055801313
ISBN-13 :
Rating : 4/5 (13 Downloads)

Synopsis Imperial Knowledge by : Ewa M. Thompson

While Western literature has long reflected the techniques of power that privileged the colonial masters and their point of view, Russian fictional and nonfictional texts have escaped such scrutiny because Russia is not generally considered a colonial power. In arguing that Russia's long history of territorial expansion is a form of colonization, this book uses postcolonial theory to examine Russian literature and the power structures reflected in it. Among the authors discussed are Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, and Solzhenitsyn.

The Imperial Sublime

The Imperial Sublime
Author :
Publisher : Univ of Wisconsin Press
Total Pages : 324
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0299181944
ISBN-13 : 9780299181949
Rating : 4/5 (44 Downloads)

Synopsis The Imperial Sublime by : Harsha Ram

The Imperial Sublime examines the rise of the Russian empire as a literary theme simultaneous with the evolution of Russian poetry between the 1730s and 1840—the century during which poets defined the main questions facing Russian literature and society. Harsha Ram shows how imperial ideology became implicated in an unexpectedly wide range of issues, from formal problems of genre, style, and lyric voice to the vexed relationship between the poet and the ruling monarch.

Haunted Empire

Haunted Empire
Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Total Pages : 213
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781501750595
ISBN-13 : 1501750593
Rating : 4/5 (95 Downloads)

Synopsis Haunted Empire by : Valeria Sobol

Haunted Empire shows that Gothic elements in Russian literature frequently expressed deep-set anxieties about the Russian imperial and national identity. Valeria Sobol argues that the persistent presence of Gothic tropes in the literature of the Russian Empire is a key literary form that enacts deep historical and cultural tensions arising from Russia's idiosyncratic imperial experience. Her book brings together theories of empire and colonialism with close readings of canonical and less-studied literary texts as she explores how Gothic horror arises from the threatening ambiguity of Russia's own past and present, producing the effect Sobol terms "the imperial uncanny." Focusing on two spaces of the imperial uncanny—the Baltic north/Finland and the Ukrainian south—Haunted Empire reconstructs a powerful discursive tradition that reveals the mechanisms of the Russian imperial imagination that are still at work today.

Empire of Nations

Empire of Nations
Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Total Pages : 389
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780801455940
ISBN-13 : 0801455944
Rating : 4/5 (40 Downloads)

Synopsis Empire of Nations by : Francine Hirsch

When the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, they set themselves the task of building socialism in the vast landscape of the former Russian Empire, a territory populated by hundreds of different peoples belonging to a multitude of linguistic, religious, and ethnic groups. Before 1917, the Bolsheviks had called for the national self-determination of all peoples and had condemned all forms of colonization as exploitative. After attaining power, however, they began to express concern that it would not be possible for Soviet Russia to survive without the cotton of Turkestan and the oil of the Caucasus. In an effort to reconcile their anti-imperialist position with their desire to hold on to as much territory as possible, the Bolsheviks integrated the national idea into the administrative-territorial structure of the new Soviet state. In Empire of Nations, Francine Hirsch examines the ways in which former imperial ethnographers and local elites provided the Bolsheviks with ethnographic knowledge that shaped the very formation of the new Soviet Union. The ethnographers—who drew inspiration from the Western European colonial context—produced all-union censuses, assisted government commissions charged with delimiting the USSR's internal borders, led expeditions to study "the human being as a productive force," and created ethnographic exhibits about the "Peoples of the USSR." In the 1930s, they would lead the Soviet campaign against Nazi race theories . Hirsch illuminates the pervasive tension between the colonial-economic and ethnographic definitions of Soviet territory; this tension informed Soviet social, economic, and administrative structures. A major contribution to the history of Russia and the Soviet Union, Empire of Nations also offers new insights into the connection between ethnography and empire.

Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire

Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire
Author :
Publisher : Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Total Pages : 340
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780802199386
ISBN-13 : 0802199380
Rating : 4/5 (86 Downloads)

Synopsis Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire by : José Manuel Prieto

Now in paperback, Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire was acclaimed by The Hartford Courant as "a thrilling discovery ... a reversal of the letters [of] Saul Bellow's Herzog ... [with] a Nabokovian delight in words and texts." J. is a smuggler living in Russia, making his living fencing the flotsam of communism's collapse. In Istanbul he takes a commission to trap an endangered Russian butterfly and decides to use it as an opportunity to smuggle V., his Russian lover who has no papers, back into her homeland. In the port of Odessa, she disappears, and J. continues alone to a small village on the Black Sea. Letters from V. begin to arrive, and as J. hunts the butterfly, he seeks a way to lure V. back into his life. Equal parts bittersweet love story, international intrigue, and one man's quest to write the perfect love letter, Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire, wrote The Tennessean, is "an amazing jewel of a story ... that winks with wit [and] wears its astonishing craftsmanship lightly." "An aesthetically blissful reading experience ... Nabokov's spirit, alive and kind, has touched [Prieto] with its butterfly wings." -- Aleksandar Hemon, The Village Voice Literary Supplement "...Nocturnal Butterflies is an impressive performance by a writer whose gifts are clearly abundant." -- Richard Bernstein, The New York Times "A beautiful, lavish, seedy, poetic, and magical book.... Pure pleasure for the literary mind." -- Chris Kridler, The Baltimore Sun

Russia's People of Empire

Russia's People of Empire
Author :
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Total Pages : 385
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780253001764
ISBN-13 : 0253001765
Rating : 4/5 (64 Downloads)

Synopsis Russia's People of Empire by : Stephen M. Norris

This book explores the multicultural world of historical Russia through the life stories of 31 individuals that exemplify the cross-cultural exchanges in the country from the late 1500s to post-Soviet Russia.

A Journey to the End of the Russian Empire

A Journey to the End of the Russian Empire
Author :
Publisher : Penguin UK
Total Pages : 0
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0141025506
ISBN-13 : 9780141025506
Rating : 4/5 (06 Downloads)

Synopsis A Journey to the End of the Russian Empire by : Anton Chekov

Overwhelmed by what he felt was the worthlessness of his great success as a writer, Chekhov (1860-1904) decided to leave everything behind him and go to the far reaches of Siberia - to the terrible Russian penal colony on Sakhalin Island. This book mixes his witty, charming letters back to friends on his long journey with his grim account of the reality of life in one of the worst places on earth. Great Journeys allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries - but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things- Great civilisations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so much was still to be discovered.