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| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Prince of Princes Simon Sebag Montefiore, 2000-01-01 Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson, Duff Cooper and Marsh Biography prizes It is one of the great love stories of history, and one of its most successful political partnerships. Catherine the Great was a woman of notorious passion and imperial ambition, perhaps the greatest of the Romanovs. Prince Potemkin - wildly flamboyant and sublimely talented - was the love of her life and her co-ruler. Together they seized Ukraine and Crimea and founded cities such as Sebastopol, defining the Russian empire to this day. Their affair was so tumultuous they negotiated an arrangement to share power, leaving Potemkin free to love his beautiful nieces, Catherine her young male favourites. But these 'twin souls' never stopped loving each other. Drawing on their intimate letters and vast new research from St Petersburg to Odessa, Simon Sebag Montefiore's enthralling, much-acclaimed biography restores these imperial partners to their rightful place as titans of their age. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: The Prince of Princes Sebag Montefiore, |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Russian and Soviet History Steven A. Usitalo, William Benton Whisenhunt, 2008 Russian and Soviet History uses noteworthy themes and important events from Russian history to spark classroom discussion. Consisting of twenty essays written by experts in each area, the book does not simply repeat the conventional themes found in nearly all Russian history texts, anthologies, and documentary compilations. Rather, it showcases current thinking on Russian cultural, political, economic, and social history from the end of the sixteenth century to the demise of the Soviet experiment. Informed by archival work in the former Soviet Union and a broad range of published sources, this book is intended to introduce students to Russian history in an accessible and provocative format. Its eclectic essays offer readers an incomparable taste of the complexity and richness of Russia as it has evolved from late Muscovy to the modern era. -- Cover description. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Catherine the Great & Potemkin Simon Sebag Montefiore, 2021-08-04 A widely acclaimed biography from the bestselling author of The Romanovs: One of the great love stories of history” (The Economist) between Catherine the Great and the wildly flamboyant and talented Prince Potemkin. • Captures the genius of two extraordinary Enlightenment figures—and of the age as well. —The Wall Street Journal Catherine the Great was a woman of notorious passion and imperial ambition. Prince Potemkin was the love of her life and her co-ruler. Together they seized Ukraine and Crimea, territories that define the Russian sphere of influence to this day. Their affair was so tumultuous that they negotiated an arrangement to share power, leaving each of them free to take younger lovers. But these “twin souls” never stopped loving each other. Drawing on the pair’s intimate letters and on vast research, Simon Sebag Montefiore restores these imperial partners to their rightful place as titans of their age. Biography in the grand tradition...Riveting...The author [is] a gifted storyteller. —The Washington Post |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: The Memoirs of Catherine the Great Catherine the Great, 2006-06-13 Empress Catherine II brought Europe to Russia, and Russia to Europe, during her long and eventful reign (1762—96). She fostered the culture of the Enlightenment and greatly expanded the immense empire created by Czar Ivan the Terrible, shifting the balance of power in Europe eastward. Famous for her will to power and for her dozen lovers, Catherine was also a prolific and gifted writer. Fluent in French, Russian, and German, Catherine published political theory, journalism, comedies, operas, and history, while writing thousands of letters as she corresponded with Voltaire and other public figures. The Memoirs of Catherine the Great provides an unparalleled window into eighteenth-century Russia and the mind of an absolute ruler. With insight, humor, and candor, Catherine presents her eyewitness account of history, from her whirlwind entry into the Russian court in 1744 at age fourteen as the intended bride of Empress Elizabeth I’s nephew, the eccentric drunkard and future Peter III, to her unhappy marriage; from her two children, several miscarriages, and her and Peter’s numerous affairs to the political maneuvering that enabled Catherine to seize the throne from him in 1762. Catherine’s eye for telling details makes for compelling reading as she describes the dramatic fall and rise of her political fortunes. This definitive new translation from the French is scrupulously faithful to her words and is the first for which translators have consulted original manuscripts written in Catherine’s own hand. It is an indispensable work for anyone interested in Catherine the Great, Russian history, or the eighteenth century. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Potemkin Simon Sebag Montefiore, 2005 As a young guardsman, Grigory Potemkin caught the eye of Catherine the Great with a theatrical act of gallantry during the coup that placed her on the throne. Over the next thirty years he would become her lover, co-ruler, and husband in a secret marriage that left room for both to satisfy their sexual appetites. Potemkin proved to be one of the most brilliant statesmen of the eighteenth century, helping Catherine expand the Russian empire and deftly manipulating allies and adversaries from Constantinople to London. This biography vividly re-creates Potemkin's outsized character and accomplishments and restores him to his rightful place as a colossus of the eighteenth century. It chronicles the tempestuous relationship between Potemkin and Catherine, a remarkable love affair between two strong personalities that helped shape the course of history. As he brings these characters to life, Montefiore also tells the story of the creation of the Russian empire. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Catherine the Great Virginia Rounding, 2007-02-06 First comprehensive modern biography of Catherine the Great to explore her both as a woman and empress. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Stories I Stole from Georgia Wendell Steavenson, 2004-02-24 Fed up with working for Time magazine in London, Steavenson moved to Georgia on a whim. Stories I Stole relates her time there in twenty vodka-fuelled episodes drawn from all over the country - tales of love, friendship and power cuts, of duelling (Georgian style), of horse races in the mountains, wars and refugees, broken hearts, fixed elections, drinking sessions and a room containing a thousand roses. Stories I Stole is a wonderful example of a writer tackling an unconventional subject with such wit, humanity and sheer literary verve that one is unable to imagine why one never learnt more about Georgia before. Stories I Stole is a magnificent first book: erudite, engaged, candid and blissfully poetic. PROLOGUE: The author visits a bizarre Stalin theme park culminating in the eery viewing of Stalin''s death mask SHASHLIK, TAMADA, SUPRA The author visits Khaketi, where she is introduced to the tamada culture of exaggerated hospitality; a point-of-honour hospitality. During a marathon toasting session at dinner she realizes It is a kind of aggression. When they did not know you well, they filled your glass and filled it again and carefully watched how you drank it... This was the Georgian way, friend or enemy with nothing in between. History was lost in tradition, drinking a way of remembering and forgetting at the same time. SHUKI The frustration of living with unpredictable power and water supplies during extremely cold winters; the heat and/or electricity is often turned off due to reasons ranging from sabotage, corruption, non-payment, theft, black clan economics, and incompetence. Nevertheless this leads to a particular happiness when the light does come on. The author discovers the heavenly comfort of public baths. Times were difficult; people had very little money. A lot of men were unemployed and all the old good professional jobs, teachers, nurses, police, engineers, were state jobs and paid less than $50 a month... Half Tbilisi owed the other half money. ETHNIC CLEANSING The author visits Abkhazia, where a refugee has asked her to find the apartment that war caused him to flee. She finds a woman living there who is a refugee herself--after her own house was burned down, she discovered the fully furnished house in Abkhazia shortly after it was vacated, and has been living there ever since, proudly tending the garden of the previous occupant. WHO ARE THE ABKHAZ On the beach with Shalva, whom she suspects is Abkhaz KGB. He feeds her the party line about the Abkhaz occupation and she feels like screaming truths at him. You won the war. You threw out all the Georgians. You have your homeland to yourselves (apart from the Armenian villages and the pockets of Russians) and what is this place? It''s a black hole. There are barely any cars, barely any petrol, no factories, nothing works, no private businesses, a curfew, no salaries, barely any pensions, a shell of a university, a terrible hospital, etc. etc. But Shalva doubts that the West is paradise: Here we have everything we need. The land is fertile. THE DUEL The story of Dato and Aleko--they get into a car wreck and Dato''s face is horribly scarred. Aleko steals Dato''s wife and Dato challenges him to a fight. When Aleko beats Dato up, Dato pulls a gun and shoots the man until he is almost paralyzed. Dato, meanwhile, lives the rest of his life with his mother, hooked on heroin. Not really Pushkin is it? LARGE ABANDONED OBJECTS The author drives to Abkhazia with several journalists to see incumbent Ardzinba win the presidential election (the journalists rename it the presidential farce, since Ardzinba is the only one running. The author marvels over the abandoned relics of the USSR she sees along the roadside--rusting tractors, bits of pipline, lines of coal cars shunted and left along a rail line, etc. For her birthday, the author goes to Gorbachev''s dacha, a palatial house he built but never got to inhabit because of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The house is a metaphor for the USSR: impressive only for its sheer size but actually full of empty space and tat. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Tolstoy’s Family Prototypes in "War and Peace" Brett Cooke, 2020-11-24 What were the consequences of Tolstoy’s unusual reliance on members of his family as source material for War and Peace? Did affection for close relatives influence depictions of these real prototypes in his fictional characters? Tolstoy used these models to consider his origins, to ponder alternative family histories, and to critique himself. Comparison of the novel and its fascinating drafts with the writer’s family history reveals increasing preferential treatment of those with greater relatedness to him: kin altruism, i.e., nepotism. This pattern helps explain many of Tolstoy’s choices amongst plot variants he considered, as well as some of the curious devices he utilizes to get readers to share his biases, such as coincidences, notions of “fate,” and aversion to incest. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: A History of Ambition in 50 Hoaxes (History in 50) Gale Eaton, 2016-09-06 What do the Trojan Horse, Piltdown Man, Keely Motor Company, and Ponzi Scheme have in common? They were all famous hoaxes, carefully designed and bolstered with false evidence. The con artists in this book pursued a variety of ambitions—making money, winning wars, mocking authority, finding fame, trading an ordinary life for a glamorous one—but they all chose the lowest, fastest road to get there. Every hoax is a curtain, and behind it is a deceiver operating levers and smoke machines to make us see what is not there and miss what is. As P.T. Barnum knew, you can short-circuit critical thinking in any century by telling people what they want to hear. Most scams operate on a personal scale, but some have shaped the balance of world power, inspired explorers to sail uncharted seas, derailed scientific progress, or caused terrible massacres. A HISTORY OF AMBITION IN 50 HOAXES guides us through a rogue’s gallery of hustlers, liars, swindlers, imposters, scammers, pretenders, and cheats. In Gale Eaton’s wide-ranging synthesis, the history of deception is a colorful tour, with surprising insights behind every curtain. Fountas & Pinnell Level Z+ |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: The Empress of Art Susan Jaques, 2016-04-15 A German princess who married a decadent and lazy Russian prince, Catherine mobilized support amongst the Russian nobles, playing off of her husband's increasing corruption and abuse of power. She then staged a coup that ended with him being strangled with his own scarf in the halls of the palace, and herself crowned the Empress of Russia. Intelligent and determined, Catherine modeled herself off of her grandfather in-law, Peter the Great, and sought to further modernize and westernize Russia. She believed that the best way to do this was through a ravenous acquisition of art, which Catherine often used as a form of diplomacy with other powers throughout Europe. She was a self-proclaimed glutton for art and she would be responsible for the creation of the Hermitage, one of the largest museums in the world, second only to the Louvre. Catherine also spearheaded the further expansion of St. Petersburg, and the magnificent architectural wonder the city became is largely her doing. There are few women in history more fascinating than Catherine the Great, and for the first time, Susan Jaques brings her to life through the prism of art. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: The Moscow Trilogy Simon Sebag Montefiore, 2018-03-08 Bestselling author and master storyteller Simon Sebag Montefiore's gripping, moving and highly acclaimed novels of love and war, betrayal, espionage and terror - gathered here for the first time in one compelling volume. Sashenka It is winter 1916 in the tsar’s wartime capital St Petersburg and the beautiful and headstrong Sashenka Zeitlin plays a dangerous game of conspiracy and seduction. Twenty years on, she is a perfect Communist wife and mother who risks everything for a forbidden love affair with a pleasure loving writer which will have devastating consequences. Sashenka's story lies hidden for half a century until a young historian goes deep into Stalin's private archives and uncovers a heartbreaking story of passion, betrayal, and unexpected heroism. Red Sky at Noon Imprisoned for a crime he did not commit, Benya Golden joins a penal battalion to fight the invading Nazis and enrols in a cavalry unit of criminals and Cossacks sent on a desperate ride across the sweltering grasslands of southern Russia. Switching between the cruel war and Stalin's secrets in the Kremlin, Benya’s affair with an Italian nurse is the heart of this epic story of passion, bravery and survival where betrayal and death are constant companions, – and love, however fleeting and doomed, offers a glimmer of redemption. One Night in Winter As Stalin and his courtiers celebrate victory over Hitler, the teenage children of two of Russia's top leaders are found dead. An investigation begins in their elite school, teenagers and children are arrested and forced to testify against their friends and their parents. The terrifying inquiry soon unveils illicit love affairs and family secrets in a world where the smallest mistakes can be punished by death. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Young Stalin Simon Sebag Montefiore, 2009-12-09 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Romanovs—and one of our pre-eminent historians—comes “a meticulously researched, authoritative biography” (The New York Times), the companion volume to the prize-winning Stalin, and essential reading for anyone interested in Russian history. This revelatory account unveils how Stalin became Stalin, examining his shadowy journey from obscurity to power—from master historian Simon Sebag Montefiore. Based on ten years of research, Young Stalin is a brilliant prehistory of the USSR, a chronicle of the Revolution, and an intimate biography. Montefiore tells the story of a charismatic, darkly turbulent boy born into poverty, scarred by his upbringing but possessed of unusual talents. Admired as a romantic poet and trained as a priest, he found his true mission as a murderous revolutionary. Here is the dramatic story of his friendships and hatreds, his many love affairs, his complicated relationship with the Tsarist secret police, and how he became the merciless politician who shaped the Soviet Empire in his own brutal image. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Written in History Simon Sebag Montefiore, 2019-10-15 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Romanovs—and one of our pre-eminent historians and a prizewinning writer—an outstanding selection of great letters from ancient times to the 21st century, touching on power, love, art, sex, faith, and war. Written in History: Letters that Changed the World celebrates the great letters of world history, and cultural and personal life. Bestselling, prizewinning historian Simon Sebag Montefiore selects letters that have changed the course of global events or touched a timeless emotion—whether passion, rage, humor—from ancient times to the twenty-first century. Some are noble and inspiring, some despicable and unsettling, some are exquisite works of literature, others brutal, coarse, and frankly outrageous, many are erotic, others heartbreaking. It is a surprising and eclectic selection, from the four corners of the world, filled with extraordinary women and men, from ancient times to now. Truly a choice of letters for our own times encompassing love letters to calls for liberation to declarations of war to reflections on life and death. The writers vary from Elizabeth I and Catherine the Great to Mandela, Stalin and Picasso, Fanny Burney and Emily Pankhurst to Ada Lovelace and Rosa Parks, Oscar Wilde, Chekhov and Pushkin to Balzac, Mozart and Michelangelo, Hitler, Rameses the Great and Alexander Hamilton to Augustus and Churchill, Lincoln, Donald Trump and Suleiman the Magnificent. In a book that is a perfect gift, here is a window on astonishing characters, seminal events, and unforgettable words. In the colorful, accessible style of a master storyteller, Montefiore shows why these letters are essential reading and how they can unveil and enlighten the past—and enrich the way we live now. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Joseph II: Volume 2, Against the World, 1780-1790 Derek Edward Dawson Beales, 1987 This final volume of Derek Beales's magisterial biography of the emperor Joseph II describes the critical period when he was sole ruler of the Austrian monarchy. Explaining his motivation and showing how his ideas developed, Derek Beales reveals that Joseph left an ineffaceable mark on all his lands. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: The Memoirs of Catherine the Great Catherine the Great, 2007-12-18 Empress Catherine II brought Europe to Russia, and Russia to Europe, during her long and eventful reign (1762—96). She fostered the culture of the Enlightenment and greatly expanded the immense empire created by Czar Ivan the Terrible, shifting the balance of power in Europe eastward. Famous for her will to power and for her dozen lovers, Catherine was also a prolific and gifted writer. Fluent in French, Russian, and German, Catherine published political theory, journalism, comedies, operas, and history, while writing thousands of letters as she corresponded with Voltaire and other public figures. The Memoirs of Catherine the Great provides an unparalleled window into eighteenth-century Russia and the mind of an absolute ruler. With insight, humor, and candor, Catherine presents her eyewitness account of history, from her whirlwind entry into the Russian court in 1744 at age fourteen as the intended bride of Empress Elizabeth I’s nephew, the eccentric drunkard and future Peter III, to her unhappy marriage; from her two children, several miscarriages, and her and Peter’s numerous affairs to the political maneuvering that enabled Catherine to seize the throne from him in 1762. Catherine’s eye for telling details makes for compelling reading as she describes the dramatic fall and rise of her political fortunes. This definitive new translation from the French is scrupulously faithful to her words and is the first for which translators have consulted original manuscripts written in Catherine’s own hand. It is an indispensable work for anyone interested in Catherine the Great, Russian history, or the eighteenth century. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: The Tsarina's Legacy Jennifer Laam, 2016-04-05 Then...Grigory Grisha Potemkin has had a successful long association with the powerful Empress Catherine of Russia. But Catherine and Grisha are older now and face new threats, both from powers outside of Russia and from those close to them. Haunted by the horrors of his campaign against the Muslim Turks, Grisha hopes to construct a mosque in the heart of the empire. Unfortunately, Catherine's much younger new lover, the ambitious Platon Zubov, stands in his way. Grisha determines that to preserve Catherine's legacy he must save her from Zubov's dangerous influence and win back her heart. Now...When she learns she is the lost heiress to the Romanov throne, Veronica Herrera's life turns upside down. Dmitry Potemkin, one of Grisha's descendants, invites Veronica to Russia to accept a ceremonial position as Russia's new tsarina. Seeking purpose, Veronica agrees to act as an advocate to free a Russian artist sentenced to prison for displaying paintings critical of the church and government. Veronica is both celebrated and chastised. As her political role comes under fire, Veronica is forced to decide between the glamorous perks of European royalty and staying true to herself. In Jennifer Laam's The Tsarina's Legacy, unexpected connections between Grisha and Veronica are revealed as they struggle to make peace with the ghosts of their past and help secure a better future for themselves and the country they both love. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Gender, Sex and the Shaping of Modern Europe Annette F. Timm, Joshua A. Sanborn, 2022-01-13 At a time when issues of gender and sexuality are as prominent as they have ever been, Gender, Sex and the Shaping of Modern Europe provides an authoritative exploration of the history of these deeply connected subjects over the last 250 years. Incorporating a blend of history and historiography, Annette F. Timm and Joshua A. Sanborn write engagingly on gender and sexuality in a way that illuminates our understanding of historical change and individual experience throughout Europe. The new and improved 3rd edition of this textbook now includes: · Personal vignette textboxes which shed light on key themes through individual life stories · Added material on Russia, Eastern Europe, the Holocaust and the 21st century · Historiographical updates throughout that bring the text up-to-date with new scholarship · 30 new images and maps Through 6 thematic chapters that cover democracy, capitalism, imperialism and war, Timm and Sanborn trace the social construction of gender roles, consider gender's influence on political and economic developments during the period and reflect on where European society's relationship with gender will go both now and in the future. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: On the Way to the "(Un)Known"? Doris Gruber, Arno Strohmeyer, 2022-09-06 This volume brings together twenty-two authors from various countries who analyze travelogues on the Ottoman Empire between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. The travelogues reflect the colorful diversity of the genre, presenting the experiences of individuals and groups from China to Great Britain. The spotlight falls on interdependencies of travel writing and historiography, geographic spaces, and specific practices such as pilgrimages, the hajj, and the harem. Other points of emphasis include the importance of nationalism, the place and time of printing, representations of fashion, and concepts of masculinity and femininity. By displaying close, comparative, and distant readings, the volume offers new insights into perceptions of otherness, the circulation of knowledge, intermedial relations, gender roles, and digital analysis. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Red Sky at Noon Simon Sebag Montefiore, 2018-12-11 Imprisoned in the Gulags for a crime he did not commit, Benya Golden joins a penal battalion made up of Cossacks and convicts to fight the Nazis. He enrolls in the Russian cavalry, and on a hot summer day in July 1942, he and his band of brothers are sent on a suicide mission behind enemy lines—but is there a traitor among them? The only thing Benya can truly trust is his horse, Silver Socks, and that he will find no mercy in onslaught of Hitler’s troops as they push East.Spanning ten epic days, between Benya’s war on the grasslands of southern Russia and Stalin’s intrigues in the Kremlin, between Benya’s intense affair with an Italian nurse and a romance between Stalin’s daughter and a war correspondent, this is a sweeping story of passion, bravery, and survival—where betrayal is a constant companion, death just a heartbeat away, and love, however fleeting, offers a glimmer of redemption. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Taming the Wild Field Willard Sunderland, 2016-03-10 Stretching from the tributaries of the Danube to the Urals and from the Russian forests to the Black and Caspian seas, the vast European steppe has for centuries played very different roles in the Russian imagination. To the Grand Princes of Kiev and Muscovy, it was the wild field, a region inhabited by nomadic Turko-Mongolic peoples who repeatedly threatened the fragile Slavic settlements to the north. For the emperors and empresses of imperial Russia, it was a land of boundless economic promise and a marker of national cultural prowess. By the mid-nineteenth century the steppe, once so alien and threatening, had emerged as an essential, if complicated, symbol of Russia itself.Traversing a thousand years of the region's history, Willard Sunderland recounts the complex process of Russian expansion and colonization, stressing the way outsider settlement at once created the steppe as a region of empire and was itself constantly changing. The story is populated by a colorful array of administrators, Cossack adventurers, Orthodox missionaries, geographers, foreign entrepreneurs, peasants, and (by the late nineteenth century) tourists and conservationists. Sunderland's approach to history is comparative throughout, and his comparisons of the steppe with the North American case are especially telling.Taming the Wild Field eloquently expresses concern with the fate of the world's great grasslands, and the book ends at the beginning of the twentieth century with the initiation of a conservation movement in Russia by those appalled at the high environmental cost of expansion. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Black Earth: A Journey Through Russia After the Fall Andrew Meier, 2005-01-17 That Black Earth is an extraordinary work is, for anyone who has known Russia, beyond question.—George Kennan A compassionate glimpse into the extremes where the new Russia meets the old, writes Robert Legvold (Foreign Affairs) about Andrew Meier's enthralling new work. Journeying across a resurgent and reputedly free land, Meier has produced a virtuosic mix of nuanced history, lyric travelogue, and unflinching reportage. Throughout, Meier captures the country's present limbo—a land rich in potential but on the brink of staggering back into tyranny—in an account that is by turns heartrending and celebratory, comic and terrifying. A 2003 New York Public Library Book to Remember. Black Earth is the best investigation of post-Soviet Russia since David Remnick's Resurrection. Andrew Meier is a truly penetrating eyewitness.—Robert Conquest, author of The Great Terror; If President Bush were to read only the chapters regarding Chechnya in Meier's Black Earth, he would gain a priceless education about Putin's Russia.—Zbigniew Brzezinski Even after the fall of Communism, most American reporting on Russia often goes no further than who's in and who's out in the Kremlin and the business oligarchy. Andrew Meier's Russia reaches far beyond . . . this Russia is one where, as Meier says, history has a hard time hiding. Readers could not easily find a livelier or more insightful guide.—Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost and The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin From the pointless war in Chechnya to the wild, exhilarating, and dispiriting East and the rise of Vladimir Putin, the former KGB officer—it's all here in great detail, written in the layers the story deserves, with insight, passion, and genuine affection.—Michael Specter, staff writer, The New Yorker; co-chief, The New York Times Moscow Bureau, 1995-98. [Meier's] knowledge of the country and his abiding love for its people stands out on every page of this book....But it is his linguistic fluency, in particular, which enables Mr. Meier to dig so deeply into Russia's black earth.—The Economist A wonderful travelogue that depicts the Russian people yet again trying to build a new life without really changing their old one.—William Taubman, The New York Times Book Review. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Eighteenth-Century Russian Music Marina Ritzarev, 2017-07-05 Little is known outside of Russia about the nation's musical heritage prior to the nineteenth century. Western scholarship has tended to view the history of Russian music as not beginning until the end of the eighteenth century. Marina Ritzarev's work shows this interpretation to be misguided. Starting from an examination of the rich legacy of Russian music up to 1700, she explores the development of music over the course of the eighteenth century, a period of especially intense Westernization and secularization. The book focuses on what is characteristic and crucial to Russian music during this period, rather than seeking to provide a comprehensive survey. The musical culture of the time is discussed against the rich background of social, political and cultural life, tying together many of the phenomena that used to be viewed separately. The book highlights the importance of previously marginalized sectors - serf culture, choral sacred culture, the contribution of foreign musicians, the significant influence of Freemasonry, the role of Ukrainian and West-European cultures and so on - as well as casting new light on the well-researched topic of Russian opera. Much new archival material is introduced, and revised biographies of the two leading eighteenth-century Russian composers, Maxim Berezovsky and Dmitry Bortniansky, are provided, as well as those of the serf composer Stepan Degtyarev and the Italian Giuseppe Sarti. The book places eighteenth-century Russian music on the European map, and will be of particular importance for the study of European musical cultures remote from such centres as Italy, Germany-Austria and France. Eighteenth-century Russian music is organically linked with its past and future and its contributory role in forming the Russian national identity and developing the Russian idiom is clarified. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: The Black Sea : A History Charles King, 2004-03-18 Based on extensive research in multiple languages, this book is an innovative and indispensable guide to the history, cultures, and politics of the fascinating Black Sea area and its future at the heart of Europe and Eurasia. Charles King breaks new ground in demonstrating how a region often thought of as a zone of timeless conflict has experienced long periods of integration and co-operation. - ;The area from the Balkans to the Caucasus is often seen as a zone of timeless conflict, a frontier region at the meeting place of mutually antagonistic civilizations. But in this pathbreaking work, Charles King investigates the myriad of connections that have made the Black Sea more of a bridge than a boundary, linking religious communities, linguistic groups, empires, and later, nations and states. For some parts of the world, the idea of waterways as defining elements in human history is uncontroversial. Mention the Mediterranean or the South Pacific, and images of mutual influence come to mind. Those images come less readily for the Black Sea-a region that has experienced ethnic conflict, economic collapse, and interstate rivalries over the last two decades. But in the recent past, the idea of the Black Sea as a distinct unit was self-evident. From its formation some seven or eight millennia ago to the political revolutions and environmental crisis of the late twentieth century, the sea has been a zone of interaction - sometimes cordial, sometimes conflictual - among the peoples and states around its shores. To the ancient Greeks, the sea lay literally at the edge of the known world. In time, the growth of Greek trading colonies linked all the coasts into a web of economic relationships. In the Middle Ages, the sea was tied to the great commercial cities of Venice and Genoa. Later, the Ottomans used the region's resources to build their own empire. In the late eighteenth century, the sea was opened to foreign commerce, and the seacoasts were part of a genuinely global system of trade. After the collapse of the Russian and Ottoman empires, the coastline was carved up among a number of newly formed nation-states, with each asserting a right to a piece of the coast and a section of the coastal waters. Today, efforts to resurrect the idea of the Black Sea as a unified region are once again on the international agenda. Based on extensive research in multiple languages, this book is an indispensable guide to the history, cultures, and politics of this fascinating sea and its future at the heart of Europe and Eurasia. - ;Well footnoted and fluently written...a useful and accessible work - with the Sea itself quite properly at the centre of attention. - Robin Milner-Gulland, History Today;In this timely book Charles King provides a stretchy timeline for the murky pool (once a lake, now a tideless sea) which has always sat on the edge of everything: Europe, Asia, civilisation, barbarism, us and other. - The Guardian Review;This is an essential book for anyone who feels they ought to know about what used to be called the eastern question and worries, secretly, that it is too late to start finding out. - The Guardian;A solid work by an academic historian, writing for the general educated public. He is particularly good on little known or forgotten episodes - the part played by Westerners in the development of the area. King is well placed to see through the myths of nationalists ... he has a good eye also for the victims of history. Kings work has all the virtues of good American scholarship ... vast array of sources, ... a transatlantic detachment, and the recent and very welcome fashion for elegant prose. - Andrew Mango, TLS;The collapse of the Soviet Union restored two great geostrategic arenas long buried in now-defunct empires or pushed to the margin by Cold War alignments. The first is Inner Asia, an immense hinterland stretching from the Chinese borderlands, across the Siberian south, to the Hindu Kush. The second is the Black Sea, a junction where the Balkans, Central Asia, and the Middle East meet. (Say no more.) To appreciate what this re-embodiment means one needs a special vantage point. King traces the Black Sea's many political incarnations from the Greeks and Scythians to the Romans, the Byzantine Christians, the Ottomans, the Russians, and the tumult of the twentieth century. Even when fractured and populated with weak and troubled states (as now), the region, King argues in this mind-broadening book, coheres-and deserves to be thought about and approached accordingly. - ;...essential reading for all who are dealing with the Black Sea history and archaeology. - International Journal of Maritime History;The collapse of the Soviet Union restored two great geostrategic arenas long buried in now-defunct empires or pushed to the margin by Cold War alignments. The first is Inner Asia, an immense hinterland stretching from the Chinese borderlands, across the Siberian south, to the Hindu Kush. The second is the Black Sea, a junction where the Balkans, Central Asia, and the Middle East meet. (Say no more.) To appreciate what this re-embodiment means one needs a special vantage point. King traces the Black Sea's many political incarnations from the Greeks and Scythians to the Romans, the Byzantine Christians, the Ottomans, the Russians, and the tumult of the twentieth century. Even when fractured and populated with weak and troubled states (as now), the region, King argues in this mind-broadening book, coheres-and deserves to be thought about and approached accordingly. - Foreign Affairs |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Reforming the Tsar's Army David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Bruce W. Menning, 2004-03-18 This volume examines how Imperial Russia's armed forces sought to adapt to the challenges of modern warfare. From Peter the Great to Nicholas II, rulers always understood the need to maintain an army and navy capable of preserving the empire's great power status. Yet they inevitably faced the dilemma of importing European military and technological innovations while keeping out political ideas that could challenge the autocracy's monopoly on power. Within the context of a constant race to avoid oblivion, the impulse for military renewal emerges as a fundamental and recurring theme in modern Russian history. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Ottoman Wars, 1700-1870 Virginia Aksan, 2014-01-14 The Ottoman Empire had reached the peak of its power, presenting a very real threat to Western Christendom when in 1683 it suffered its first major defeat, at the Siege of Vienna. Tracing the empire’s conflicts of the next two centuries, The Ottoman Wars: An Empire Besieged examines the social transformation of the Ottoman military system in an era of global imperialism Spanning more than a century of conflict, the book considers challenges the Ottoman government faced from both neighbouring Catholic Habsburg Austria and Orthodox Romanov Russia, as well as - arguably more importantly – from military, intellectual and religious groups within the empire. Using close analysis of select campaigns, Virginia Aksan first discusses the Ottoman Empire’s changing internal military context, before addressing the modernized regimental organisation under Sultan Mahmud II after 1826. Featuring illustrations and maps, many of which have never been published before, The Ottoman Wars draws on previously untapped source material to provide an original and compelling account of an empire near financial and societal collapse, and the successes and failures of a military system under siege. The book is a fascinating study of the decline of an international power, raising questions about the influence of culture on warfare. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: A Concise History of Russia Paul Bushkovitch, 2011-12-05 Accessible to students, tourists and general readers alike, this book provides a broad overview of Russian history since the ninth century. Paul Bushkovitch emphasizes the enormous changes in the understanding of Russian history resulting from the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since then, new material has come to light on the history of the Soviet era, providing new conceptions of Russia's pre-revolutionary past. The book traces not only the political history of Russia, but also developments in its literature, art and science. Bushkovitch describes well-known cultural figures, such as Chekhov, Tolstoy and Mendeleev, in their institutional and historical contexts. Though the 1917 revolution, the resulting Soviet system and the Cold War were a crucial part of Russian and world history, Bushkovitch presents earlier developments as more than just a prelude to Bolshevik power. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Terrible Tsarinas Henri Troyat, 2007 Five flamboyant, OC full-blooded women had a chance to rule Russia. How did it happen, and how did they do? In todayOCOs debates about male-female parity, much goes unsaid. TroyatOCOs book brings back the past, when women really had political power. A realisti |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Truth-Spots Thomas F. Gieryn, 2018-05-22 We may not realize it, but truth and place are inextricably linked. For ancient Greeks, temples and statues clustered on the side of Mount Parnassus affirmed their belief that predictions from the oracle at Delphi were accurate. The trust we have in Thoreau’s wisdom depends in part on how skillfully he made Walden Pond into a perfect place for discerning timeless truths about the universe. Courthouses and laboratories are designed and built to exacting specifications so that their architectural conditions legitimate the rendering of justice and discovery of natural fact. The on-site commemoration of the struggle for civil rights—Seneca, Selma, and Stonewall—reminds people of slow but significant political progress and of unfinished business. What do all these places have in common? Thomas F. Gieryn calls these locations “truth-spots,” places that lend credibility to beliefs and claims about natural and social reality, about the past and future, and about identity and the transcendent. In Truth-Spots, Gieryn gives readers an elegant, rigorous rendering of the provenance of ideas, uncovering the geographic location where they are found or made, a spot built up with material stuff and endowed with cultural meaning and value. These kinds of places—including botanical gardens, naturalists’ field-sites, Henry Ford’s open-air historical museum, and churches and chapels along the pilgrimage way to Santiago de Compostela in Spain—would seem at first to have little in common. But each is a truth-spot, a place that makes people believe. Truth may well be the daughter of time, Gieryn argues, but it is also the son of place. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: The Bentham Brothers and Russia Roger Bartlett, 2022-09-29 The jurist and philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, and his lesser-known brother, Samuel, equally talented but as a naval architect, engineer and inventor, had a long love affair with Russia. Jeremy hoped to assist Empress Catherine II with her legislative projects. Samuel went to St Petersburg to seek his fortune in 1780 and came back with the rank of Brigadier-General and the idea, famously publicised by Jeremy, of the Inspection-House or Panopticon. The Bentham Brothers and Russia chronicles the brothers’ later involvement with the Russian Empire, when Jeremy focused his legislative hopes on Catherine’s grandson Emperor Alexander I (ruled 1801-25) and Samuel found a unique opportunity in 1806 to build a Panopticon in St Petersburg – the only panoptical building ever built by the Benthams themselves. Setting the Benthams’ projects within an in-depth portrayal of the Russian context, Roger Bartlett illuminates an important facet of their later careers and offers insight into their world view and way of thought. He also contributes towards the history of legal codification in Russia, which reached a significant peak in 1830, and towards the demythologising of the Panopticon, made notorious by Michel Foucault: the St Petersburg building, still relatively unknown, is described here in detail on the basis of archival sources. The Benthams’ interactions with Russia under Alexander I constituted a remarkable episode in Anglo-Russian relations; this book fills a significant gap in their history. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Newsletter Study Group on Eighteenth-Century Russia, 2001 |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Nineteenth-Century Worlds Keith Hanley, Greg Kucich, 2013-10-31 This volume assembles a wide range of studies that together provide—through their interdisciplinary range, international scope, and historical emphases—an original scholarly exploration of one of the most important topics in recent nineteenth-century studies: the emergence in the nineteenth century of forms of global experience that have developed more recently into rapidly expanding processes of globalization and their attendant collisions of race, religion, ethnicity, population groups, natural environments, national will and power. Emphasizing such links between global networks past and present, the essays in this volume engage with the latest work in postcolonial, cosmopolitan, and globalization theory while speaking directly to the most pressing concerns of contemporary geopolitics. Each essay examines specific cultural and historical circumstances in the formation of nineteenth-century worlds from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including economics, political history, natural history, philosophy, the history of medicine and disease, religious studies, literary criticism, art history, and colonial studies. Detailed in their particular modes of analysis yet integrated into a collective conversation about the nineteenth century’s profound impact on our present worlds, these inquiries also explore the economic, political, and cultural determinants on nineteenth-century types of transnational experience as interweaving forces creating new material frameworks and conceptual models for comprehending major human categories—such as race, gender, subjectivity, and national identity—in global terms. As nineteenth-century global intersections differ in important ways from the shapes of globalization today, however, the essays in this volume generate new ways of understanding emergent patterns of worldwide experience in the age of imperialism and thereby stimulate fresh insights into the dynamics of global formations and conflicts today. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: The Rise of Female Kings in Europe, 1300-1800 William Monter, 2012-01-24 In this lively and pathbreaking book, William Monter sketches Europe's increasing acceptance of autonomous female rulers between the late Middle Ages and the French Revolution. Monter surveys the governmental records of Europe's thirty women monarchs—the famous (Mary Stuart, Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great) as well as the obscure (Charlotte of Cyprus, Isabel Clara Eugenia of the Netherlands)—describing how each of them achieved sovereign authority, wielded it, and (more often than men) abandoned it. Monter argues that Europe's female kings, who ruled by divine right, experienced no significant political opposition despite their gender. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: A Companion to Russian History Abbott Gleason, 2014-01-28 This companion comprises 28 essays by international scholars offering an analytical overview of the development of Russian history from the earliest Slavs through to the present day. Includes essays by both prominent and emerging scholars from Russia, Great Britain, the US, and Canada Analyzes the entire sweep of Russian history from debates over how to identify the earliest Slavs, through the Yeltsin Era, and future prospects for post-Soviet Russia Offers an extensive review of the medieval period, religion, culture, and the experiences of ordinary people Offers a balanced review of both traditional and cutting-edge topics, demonstrating the range and dynamism of the field |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Newsletter - Study Group on Eighteenth-Century Russia Study Group on Eighteenth-Century Russia, 2001 |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Paris Between Empires Philip Mansel, 2014-03-25 Paris between 1814 and 1852 was the capital of Europe, a city of power and pleasure, a magnet for people of all nationalities that exerted an influence far beyond the reaches of France. Paris was the stage where the great conflicts of the age, between nationalism and cosmopolitanism, revolution and royalism, socialism and capitalism, atheism and Catholicism, were fought out before the audience of Europe. As Prince Metternich said: When Paris sneezes, Europe catches cold. Not since imperial Rome has one city so dominated European life. Paris Between Empires tells the story of this golden age, from the entry of the allies into Paris on March 31, 1814, after the defeat of Napoleon I, to the proclamation of his nephew Louis-Napoleon, as Napoleon III in the Hôtel de Ville on December 2, 1852. During those years, Paris, the seat of a new parliamentary government, was a truly cosmopolitan capital, home to Rossini, Heine, and Princess Lieven, as well as Berlioz, Chateaubriand, and Madame Recamier. Its salons were crowded with artisans and aristocrats from across Europe, attracted by the freedom from the political, social, and sexual restrictions that they endured at home. This was a time, too, of political turbulence and dynastic intrigue, of violence on the streets, and women manipulating men and events from their salons. In describing it Philip Mansel draws on the unpublished letters and diaries of some of the city's leading figures and of the foreigners who flocked there, among them Lady Holland, two British ambassadors, Lords Stuart de Rothesay and Normanby, and Charles de Flahaut, lover of Napoleon's step-daughter Queen Hortense. This fascinating book shows that the European ideal was as alive in the nineteenth century as it is today. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams Charles King, 2011-02-28 Winner of a National Jewish Book Award Fascinating.…A humane and tragic survey of a great and tragic subject. —Jan Morris, Literary Review From Alexander Pushkin and Isaac Babel to Zionist renegade Vladimir Jabotinsky and filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, an astonishing cast of geniuses helped shape Odessa, a legendary haven of cosmopolitan freedom on the Black Sea. Drawing on a wealth of original sources and offering the first detailed account of the destruction of the city's Jewish community during the Second World War, Charles King's Odessa is both history and elegy—a vivid chronicle of a multicultural city and its remarkable resilience over the past two centuries. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: One Night in Winter Simon Sebag Montefiore, 2014-05-06 “The truly magnetic power” of this thriller is “the stirring of our deepest fears and their unexpected resolution—at this, Montefiore is the master” (Washington Post). Inspired by a true story, prize–winning historian and acclaimed novelist Simon Sebag Montefiore explores the consequences of forbidden love in this heartbreaking epic that unfolds in Stalin’s Moscow. As Soviet Russia celebrates the motherland’s glorious victory over the Nazis, shots ring out on the crowded streets. On a nearby bridge, a teenage boy and girl lie dead. But this is no ordinary tragedy, because these are no ordinary teenagers. As the son and daughter of high-ranking Soviet officials, they attend the most elite school in Moscow. Was it an accident, or murder? Is it a conspiracy against Stalin, or one of his own terrifying intrigues? On Stalin’s instructions, a ruthless investigation begins that becomes known as the Children’s Case. Youth across the city are arrested and forced to testify against their friends and their parents. As families are ripped apart, secrets come spilling out. Trapped at the center of this witch-hunt are two pairs of illicit lovers, who learn that matters of the heart exact a terrible price. By turns a darkly sophisticated political thriller, a rich historical saga, and a deeply human love story, Montefiore’s masterful novel powerfully portrays the terror and drama of Stalin’s Russia. “In a league of its own.” —Wall Street Journal “A darkly enjoyable read.” —The Guardian, London “Gripping.” —Steve Emmett, New York Journal of Books “A kind of Virgin Suicides for the Soviet set, speaking to much that’s dark in the human soul—but to what can redeem it, too.” —Kirkus Reviews |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: The Crimean War Orlando Figes, 2011-04-12 Please note that the maps available in the print edition do not appear in the ebook. From the great storyteller of modern Russian historians, (Financial Times) the definitive account of the forgotten war that shaped the modern age The Charge of the Light Brigade, Florence Nightingale—these are the enduring icons of the Crimean War. Less well-known is that this savage war (1853-1856) killed almost a million soldiers and countless civilians; that it enmeshed four great empires—the British, French, Turkish, and Russian—in a battle over religion as well as territory; that it fixed the fault lines between Russia and the West; that it set in motion the conflicts that would dominate the century to come. In this masterly history, Orlando Figes reconstructs the first full conflagration of modernity, a global industrialized struggle fought with unusual ferocity and incompetence. Drawing on untapped Russian and Ottoman as well as European sources, Figes vividly depicts the world at war, from the palaces of St. Petersburg to the holy sites of Jerusalem; from the young Tolstoy reporting in Sevastopol to Tsar Nicolas, haunted by dreams of religious salvation; from the ordinary soldiers and nurses on the battlefields to the women and children in towns under siege.. Original, magisterial, alive with voices of the time, The Crimean War is a historical tour de force whose depiction of ethnic cleansing and the West's relations with the Muslim world resonates with contemporary overtones. At once a rigorous, original study and a sweeping, panoramic narrative, The Crimean War is the definitive account of the war that mapped the terrain for today's world.. |
| prince of princes the life of potemkin: Imperial Legend Alexis S. Troubetzkoy, 2002-09-12 Alexander I, one of Russia’s greatest emperors, beloved of his subjects for his many liberalizing works and reforms domestically, and for his astounding—and unexpected—victory over the presumably invulnerable Napoleon Bonaparte, reigned from 1801 to late 1825. But despite his many glittering successes at home and abroad, his immense power and wealth, the tsar was throughout his life a troubled man. Caught up in the personal and political maelstrom between his domineering grandmother Catherine the Great and his highly neurotic and volatile father Paul I, Alexander came to the throne as a result of a coup mounted against his father in March 1801. Although not an active participant in the plot, and reassured that the plan was to depose and exile the unpopular Paul, not to harm him, Alexander was devastated when the takeover turned violent and his father was assassinated. That cloud under which he acceded to the throne never lifted, and throughout his reign he often confided to family and friends his desire to thrust off the burdens of state and retire to some quiet place to live out the rest of his life. By 1825, his popularity waning, the health of his wife becoming more fragile by the day, he decided to remove himself and a bare-bones court to Taganrog, a remote town near the Crimea. A few weeks after his arrival there, he suddenly fell ill and died on November 19, 1825. Or did he? Ever since that day, rumors have swarmed that the young and still-vigorous tsar—he was only forty-eight—had staged his death to expiate the sin that refused to leave him, the sin of patricide. The legend has it that his “reincarnation” took the form of a starets, the humble and holy men who wandered throughout nineteenth-century Russia doing good works. That starets, brilliant and uncommonly erudite, was one Feodor Kuzmich. So widespread and persistent was the belief that Tsar Alexander and Feodor Kuzmich were one and the same that the great Leo Tolstoy planned to write a book on the subject. Imperial Legend, with a deft touch and a fresh voice, “solves” one of the most intriguing royal mysteries of the past two centuries. |
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Prince Rogers Nelson (June 7, 1958 – April 21, 2016) was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor.
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Prince Rogers Nelson (better known as Prince) (June 7, 1958 – April 21, 2016) was an American singer, songwriter and dancer. He was born in Minneapolis …
Prince (musician) - Wikipedia
Prince Rogers Nelson (June 7, 1958 – April 21, 2016) was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor.
Prince - Songs, Death & Life - Biography
Apr 2, 2014 · American musician Prince achieved worldwide fame in the 1980s with '1999' and 'Purple Rain,' the latter album also serving as the soundtrack for the popular film of the same …
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Prince (born June 7, 1958, Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.—died April 21, 2016, Chanhassen, Minnesota) was an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, producer, dancer, and performer on …
Prince | Official Website
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