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In a fascinating \"urban biography,\" Michael Hamm tells the story of one of Europe's most diverse cities and its distinctive mix of Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, and Jewish inhabitants. A splendid urban center in medieval times, Kiev became a major metropolis in late Imperial Russia, and is now the capital of independent Ukraine. After a concise account of Kiev's early history, Hamm focuses on the city's dramatic growth in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first historian to analyze how each of Kiev's ethnic groups contributed to the vitality of the city's culture, he also examines the violent conflicts that developed among them. In vivid detail, he shows why Kiev came to be known for its \"abundance of revolutionaries\" and its anti-Semitic violence.

This new and abridged edition of Scenarios of Power is a concise version of Richard Wortman's award-winning study of Russian monarchy from the seventeenth century until 1917. The author breaks new ground by showing how imperial ceremony and imagery were not simply displays of the majesty of the sovereign and his entourage, but also instruments central to the exercise of absolute power in a multinational empire. In developing this interpretation, Wortman presents vivid descriptions of coronations, funerals, parades, trips through the realm, and historical celebrations and reveals how these ceremonies were constructed or reconstructed to fit the political and cultural narratives in the lives and reigns of successive tsars. He describes the upbringing of the heirs as well as their roles in these narratives and relates their experiences to the persistence of absolute monarchy in Russia long after its demise in Europe.

During March–April 1905 and from October 1905 until February 1906, Nahum Sokolow (1859–1936), a renowned journalist, editor, Zionist and public figure who lived and was active in Warsaw, stayed in St. Petersburg. During that time he wrote almost every day in his diary about the political meetings he attended and the existence of the city during those crucial moments. Most of the diary is written in Polish, and some parts are written in Hebrew and Yiddish. His notes indicate that he was fully aware of being a witness to significant historical events and saw them as an opportunity to gain some advantages for the Jewish residents of the Russian Empire and for himself. As a result we can learn about the daily life of the city and get a sense of how the political life was conducted in the shadow of the revolution. Although Sokolow was fully aware of the significance of the 1905 events for the entire Russian Empire, he was not aware of the transition that was taking place in the Jewish public sphere. He believed that the old political methods were still relevant and did not realize that a new era in the Jewish political life in the Russian Empire had begun. Sokolow’s diary provides an opportunity to learn of the events that took place in St. Petersburg from the perspective of a journalist and political activist who knew the city quite well, but nevertheless remained an outsider.

Macey reviews Count Sergei Witte and the Twilight of Imperial Russia: A Biography by Sidney Harcave.

This ground-breaking work documents Russian efforts to appropriate Western solutions to the problem of economic backwardness since the time of Catherine the Great. Entangled then as now with issues of cultural borrowing, educated Russians searched for Western nations, ideas, and social groups that embodied universal economic truths applicable to their own country. Esther Kingston-Mann describes Russian Westernization--which emphasized German as well as Anglo-U.S. economics--while she raises important questions about core values of Western culture and how cultural values and priorities are determined. This is the first historical account of the significant role played by Russian social scientists in nineteenth-century Western economic and social thought. In an era of rapid Western colonial expansion, the Russian quest for the \"right\" Western economic model became more urgent: Was Russia condemned to the fate of India if it did not become an England? In the 1900s, Russian liberal economists emphasized cultural difference and historical context, while Marxists and prerevolutionary government reformers declared that inexorable economic laws doomed peasants and their \"medieval\" communities. On the eve of 1917, both the tsarist regime and its leading critics agreed that Russia must choose between Western-style progress or \"feudal\" stagnation. And when peasants and communes survived until Stalin's time, he mercilessly destroyed them in the name of progress. Today Russia's painful modernizing traditions shape the policies of contemporary reformers, who seem as certain as their predecessors that economic progress requires wholesale obliteration of the past.

MOSCU.- La politica de Rusia no es la de la estepa. Los electores rusos no pueden pasar a la izquierda en una sola eleccion y a la derecha a la siguiente, sin estar preocupados por caer a un lado o al otro. Vivimos en uno u otro lado de una gran linea divisoria. Ahora la pregunta es si en las elecciones de la Duma, a celebrarse el proximo 19 de diciembre, y en las elecciones presidenciales del verano entrante el pais continuara su transicion cruzando o retrocediendo sobre esa linea divisoria. Esta de moda despreciar el proceso de reforma considerandolo un fracaso. Pero el cinismo esta mal. Algunas politicas pudieron haber sido manejadas de manera diferente, pero a pesar de la nostalgia por la seguridad del Estado todopoderoso hemos avanzado tan rapido que el comunismo ha sido consignado al bote de basura de la historia de Rusia. La imposibilidad de la restauracion del comunismo es quiza el gran logro de la Presidencia de Yeltsin.

\"In one of the 'people's houses' outside Moscow men are decently lodged for 2 1/2 cents a night, and boarded and lodged for 12 cents a day. A 'people's house,' as understood in Moscow, is a workingman's restaurant, club, library and much besides. The restaurants are fine large rooms, well lighted and well ventilated and beautifully clean; soap, water and towels are supplied gratis to the visitors. . . . The food supplied is both good and cheap, and only the bare cost is charged, the other expenses being paid out of the government subsidy.

We learn more about Shafirov from the study contributed by Dr. Saveli Dudakov for the Russian-language series Jews in World Culture, published in Jerusalem. Shafirov was descended from a Jewish family hailing from Speyer, Germany; in the 17th century, it operated a big business in Smolensk, on the eastern confines of the Polish kingdom. [PIOTR SHAFIROV]'S diplomatic qualities (he proved his mettle by negotiating an anti-Swedish coalition in 1699), were rewarded by the post of vice-chancellor. In one of his other brilliant diplomatic moves Shafirov arranged the marriage of the Duke of Courland with Peter's niece Ann - an act which ultimately served as a pretext for the Russian emperor to annex the Baltic states. Shafirov was made a baron - the first \"Jewish\" baron in Europe. Shafirov saved Peter from catastrophe when the tsar's 30,000-man army was surrounded by the five-times-stronger Turks. The deal negotiated by Shafirov allowed the tsar to go home free, ceding to the Porte only some unimportant possessions on the Azov Sea. Shafirov himself was detained in Istanbul for two and half years as a hostage until the terms of the agreement were all fulfilled.