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Twentieth-Century Russian and East European Painting: The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection
Johne E. Bowlt , and
Nicoletta Misler
Manufacturer: Philip Wilson Publishers
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ASIN: 0302006192 |
Book Description
At the heart of this pioneering study - the result of exhaustive comparative research in Russian, European and American collections - is an illustrated catalogue which provides detailed descriptions of each work in the context of the artist's career and the broader artistic developments of the age. The condition, provenance, and previous location of the works are also detailed.
The catalogue is introduced by three essays: The Russian Avant-Garde, the Hungarian Avant-Garde, and the history of the collecting of Russian Avant-Garde art. The volume concludes with artists' biographies, bibliographical information, a glossary and index.
A catalogue of 59 works, written by two of the most eminent scholars in the field.
Book Description
Unlike most Soviet-centered histories, A Vision Unfulfilled begins with a chapter summarizing late nineteenth-century Russian history, allowing instructors to begin their course with 1894, 1905, 1914, or 1917. The book also gives fuller attention to the history of the non-Russian populations in the tsarist and Soviet empires than other texts of its kind.
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A Dictionary of Twentieth Century Russian and Soviet Painters, 1900-80s
Matthew Cullerne Bown
Manufacturer: Izo
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ASIN: 0953206106 |
Customer Reviews:
Critical Sourcebook.......2007-02-18
This is an absolutely critical sourcebook for any student of Russian art, including post Revolutionary Impressionism and Socialist Realism. It has critical biographies of a huge number of Russian artists. No one should invest in Russian art without this book.
Book Description
The second edition of
Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century is an ideal introduction to an important area which is as diverse and diffuse as it is interesting and important. Richard Crampton extends his coverage through the revolutions of 1989-1991 up to today, and places these revolutions in the context of each country's historical tradition. He also develops themes such as how to create a democracy and maintain a functioning market economy; the resurgence of nationalism, war and the emergence of organized crime in the fragmented ex-empire. The revised edition also contains an up-to-date bibliography and extended examination of the breakdown of stability in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Customer Reviews:
Good on tiny details not so hot on the big picture........2003-10-20
If, like me, you are no expert on Eastern Europe, then this book is reassuring in that it proves someone out there is. However it really does nothing to help weave a broad picture for the reader or to explain well the context surrrounding the events. I certainly felt less confident about my knowledge of the region after reading it than before.
There could be more overview and less detail and this book would not have suffered for it.
Comprehensive, detailed, and scholarly........2003-05-31
I am not an authority on Eastern Europe; I read this book as a (very successful) undergraduate in social sciences. I enjoyed the thorough, methodically-organized text. Crampton divides the text into time periods or event trends, and examines each country's experience in detail. The organization is this text's strongest point. Its other great asset is the degree of detail. It combines a historian's "big-picture" view of trends with a nearly journalistic (I hope the word doesn't offend!) chronology of political events at crucial moments. This pair of perspectives, together with the fact that headings make it easy to identify sections for quick reference, made this a really good book for me.
Now the downside: all of this detail makes the book terribly long. The prose, particularly in early sections, is unnecessarily verbose and not particularly well-constructed. I am quite comfortable reading academic texts; this one could be better. Teachers using this text should include some sort of geography primer; I think that even if Americans were geographically compotent, we would need help with some of these references to non-political regional names. I do not consider this a weakness, however, and generally endorse this text; my course used several of these chronologies, and this was easily the best. If your students will read 500+ pages of rather obscure text, Crampton will serve you very well.
Book Description
When Canadian journalist Stephanie Williams set out to discover her Russian grandmother’s long-lost history, what she unearthed was this stunning, sprawling portrait of a life lived on the grand stage of the 20th century.
Born in remote Siberia in 1900, Olga Yunter was the youngest of five children. As a teenager during the Revolution, she was a courier and arms-runner for the White Russians. After learning of the execution of her brother at the hands of the Red Army, which drew nearer every day, her father sent her to China with rubies and gold sewn into her petticoats. She would never see her family again.
The life of a Russian exile in China meant poverty and fear. But Olga was lucky. She met and married Fred Edney, and gave birth to their daughter, Irina, the author’s mother. But the creeping Japanese occupation and invasion of China forced Olga to flee with Irina to Canada, leaving Fred behind to continue working. For five years she heard almost nothing of her husband, save that he was alive in a Japanese prison camp. At the end of the war she returned to China to find him broken by his internment. The family was driven out of the country for good by the Chinese Revolution in 1949. They settled in Oxford, where Olga and Fred lived out the rest of their days.
Drawing on letters, diaries, government documents, and interviews, Stephanie Williams brings to life this gripping historical drama, sweeping in scope and illuminated by the intimate details of one woman’s extraordinary life.
Customer Reviews:
Compelling Story, Fascinating Woman.......2006-01-04
I have never read a more compelling story. The author's grandmother Olga was a fascinating woman who led a remarkable life spanning three continents. Ms. Williams has woven the stories Olga told her over the years together with extensive research to create a vivid biography. It is filled with human drama and rich history -- much of it unfamiliar to Westerners. Lively, artful writing enhances this extraordinary book which I thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend.
An engrossing narrative of the 20th Century in turmoil.......2005-08-25
The machinations of war and revolution come alive as the threads of one family's life are interwoven throughout the history of two World Wars, the Bolshevik Revolution and the rise of Communism.
This book was especially poignant for me: my grandmother too was born in Russia. White Russian or Red, ordinary people were capriciously affected by the power struggle. Coincidentally,I read the book while on a two week trip to Shanghai, China and walked along the Bund (where some of the old buildings still remain standing) imagining the countless people affected by the Japanese invasion and by Mao's rise to power. I've also visited Victoria in beautiful British Columbia, Canada where Olga temporarily took refuge.
This book has given me an understanding at how quickly events change. I pray that the free world will never again be overrun by those who wish to impose their views on society.
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- One of a kind
- THE HEROIC AGE OF THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION
- How to get the most out of this great book
- Eye Witness Account - Recommended by Lenin
- A useful exposition of the October Revolution
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Ten days that Shook the World (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
John Reed
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
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ASIN: 0140182934 |
Amazon.com
The situation in St. Petersburg was growing more and more tense. The People's Revolution had begun by overthrowing the corrupt Tsarist regime in March 1917, but the workers and the peasants felt the revolution had much farther to go. Tired of fighting a war that meant little to them, the soldiers also grew restless: "When the land belongs to the peasants, and the factories to the workers, and the power to the Soviets, then we'll know we have something to fight for, and we'll fight for it!"
Lenin pressed the Bolsheviks to seize power. On the night of October 24, an organized mass of workers, soldiers, peasants, and sailors stormed the Winter Palace. On the following day, at the opening of the second Congress of Soviets, Trotsky announced the overthrow of the provisional government. Counterrevolutionary forces marched on the capital, but the Revolutionary Army triumphed. After all, "[t]his was their battle, for their world; the officers in command were elected by them. For the moment that incoherent multiple will was one will."
In Ten Days That Shook the World John Reed tells the story of Red October and the Russian revolution from a unique, firsthand perspective. Reed, an American journalist, was on assignment in Russia for The Masses--then the principal radical journal in the United States--and spent his days walking the streets, reading and collecting handbills, newspapers, and posters, and talking to people. As a result, Ten Days crackles with energetic immediacy. At its best moments it reads like a novel: Reed recounts conversations and arguments, details political machinations, and speculates on personal motives. Though this is no mere piece of propaganda, Reed's enthusiasm for the revolution infuses the text (some readers may be put off by Reed's florid prose), casting each counterrevolutionary act in a negative light. Helpful notes flesh out the background for those less familiar with the preceding events and render this a solid work of history. Ten Days That Shook the World is a stirring account of a stirring event. --Sunny Delaney
Book Description
The classic firsthand account of how the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917.
With vivid prose, verbatim speeches and actual documents American journalist John Reed captures the drama of the power struggle in Petrograd folowing the Tsar's abdication in 1917. Traveling throughout the city in those fateful days, he recounts with forceful description the packed meetings, the Provisional government's downfall, the resistance to the Bolsheviks, and their eventful hold on the country. A bestseller when first published in 1919, TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD still teaches compelling lessons about democracy.
This edition includes a new introduction with historical background, 25 newly selected illustrations, an author biography, key map and index. 6 x 9 format.
Download Description
This book is a slice of intensified history-history as I saw it. It does not pretend to be anything but a detailed account of the November Revolution, when the Bolsheviki, at the head of the workers and soldiers, seized the state power of Russia and placed it in the hands of the Soviets.
Customer Reviews:
One of a kind.......2007-09-10
This book is one of the most biased books ever written, but this shouldnt be taken as a criticism. This is one of the those history books that was written by someone that was actually there at the time things were happening, and the author made it clear that he was not trying to present "both sides" of the story. He was going to present the "people's side" (at least at that specific time). You dont have to be a communist to enjoy this book. In fact, you can compare the dream the people had at that time with what they actually got later. Beautifully written, this book makes you live the revolution. As you read it, you find yourself walking down the same street with the people at that time and listening to them talk and argue and even fight. Thanks to Reed's amazing style you can visualize the whole thing.
THE HEROIC AGE OF THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION .......2006-11-29
John Reed, Harvard Class of 1910, epitomized the best of the pre-World War I bourgeois radicals. Unlike the vast majority of his Class and class he cast his fate with the working people and oppressed of America at a time when the dominant left bourgeois movement- the Progressive movement- was busy applying band aids to the increasingly inequitable capitalist system. The radical movement is always in need, sometimes desperately in need, of intellectuals to tell its side of the story. Despite some exceptions, like Reed, the intellectuals then, as now, either stand on the sidelines or at most acted as `fellow travelers' to the movement. Reed on the contrary put all his energies into the movement. As a journalist he sought out all the radical hotspots of his time starting with his coverage of the Mexican Revolution, through the various workers' strikes of the 1910's in America culminating in his coverage of the heroic period of the Russian Revolution. His journalistic account of the Bolshevik seizure of power, Ten Days That Shook the World, stands even today as one of the best eyewitness accounts of that turbulent time in Russia. Reed had access to many elements of Russian society, from the revolutionatry workers quarters in Vyborg and Kronstadt to high society in the shadow of the Winter Palace, and mined those sources for his material. He brings the passion of the partisan in the best sense to his work.
If you want insights into the struggle for power from a central character in the fight then Leon Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution is must reading. If you want to know what the Bolshevik Revolution meant for the configuration of world geo-politcs them E.H. Carr's three volume study is for you. If you want to know what the various parties were up to in the period prior to the Bolshevik seizure of power then Sukhanov's Notes on the Revolution will provide a rather insightful guide. However, if you want to know how the revolutionary developments in 1917 affected various layers of society (and how they responded) then Reed is for you. Enough said.
How to get the most out of this great book.......2006-06-24
To appreciate this book, you have to understand what it is and what it isn't.
This is top-notch journalism, by someone with a lot of insight into what he was seeing, and a knack for turning up in all the right places. It gives you a vivid, unparalleled *flavor* of the Russian revolution of 1917, the first victorious working class revolution.
But it's still *journalism*. It's not an organized chronicle of what happened, beginning at the beginning and introducing events and ideas in a logical order. On top of that, Reed arrived in Russia at the climax of the revolution, after seven months of intense activity by an overwhelming cast of characters. If you read it too casually, it's like starting a textbook by reading the last chapter.
To get the most out of the book, I suggest reading Reed's introductory material carefully, probably returning to it more than once as you read the book. If you need more help, there's a good summary in the last two chapters of "Revolutionary Continuity: the Early Years" by Farrell Dobbs.
Your efforts will be well-rewarded. It really is great journalism.
For a definitive history, I highly recommend the widely acclaimed masterpiece, "History of the Russian Revolution" by Leon Trotsky. If you like one book, you'll like the other. I promise. Please read my review. (Click on "See all my reviews" above.)
Some reviewers complained that Reed doesn't explain the revolution's shortcomings -- the Russian revolution obviously turned out badly in the long run. But not everyone agrees that the revolution was fatally flawed from the very beginning. I don't. It's hard to read Reed's book and believe it was anything but an authentic popular revolution. For what went wrong, I recommend "The Revolution Betrayed" by Leon Trotsky and "Lenin's Final Fight", a collection of Lenin's last writings.
Eye Witness Account - Recommended by Lenin.......2005-11-15
This is an excellent account of the Russian Revolution told in story form and should be included in your study of the Revolution. The author was an American journalist and active participant in the American Labor movement aiding strikers in Paterson, NJ. In 1919 he chaired the meeting which founded the Communist-Labour Party, later the Communist Party of the U.S.A.. There is no such thing as an "objective" and neutral study, all sides are bias, so this book should be read with the so called anti-communist accounts to balance this study out.
There are a lot of details and yet it is told in story form. I think the other book to read on this subject is the History of the Russian Revolution written by the source itself, Leon Trotsky. Also Trotsky's book, The Revolution Betrayed. Then you can go to writings of Lenin. I found a short book on a couple of essays by the German Socialist and contemporary of the Socialist movement, Rosa Luxemburg, is very significant as an analysis. In this she criticizes much of Lenin and Trotsky's centralization as opposed to opportunism and the disbanding of the Duma and so forth, an excellent read! There are also quite a few modern books on the Russian Revolution as Richard Piper and others. This book is an excellent place to start and should not be excluded in this study.
This book as scores of statements Reed took from the many of the Bolshevik - proletarian and the bourgeois newspapers, documents, announcements and decrees of Kerensky and the provincial government, short conversations with Bolsheviks, Cadets, Cossacks, Mensheviks, proletarians and bourgeois alike. What I found so helpful is that Reed, as an sort of neutral in between person, was able to interview many of the opposing sides.
A useful exposition of the October Revolution.......2005-02-10
John Reed's book, "Ten Days That Shook The World", presents a challenge to well-meaning scholars of the October Revolution everywhere. The continuing debate over comrade Reed's accounts of the events of the socialist triumph over the bourgeois Kerenskyite oligarchs has been overshadowed by the present-day temporary setback experienced by the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and its struggle to resume its true and rightful place as the vanguard of the international proletariat. As Engels wrote in his classic work, "Materialism and the Apostasis of the 18th Brumaire" (Progress Press, Moscow, 1957), the inevitability of achieving a worker's state is far from a seamless upward trail, and will, from time to time encounter momentary challenges and obstacles thrown in the path of progess by counter-revolutionary and capitalist elements.
How does the proper historian view Reed's work? Clearly, as comrade V. I. Lenin wrote his original introduction to "Ten Days", Reed was at his best in reporting on the empirical reality of the proletarian movements inside Petrograd. As comrade Lenin and others later commented, Reed could be excused as a "revolutionary journalist" (a bourgeois conceit, of course) for failing to correctly observe the deviationism underlying the Plenkhavites and so-called moderate Socialist Revolutionaries, not to mention crypto-anarchists and other undisciplined romantic individualists. Reed erred in not uncovering the Menshevik centrist trend in the Russian Social Democratic movement, lead by Trotsky and Bukharin, arch-conspirators and chauvinists who were rightfully expelled from the Party in 1927. Indeed, it was with comradely restraint and generosity that comrade Lenin granted a state memorial to comrade Reed's memory....
Regrettably, truly objective scholarship has all but disappeared since the unfortunate events of the past decade. Perhaps the best critical analysis of the contradictions in Reed's works is found in comrade S.I. Klepov's monumental and enthralling six volume work, "Annals of the Sixth Comintern's Sub-Committee On Far Eastern Labor Relations in the Baikal-Irkutsk Regions (Progress Press, Moscow, 1937 (sadly, now out of print)), in which at page 708, he writes, "The American J. Reed fails to dialectically confront the errors of so-called moderates but in reality bourgeois roaders such as Zinoviev. He can be excused many of these faults due to his education in the infantile American labor movement and its inability to grasp such fundamental necessities as party discipline... As we know, "facts" are not the same as "truth." Shorn of the necessary empiro-criticism guided by the steady hand of the Party, Reed's "account" of the November revolution are but an empty shadow of the genuine proletariat victory." Truly such words were written on pages of gold!
Surely we cannot improve on comrade Klepov's correct analysis. Comrade Reed's work, while flawed, can be forgiven as a good and indulgent father excuses an errant but well-meaning child.
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The Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Civil War: (Greenwood Press Guides to Historic Events of the Twentieth Century)
Rex A. Wade
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press
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ASIN: 0313299749 |
Book Description
The Bolshevik Revolution remains one of the most important events of modern history. It reshaped the political, social, and economic structure of one of the world's "great powers" and had enormous international impact. This work brings together a rich, readable account that will help students to understand the event and its significance, as well as ready-reference materials for student research. Six topical essays, a timeline of events, 13 lengthy biographical profiles of key players, and the text of 32 key documents provide a wealth of information on this seminal event in world history. The essays are all based on the most recent historical scholarship. An overview of the Bolshevik Revolution puts the event into historical perspective. Topical essays consider the aspirations of the Russian people, the nature of the Revolution, the civil wars, the issue of ethnicity and nationality, and the legacy of the Bolshevik Revolution. Biographical profiles cover fully the lives and contributions of the key players in the Revolution. A wealth of documents, with explanatory introductions, provides an excellent source of primary materials. An annotated bibliography guides the reader to appropriate works for further research. This work is an excellent introduction to the Bolshevik Revolution for the student and interested reader.
Book Description
In this revision of their best-selling text, MacKenzie and Curran present a succinct, updated history from the later imperial tsarist regime to the current Russia. Acclaimed in the field for its clarity, comprehensiveness, and accuracy, the text balances social/cultural history with political history through the Putin presidency, and offers Russian as well as post-Soviet views of Russian history.
Book Description
During the twentieth century, Russia, Ukraine, and the other territories of the former Soviet Union experienced more bloodshed and violent death than anywhere else on earth: fifty million dead in an epic of destruction that encompassed war, revolution, famine, epidemic, and political purges. In Night of Stone, Catherine Merridale asks Russians difficult questions about how their country's volatile past has affected their everyday lives, aspirations, dreams, and nightmares. Drawing upon evidence from rare Imperial archives, Soviet propaganda, memoirs, letters, newspapers, literature, psychiatric studies, and interviews, Night of Stone provides a highly original and revealing history of modern Russia.
Customer Reviews:
Haunting and Mesmerizing.......2005-11-30
What an incredible book, and also necessary. Merridale puts so much emotion into her work, and one cannot help but feel incredible sorrow and sympathy for the poor peasants in communist Russia. These stories are essential for us to know, and hopefully suffering of this magnitude will never happen again. Recommended for everyone, as Merridale's style is easy to read and hard to put down. What makes Merridale's book so unique is her combination of history and psychology. She indicates the importance of national recognition of tragedies as a way to help the people heal. Also, she points to the many inefficiencies of communist Russia that most people probably never imagined. Her descriptions of the crematoriums is especially chilling. Worth every penny.
Such horrifying history as this.......2004-12-23
Night of Stone is a curious book, not quite entirely history or psychology or spirituality. It is Catherine Merridale's contribution towards an understanding of some of the ghastliness of Russian history. As spirituality is beyond me, I'll make no attempt to relate what Merridale says on the subject. As for the rest, it is a somewhat horrifying look and mankind at its lowest.
The order is generally chronological, and touches on everything relating to death in Russia. The early chapters go back into the Nineteenth Century, making the recording of eyewitness descriptions impossible (unlike much of the book). But we see how Russia handled funeral rituals and what sort of superstitious and religious beliefs people had throughout the country. This is not comprehensive, but we read accounts of how village doctors, after traveling long and hard to reach their accursed postings, found the people untrusting and woefully uninformed. Likewise, we see the grip the church held on the peasantry. Even in death it wouldn't let go, charging exorbitant fees for funerals.
As we move into the Twentieth Century, we get a long look at how the Soviet state handled death rituals. Religious funerals were frowned upon, leading to the curious invention of the communist funeral. Some mention is made of Lenin's death, and how the party tried to preserve his body as a way of defying mortality. The trade-off between burials and cremation is covered. And of course, there is talk of the purges and the war.
I see that my last two paragraphs look awfully jumpy, as if the book is a mish mash of trivia. In some sense, that's not far off. Merridale does not leave any topic behind, but of course her prose pulls it together is a more seamless fashion than I have done. The work is, I think, meant to try to reveal the Russian mind-set on death by showing how its various aspects flow together in society. I don't know if it is successful or not.
Moving along, starting with World War 2 and the repressions, we start to see events that have survivors today, and that's where things start to take off, because Merridale spent considerable time in Russian interviewing a variety of people. What was it like to survive the purge, and a gulag? Or to fight in the war? How did people handle it emotionally, especially in a society where the party said `thou shall not feel', `thou shall not mourn', `thou shall not lose your mind', and you will die when the party tells you to, not sooner, and not later? Here, with actual people to talk to, Merridale gets as close as she can to the meat of the book. And finally, now that the Soviet beast is itself dead, how does modern Russia deal with its own past. There are many millions of bodies buried out in the Russian countryside, and often the sites have been covered over and forgotten. Shall they be exhumed? And identified? And is it worth it? Who should answer for them?
Historically (which is how I tend to evaluate such books, other readers may have other criteria), Night of Stone is both fascinating and over-reaching. At times there are too many ideas and subjects for the space assigned to them. But on the other hand, there are enough gritty details of human drama to satisfy the urge to understand the Soviet Union and its overwhelming worship at the altar of death. The Bolsheviks were, if nothing else, death cultists. The purges. The famines. The civil war. The Second World War was forced upon it, but its reaction and methods showed its death cultism. I, for one, was reminded again of why I wouldn't want to live in Russia at any time in its history, however fascinating it may be to read about. But it is a gloriously gruesome and fascinating book, and on a topic that speaks to our inner darkness.
Amazing Book Weaves Historical Horrors InOne Vast Tapestry.......2002-12-05
One of the constants that I've noticed for many years is the near total ignorance that so many of us have about Russian/Soviet 20th Century History. It seems there has been more interest in soap operas and sitcoms than in the trials and horrors of the vast nation that was our cold war enemy for so many years. Having read dozens of great books on the wars, revolutions, famines etc. of the recent Russian past, it was great to run across one that brought it all together, even if this huge story on occasion becomes macabre in it's deathly persistance. For all those horror fans out there, try this book, and you'll really get a dose of the real thing. Suffering and tragedy completely foreign to most of us. Say the seige of Leningrad during WWII (barely known here), where a great city the size of Chicago loses over a million civilians, more than all the casualties of all the American wars.If you can find a copy, grab it!
Finally Justice to the Millions of the Soviet Dead.......2002-12-01
Not many people realize that over 50 million Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, etc. lost their lives unnaturally at the first half of the 20th century. This book, however unbalanced by its constance reference to the Orthodox Church and other mistakes, should be applauded by taking this grim statistic and analyzing its effects on the minds and mentality of the Soviet people. These facts have been hidden behind the Iron Curtain far too long for Westerners to be so blissfully ignorant. Bravo to Catherine Merridale for writing this excellent book.
Probaby the best book you'll read this year!.......2002-10-25
This is the most moving and memorable book I've read for many years. The scope is breath-taking, no less than an investigation of the Russian attitude to death, and ways of coping with it, from the late Czarist times to the present day. Given Russia's ghastly 20th century history the story is a terrible one and at many places in the book one has to pause, quite overcome by pity and emotion. Horror is piled on horror, though never for the sake of shock, yet the overriding feeling on finishing the book is of amazement at the resilience and nobility of the human spirit. The countless instances of cruelty, misery and waste, on a scale incomprehensible in a Western country, are matched by an even greater number of cases of endurance and triumph, if not physical, then spiritual. The overriding impression is of hell let loose on earth, not once, not transiently, but repeatedly, sustainedly, of millions dying, suffering and degraded in the process and yet of the survivors maintaining humanity, generosity and hope. Stupidity, prejudice and bull-headed arrogance all play their role in the story but more terrifying still is the sense of conscious, deliberate distancing from all human compassion that underlay so many of the man-made tragedies described. It is inappropriate to say that anyone will enjoy reading this wonderful book but they will be thrilled, moved and possibly changed by it. Other than by Zoë Oldenbourg's unforgettable novel "Destiny of Fire" I have never been so disturbed and challenged by a single book.
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