Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
3,731
result(s) for
"Countries Russia."
Sort by:
Portrait of a Russian Province
Several stark premises have long prevailed in our approach to Russian history. It was commonly assumed that Russia had always labored under a highly centralized and autocratic imperial state. The responsibility for this lamentable state of affairs was ultimately assigned to the profoundly agrarian character of Russian society. The countryside, home to the overwhelming majority of the nation's population, was considered a harsh world of cruel landowners and ignorant peasants, and a strong hand was required for such a crude society.A number of significant conclusions flowed from this understanding. Deep and abiding social divisions obstructed the evolution of modernity, as experienced \"naturally\" in other parts of Europe, so there was no Renaissance or Reformation; merely a derivative Enlightenment; and only a distorted capitalism. And since only despotism could contain these volatile social forces, it followed that the 1917 Revolution was an inevitable explosion resulting from these intolerable contradictions-and so too were the blood-soaked realities of the Soviet regime that came after. In short, the sheer immensity of its provincial backwardness could explain almost everything negative about the course of Russian history.This book undermines these preconceptions. Through her close study of the province of Nizhnii Novgorod in the nineteenth century, Catherine Evtuhov demonstrates how nearly everything we thought we knew about the dynamics of Russiansociety was wrong. Instead of peasants ground down by poverty and ignorance, we find skilled farmers, talented artisans and craftsmen, and enterprising tradespeople. Instead of an exclusively centrally administered state, we discover effective and participatory local government. Instead of pervasive ignorance, we are shown a lively cultural scene and an active middle class. Instead of a defining Russian exceptionalism, we find a world recognizable to any historian of nineteenth-century Europe.Drawing on a wide range of Russian social, environmental, economic, cultural, and intellectual history, and synthesizing it with deep archival research of the Nizhnii Novgorod province, Evtuhov overturns a simplistic view of the Russian past. Rooted in, but going well beyond, provincial affairs, her book challenges us with an entirely new perspective on Russia's historical trajectory.
eBook
Russia, Brics, and the disruption of global order
Russia's leadership in establishing the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) is emblematic of its desire to end US hegemony and rewrite the rules of the international system. Rachel S. Salzman tells the story of why Russia broke with the West, how BRICS came together, why the group is emblematic of Russia's challenge to the existing global order, and how BRICS has changed since its debut. The BRICS group of non-Western states with emerging economies is held together by a shared commitment to revising global economic governance and strict noninterference in the internal affairs of other countries. BRICS is not exclusively a Russian story, but understanding the role of BRICS in Russian foreign policy is critical to understanding the group's mission. In a time of alienation from the Euro-Atlantic world, BRICS provides Russia with much needed political support and legitimacy. While the longterm cohesion of the group is uncertain, BRICS stands as one of Vladimir Putin's signature international accomplishments. This book is essential reading for scholars and policymakers interested in Russian foreign policy, the BRICS group, and global governance.
Book
Imagining the West in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union
This volume presents work from an international group of writers who explore conceptualizations of what defined \"East\" and \"West\" in Eastern Europe, imperial Russia, and the Soviet Union. The contributors analyze the effects of transnational interactions on ideology, politics, and cultural production. They reveal that the roots of an East/West cultural divide were present many years prior to the rise of socialism and the cold war.
The chapters offer insights into the complex stages of adoption and rejection of Western ideals in areas such as architecture, travel writings, film, music, health care, consumer products, political propaganda, and human rights. They describe a process of mental mapping whereby individuals \"captured and possessed\" Western identity through cultural encounters and developed their own interpretations from these experiences. Despite these imaginaries, political and intellectual elites devised responses of resistance, defiance, and counterattack to defy Western impositions.
Socialists believed that their cultural forms and collectivist strategies offered morally and materially better lives for the masses and the true path to a modern society. Their sentiments toward the West, however, fluctuated between superiority and inferiority. But in material terms, Western products, industry, and technology, became the ever-present yardstick by which progress was measured. The contributors conclude that the commodification of the necessities of modern life and the rise of consumerism in the twentieth century made it impossible for communist states to meet the demands of their citizens. The West eventually won the battle of supply and demand, and thus the battle for cultural influence.
eBook
Russian-Arab worlds : a documentary history
The roots of the Arab world's current Russian entanglements reach deep into the tsarist and Soviet periods. To explore those entanglements, this book presents and contextualizes a set of primary sources translated from Russian, Arabic, Armenian, Persian, French, and Tatar: a 1772 Russian naval officer's diary, an Arabic slave sale deed from the Caucasus, an interview with a Russian-educated contemporary Syrian novelist, and many more. These archival, autobiographical, and literary sources, all appearing in English for the first time, are introduced by specialists and in some cases by pairs of scholars with complementary language expertise. They highlight connections long obscured by disciplinary cleavages between Slavic and Middle East studies.--Publisher's website.
Book
Russia and the West from Alexander to Putin
Since Russia has re-emerged as a global power, its foreign policies have come under close scrutiny. In Russia and the West from Alexander to Putin, Andrei P. Tsygankov identifies honor as the key concept by which Russia's international relations are determined. He argues that Russia's interests in acquiring power, security and welfare are filtered through this cultural belief and that different conceptions of honor provide an organizing framework that produces policies of cooperation, defensiveness and assertiveness in relation to the West. Using ten case studies spanning a period from the early nineteenth century to the present day - including the Holy Alliance, the Triple Entente and the Russia-Georgia war - Tsygankov's theory suggests that when it perceives its sense of honor to be recognized, Russia cooperates with the Western nations; without such a recognition it pursues independent policies either defensively or assertively.
eBook
The lands in between : Russia vs. the West and the new politics of hybrid war
\"Russia's stealth invasion of Ukraine and its assault on the US elections in 2016 forced a reluctant West to grapple with the effects of hybrid war. While most citizens in the West are new to the problems of election hacking, state-sponsored disinformation campaigns, influence operations by foreign security services, and frozen conflicts--citizens of the frontline states between Russia and the European Union have been dealing with these issues for years. This book contends that these \"lands in between\" hold powerful lessons for Western countries. For Western politics is becoming increasingly similar to the lands in between, where hybrid warfare has polarized parties and voters into two camps: those who support a Western vision of liberal democracy and those who support a Russian vision of nationalist authoritarianism. Paradoxically, while politics increasingly boils down to a zero sum \"civilizational choice\" between Russia and the West, those who rise to the pinnacle of the political system in the lands in between are often non-ideological power brokers who have found a way to profit from both sides, taking rewards from both Russia and the West. Increasingly, the political pathologies of these small, vulnerable, and backwards states in Europe are our problems too. In this deepening conflict, we are all lands in between\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Russia's postcolonial identity : a subaltern empire in a Eurocentric world
01
02
This book applies postcolonial theory to Russia by looking at it as a subaltern empire. It pushes postcolonial studies and constructivist International Relations towards an uneasy dialogue, which produces tensions and reveals multiple blind spots in both approaches. A critical re-evaluation of the existing literature enables the author to produce a comprehensive account of how Russia's position in the international system has conditioned its domestic development, and how this in turn generated specific foreign policy outcomes. Having internalised the Eurocentric worldview, Russia is nevertheless different from the core European countries. This difference is not determined by 'culture', but rather by uneven and combined development of global capitalism, in which Russia is integrated as a semi-peripheral nation. The Russian state has colonised its own periphery on behalf of the Western core, but has never been able to overcome economic and normative dependency on the West. The peculiar dialectic of the subaltern and the imperial during the post-Soviet period has given rise to a regime which claims to defend 'genuine Russian values', while in fact there is nothing behind this new traditionalism but the negation of Western hegemony. Trying to 'defend' the nation from the postulated threat of Western interventionism, the regime engages in a disavowal of politics and thus suppresses popular subjectivity. The only political subject that remains on the horizon of Russian politics is the West, while the Russian people, as any other subaltern, are being spoken for, and thus silenced, by the country's Eurocentric elites and the Western intellectuals.
02
02
Pushing postcolonial studies and constructivist International Relations towards an uneasy dialogue, this book looks at Russia as a subaltern empire. It demonstrates how the dialectic of the subaltern and the imperial has produced a radically anti-Western regime, which nevertheless remains locked in a Eurocentric outlook.
04
02
1. The Postcolonial and the Imperial in the Space and Time of World Politics
2. Russia in/and Europe: Sources of Ambiguity
3. Material Dependency: Postcolonialism, Development and Russia's 'Backwardness'
4. Normative Dependency: Putinite Paleoconservatism and the Missing Peasant
5 The People are Speechless: Russia, the West and the Voice of the Subaltern
6. Conclusion
13
02
Viatcheslav Morozov is Professor of EU-Russia Studies at the University of Tartu. Before moving to Estonia in 2010, he taught for thirteen years at the St Petersburg State University, Russia. He is the author of Russia and the Others: Identity and Boundaries of a Political Communit y and the editor of Decentring the West: The Idea of Democracy and the Struggle for Hegemony .
eBook
EU-Russian Border Security
The land border between Russia and the European Union is one of the longest land borders in the world, with very considerable trade flowing across the border in both directions. This book examines the nature of the EU-Russia border, and the issues connected with its management. It describes the territories and the societies on each side of the border, discusses the challenges which confront border management, including migration and criminal activities, and explores how people on both sides perceive each other and perceive threats and security issues. It concludes by assessing achievements to date in managing the border and by assessing continuing unresolved challenges.
eBook