BiblioVault - Books about Russia (Federation)

Early Cinema in Russia and Its Cultural Reception
Yuri Tsivian
University of Chicago Press, 1998
Library of Congress PN1993.5.R9T7713 1998 | Dewey Decimal 791.430947

Early Cinema in Russia chronicles one of the great lost periods in cinema history, that of Pre-Revolutionary Russia. In contrast to standard film histories, Yuri Tsivian focuses on reflected images: it features the historical film-goer and early writings on film as well as examining the physical elements of cinematic performance.

"Tsivian casts a probing beam of illumination into some of the most obscure areas of film history. And the terrain he lights up with his careful assembly and insightful reading of the records of early film viewing in Russia not only changes our sense of the history of this period but also . . . causes us to re-evaluate some of our most basic theoretical and historical assumptions about what a film is and how it affects its audiences."—Tom Gunning, from the Foreword

"Early Cinema in Russia . . . reveals Tsivian's strengths very well and demonstrates why he is . . . the finest film historian of his generation in the former Soviet Union."—Denise Y. Youngblood, Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television

"A work of fundamental importance."—Julian Graffy, Recent Studies of Russian and Soviet Cinema

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Eco-Nationalism: Anti-Nuclear Activism and National Identity in Russia, Lithuania, and Ukraine
Jane I. Dawson
Duke University Press, 1996
Library of Congress HD9698.U382D39 1996 | Dewey Decimal 333.79240947

Eco-nationalism examines the spectacular rise of the anti-nuclear power movement in the former Soviet Union during the early perestroika period, its unexpected successes in the late 1980s, and its substantial decline after 1991. Jane I. Dawson argues that anti-nuclear activism, one of the most dynamic social forces to emerge during these years, was primarily a surrogate for an ever-present nationalism and a means of demanding greater local self-determination under the Soviet system. Rather than representing strongly held environmental and anti-nuclear convictions, this activism was a political effort that reflected widely held anti-Soviet sentiments and a resentment against Moscow’s domination of the region—an effort that largely disappeared with the dissolution of the USSR.
Dawson combines a theoretical framework based on models of social movements with extensive field research to compare the ways in which nationalism, regionalism, and other political demands were incorporated into anti-nuclear movements in Russia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Armenia, Tatarstan, and Crimea. These comparative case studies form the core of the book and trace differences among the various regional movements to the distinctive national identities of groups involved. Reflecting the new opportunities for research that have become available since the late 1980s, these studies draw upon Dawson’s extended on-site observation of local movements through 1995 and her unique access to movement activists and their personal archives.
Analyzing and documenting a development with sobering and potentially devastating implications for nuclear power safety in the former USSR and beyond, Eco-nationalism’s examination of social activism in late and postcommunist societies will interest readers concerned with the politics of global environmentalism and the process of democratization in the post-Soviet world.

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Eleven Winters of Discontent: The Siberian Internment and the Making of a New Japan
Sherzod Muminov
Harvard University Press, 2022
Library of Congress UB805.R9M86 2022 | Dewey Decimal 940.547247089956

The odyssey of 600,000 imperial Japanese soldiers incarcerated in Soviet labor camps after World War II and their fraught repatriation to postwar Japan.

In August 1945 the Soviet Union seized the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo and the colony of Southern Sakhalin, capturing more than 600,000 Japanese soldiers, who were transported to labor camps across the Soviet Union but primarily concentrated in Siberia and the Far East. Imprisonment came as a surprise to the soldiers, who thought they were being shipped home.

The Japanese prisoners became a workforce for the rebuilding Soviets, as well as pawns in the Cold War. Alongside other Axis POWs, they did backbreaking jobs, from mining and logging to agriculture and construction. They were routinely subjected to “reeducation” glorifying the Soviet system and urging them to support the newly legalized Japanese Communist Party and to resist American influence in Japan upon repatriation. About 60,000 Japanese didn’t survive Siberia. The rest were sent home in waves, the last lingering in the camps until 1956. Already laid low by war and years of hard labor, returnees faced the final shock and alienation of an unrecognizable homeland, transformed after the demise of the imperial state.

Sherzod Muminov draws on extensive Japanese, Russian, and English archives—including memoirs and survivor interviews—to piece together a portrait of life in Siberia and in Japan afterward. Eleven Winters of Discontent reveals the real people underneath facile tropes of the prisoner of war and expands our understanding of the Cold War front. Superpower confrontation played out in the Siberian camps as surely as it did in Berlin or the Bay of Pigs.

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Emerging Writing Research from the Russian Federation
edited by L. Ashley Squires
University Press of Colorado, 2022
Library of Congress PG2475 | Dewey Decimal 808.049171071

In the early 2010s, Russian institutions of higher education began responding to the need to internationalize Russian academia through faculty publications and academic mobility programs. The promotion of academic writing courses and writing centers based on international models has been a critical part of that effort, leading to the rapid growth of a field of teaching and scholarship that had not received much attention. This book explores these developments through contributions from individuals with experience in Russian higher education, who write about the rationale for importing and adapting international models of academic writing and rhetoric and composition, the role of the English and the Russian language in the development of this field, and the specific needs of faculty and student writers in Russia. We expect this book to be of interest to scholars investigating the internationalization of higher education, the role of English in the international dissemination of research, and programs developedspecifically for multilingual faculty writers, who are a core constituency for writing services in Russia.

This book is also available as an open access ebook through the WAC Clearinghouse.

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The End of Peasantry?: The Disintegration of Rural Russia
Grigory Ioffe
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006
Library of Congress HD1995.15.Z8I54 2006 | Dewey Decimal 338.10947

The End of Peasantry? examines the dramatic recent decline of agriculture in post-Soviet Russia. Historically, Russian farmers have encountered difficulties relating to the sheer abundance of land, the vast distances between population centers, and harsh environmental conditions. More recently, the drastic depopulation of rural spaces, decreases in sown acreage, and overall inefficiency of land usage have resulted in the disruption and spatial fragmentation of the countryside. For many decades, rural migration has been a selective process, resulting in the most enterprising and self-motivated people leaving the rural periphery. The new agricultural operators representing nascent but aggressive Russian agribusiness have difficulty co-opting traditional rural communities afflicted by profound social dysfunction. The contrast between agriculture in proximity to large cities and in their hinterlands is as sharp as ever, and some vacant niches are increasingly occupied by ethnically non-Russian migrants. All of these conditions existed to some degree in pre-Soviet times, but they have been exacerbated since Russia took steps toward a market economy.

Understudied and often underestimated in the West, the crisis facing Russian agriculture has profound implications for the political and economic stability of Russia. The authors see hope in the significant increase in land use intensity on vastly diminished farmland. The lessons gathered from this thoroughly researched study are far-reaching and relevant to the disciplines of Slavic and European studies, agriculture, political science, economics, and human geography.

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Endquote: Sots-Art Literature and Soviet Grand Style
Marina Balina, Nancy Condee, and Evgeny Dobrenko
Northwestern University Press, 1999
Library of Congress PG3026.P67E53 2000 | Dewey Decimal 891.7090044

Sots-art, the mock use of the Soviet ideological clichés of mass culture, originated in Soviet nonconformist art of the early 1970s. An original and provocative guide, Endquote: Sots-Art Literature and Soviet Grand Style examines the conceptual aspect of sots-art, sots-art poetry, and sots-art prose, and discusses where these still-vital intellectual currents may lead.

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Entangled Far Rights: A Russian-European Intellectual Romance in the Twentieth Century
Marlene Laruelle
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018
Library of Congress D34.S65E58 2018 | Dewey Decimal 327.47040904

Since the rise of Putin, many have puzzled by the strange affinity of the far right in the West for today's authoritarian Russia. Entangled Far Rights explores the deep roots of this phenomena and reveals it to be a running thread through the entire history of the long 20th century and present regardless of the changing political character of Russia's regimes.

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Etazhi: Second Year Russian Language and Culture
Evgeny Dengub and Susanna Nazarova
Georgetown University Press, 2021
Library of Congress PG2129.E5D46 2021 | Dewey Decimal 491.782421

A highly communicative approach to Intermediate Russian grounded in everyday culture and authentic texts

Etazhi uses the communicative approach to advance student’s Russian proficiency from the Novice High / Intermediate Low level of the ACTFL scale to an Intermediate Mid / Intermediate High level. Designed for one academic year of instruction, Etazhi engages students with highly relevant topics to internalize new vocabulary, expand their grammatical reach, and deepen their cultural understanding of Russian speakers.

Chapters on Russian daily life, travel, dating and marriage, clothing, cuisine, health and medicine, education, holiday traditions, and careers are infused with humor and help students acquire the vocabulary and cultural nuance needed to discuss Russian literature, culture, and the arts. Hundreds of authentic texts, photographs, and illustrations gathered from across the Russian Federation–including authentic material written by real people about their experiences in Russia–show the diversity of Russian speakers, culture, and society. Each of the six chapters contains approximately fifty exercises that help students practice the four basic language skills–listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

This textbook improves vocabulary and grammar while promoting deeper cultural competency, preparing students to study abroad, and providing a firm foundation for advanced courses.

Special features include:

Audio transcripts to aid in comprehension checks (available for free on the Press's website)
A grammar reference with charts and tables, including case and verb charts
An extensive Russian-English glossary
Over 120 authentic photographs and hand-drawn images by a Russian artist
A sample of presentation materials and a sample exam for chapter one to aid instructors (available for free on the Press's website)

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European-Russian Power Relations in Turbulent Times
Mai’a K. Davis Cross and Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 2021
Library of Congress D1065.R9 | Dewey Decimal 355.0310940947

The Russia-Europe relationship is deteriorating, signaling the darkest era yet in security on the continent since the end of the Cold War. In addition, the growing influence of the Trump administration has destabilized the transatlantic security community, compelling Europe—especially the European Union—to rethink its relations with Russia.

The volume editors’ primary goal is to illuminate the nature of the deteriorating security relationship between Europe and Russia, and the key implications for its future. While the book is timely, the editors and contributors also draw out long-term lessons from this era of diplomatic degeneration to show how increasing cooperation between two regions can devolve into rapidly escalating conflict. While it is possible that the relationship between Russia and Europe can ultimately be restored, it is also necessary to understand why it was undermined in the first place. The fact that these transformations occur under the backdrop of an uncertain transatlantic relationship makes this investigation all the more pressing.

Each chapter in this volume addresses three dimensions of the problem: first, how and why the power status quo that had existed since the end of the Cold War has changed in recent years, as evidenced by Russia’s newly aggressive posturing; second, the extent to which the EU’s power has been enabled or constrained in light of Russia’s actions; and third, the risks entailed in Europe’s reactive power—that is, the tendency to act after-the-fact instead of proactively toward Russia—in light of the transatlantic divide under Trump.

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Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground
James Dobbins
RAND Corporation, 2019
Library of Congress JZ1480.A57R873 2019 | Dewey Decimal 355.033047

As the U.S. National Defense Strategy recognizes, the United States is currently locked in a great-power competition with Russia. This report seeks to define areas where the United States can compete to its own advantage. It examines Russian vulnerabilities and anxieties; analyzes potential policy options to exploit them; and assesses the associated benefits, costs, and risks, as well as the likelihood of successful implementation.

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