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the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: The Russian Revolution Sheila Fitzpatrick, 2017-09-29 The Russian Revolution had a decisive impact on the history of the twentieth century. In the years following the collapse of the Soviet regime and the opening of its archives, it has become possible to step back and see the full picture. Starting with an overview of the roots of the revolution, Fitzpatrick takes the story from 1917, through Stalin's 'revolution from above', to the great purges of the 1930s. She tells a gripping story of a Marxist revolution that was intended to transform the world, visited enormous suffering on the Russian people, and, like the French Revolution before it, ended up by devouring its own children. This updated edition contains a fully revised bibliography and updated introduction to address the centenary, what does it all mean in retrospect. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Everyday Stalinism Sheila Fitzpatrick, 1999-03-04 Focusing on urban areas in the 1930s, this college professor illuminates the ways that Soviet city-dwellers coped with this world, examining such diverse activities as shopping, landing a job, and other acts. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: The Russian Revolution: A Very Short Introduction S. A. Smith, 2002-02-21 This introduction to the Russian Revolution provides a narrative of the main developments between 1917 and 1936. It sees the process as the result of a backward society which sought modernisation and ended in political tyranny. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Tear Off the Masks! Sheila Fitzpatrick, 2005-07-25 When revolutions happen, they change the rules of everyday life--both the codified rules concerning the social and legal classifications of citizens and the unwritten rules about how individuals present themselves to others. This occurred in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, which laid the foundations of the Soviet state, and again in 1991, when that state collapsed. Tear Off the Masks! is about the remaking of identities in these times of upheaval. Sheila Fitzpatrick here brings together in a single volume years of distinguished work on how individuals literally constructed their autobiographies, defended them under challenge, attempted to edit the file-selves created by bureaucratic identity documentation, and denounced others for masking their true social identities. Marxist class-identity labels--worker, peasant, intelligentsia, bourgeois--were of crucial importance to the Soviet state in the 1920s and 1930s, but it turned out that the determination of a person's class was much more complicated than anyone expected. This in turn left considerable scope for individual creativity and manipulation. Outright imposters, both criminal and political, also make their appearance in this book. The final chapter describes how, after decades of struggle to construct good Soviet socialist personae, Russians had to struggle to make themselves fit for the new, post-Soviet world in the 1990s--by de-Sovietizing themselves. Engaging in style and replete with colorful detail and characters drawn from a wealth of sources, Tear Off the Masks! offers unique insight into the elusive forms of self-presentation, masking, and unmasking that made up Soviet citizenship and continue to resonate in the post-Soviet world. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: The House of Government Yuri Slezkine, 2017 Written in the tradition of Tolstoy's War and Peace, Grossman's Life and Fate, and Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, Yuri Slezkine's ... narrative tells the true story of the residents of an enormous Moscow apartment building where top Communist officials and their families lived before they were destroyed in Stalin's purges. [An] ... account of the personal and public lives of Bolshevik true believers, the book begins with their conversion to Communism and ends with their children's loss of faith and the fall of the Soviet Union--Provided by publisher. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: The Russian Revolution Sean McMeekin, 2017-05-30 A “powerful revisionist history” (Times UK) illuminating the tensions and transformations of the Russian Revolution In The Russian Revolution, acclaimed historian Sean McMeekin traces the events which ended Romanov rule, ushered the Bolsheviks into power, and introduced Communism to the world. Between 1917 and 1922, Russia underwent a complete and irreversible transformation. Taking advantage of the collapse of the Tsarist regime in the middle of World War I, the Bolsheviks staged a hostile takeover of the Russian Imperial Army, promoting mutinies and mass desertions of men in order to fulfill Lenin's program of turning the imperialist war into civil war. By the time the Bolsheviks had snuffed out the last resistance five years later, over 20 million people had died, and the Russian economy had collapsed so completely that Communism had to be temporarily abandoned. Still, Bolshevik rule was secure, owing to the new regime's monopoly on force, enabled by illicit arms deals signed with capitalist neighbors such as Germany and Sweden who sought to benefit-politically and economically-from the revolutionary chaos in Russia. Drawing on scores of previously untapped files from Russian archives and a range of other repositories in Europe, Turkey, and the United States, McMeekin delivers exciting, groundbreaking research about this turbulent era. The first comprehensive history of these momentous events in two decades, The Russian Revolution combines cutting-edge scholarship and a fast-paced narrative to shed new light on one of the most significant turning points of the twentieth century. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Stalinism Sheila Fitzpatrick, 2000 First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Vladimir Lenin and the Russian Revolution Elizabeth Schmermund, Judith Edwards, 2015-12-15 Ending a two-hundred-year tsarist regime and bringing communism to the masses, Vladimir Lenin changed not only Russia, but also the worlds political climate. Using source documents and photos, this text discusses the major events of the Russian Revolution and its consequences in a way that makes the concepts clear, concise, and interesting to students. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: A Companion to the Russian Revolution Daniel Orlovsky, 2020-08-21 A compendium of original essays and contemporary viewpoints on the 1917 Revolution The Russian revolution of 1917 reverberated throughout an empire that covered one-sixth of the world. It altered the geo-political landscape of not only Eurasia, but of the entire globe. The impact of this immense event is still felt in the present day. The historiography of the last two decades has challenged conceptions of the 1917 revolution as a monolithic entity— the causes and meanings of revolution are many, as is reflected in contemporary scholarship on the subject. A Companion to the Russian Revolution offers more than thirty original essays, written by a team of respected scholars and historians of 20th century Russian history. Presenting a wide range of contemporary perspectives, the Companion discusses topics including the dynamics of violence in war and revolution, Russian political parties, the transformation of the Orthodox church, Bolshevism, Liberalism, and more. Although primarily focused on 1917 itself, and the singular Revolutionary experience in that year, this book also explores time-periods such as the First Russian Revolution, early Soviet government, the Civil War period, and even into the 1920’s. Presents a wide range of original essays that discuss Brings together in-depth coverage of political history, party history, cultural history, and new social approaches Explores the long-range causes, influence on early Soviet culture, and global after-life of the Russian Revolution Offers broadly-conceived, contemporary views of the revolution largely based on the author’s original research Links Russian revolutions to Russian Civil Wars as concepts A Companion to the Russian Revolution is an important addition to modern scholarship on the subject, and a valuable resource for those interested in Russian, Late Imperial, or Soviet history as well as anyone interested in Revolution as a global phenomenon. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Access to History: Bolshevik and Stalinist Russia 1917-64 for AQA Fifth Edition Michael Lynch, 2015-03-27 Exam Board: AQA, Edexcel, OCR & WJEC Level: A-level Subject: History First Teaching: September 2015 First Exam: June 2016 Give your students the best chance of success with this tried and tested series, combining in-depth analysis, engaging narrative and accessibility. Access to History is the most popular, trusted and wide-ranging series for A-level History students. This title: - Supports the content and assessment requirements of the 2015 A-level History specifications - Contains authoritative and engaging content - Includes thought-provoking key debates that examine the opposing views and approaches of historians - Provides exam-style questions and guidance for each relevant specification to help students understand how to apply what they have learnt This title is suitable for a variety of courses including: - AQA: Revolution and Dictatorship: Russia and the Soviet Union, 1917-1953 |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Red Britain Matthew Taunton, 2019-04-04 Red Britain sets out a provocative rethinking of the cultural politics of mid-century Britain by drawing attention to the extent, diversity, and longevity of the cultural effects of the Russian Revolution. Drawing on new archival research and historical scholarship, this book explores the conceptual, discursive, and formal reverberations of the Bolshevik Revolution in British literature and culture. It provides new insight into canonical writers including Doris Lessing, George Orwell, Dorothy Richardson, H.G Wells, and Raymond Williams, as well bringing to attention a cast of less-studied writers, intellectuals, journalists, and visitors to the Soviet Union. Red Britain shows that the cultural resonances of the Russian Revolution are more far-reaching and various than has previously been acknowledged. Each of the five chapters takes as its subject one particular problem or debate, and investigates the ways in which it was politicised as a result of the Russian Revolution and the subsequent development of the Soviet state. The chapters focus on the idea of the future; numbers and arithmetic; law and justice; debates around agriculture and landowning; and finally orality, literacy, and religion. In all of these spheres, Red Britain shows how the medievalist, romantic, oral, pastoral, anarchic, and ethical emphases of English socialism clashed with, and were sometimes overwritten by, futurist, utilitarian, literate, urban, statist, and economistic ideas associated with the Bolshevik Revolution. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Mastering Twentieth-Century Russian History Norman Lowe, 2020-08-29 Mastering Twentieth Century Russian History presents a vivid and informative account of the events which befell the Russian people during the course of the twentieth century. - Explores the major developments of the last century, from the revolution of 1905, to the First and Second World Wars, to the Cold War and the rise and fall of the USSR - Examines key figures and their actions - from Nicholas II, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev and Yeltsin to Putin - Deals with events right up to 2000, enabling the Soviet experiment to be placed in context a decade after its collapse - Incorporates the latest research from British, American and Russian historians, examining key controversies and debates - Includes primary source material, maps, photographs, posters and a full chronology of events This text is the ideal companion for anyone seeking a clear yet detailed introduction to the fascinating events of twentieth century Russian history. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Russia in the Era of NEP Sheila Fitzpatrick, Alexander Rabinowitch, Richard Stites, 1991-09-22 . . . a comprehensive look at an enigmatic era . . . —Choice This provocative collection of essays certainly takes some of the polish off Soviet socialism's golden age. —Journal of Interdisciplinary History The authors and editors of this splendid volume deserve great praise. Their work moves the field of Soviet history several large steps forward. —Slavic Review Lenin's New Economic Policy of the 1920s, although a relatively free and open potential alternative to Soviet communism, was also a time of extreme tension, as Russian society and culture were rocked by the forces of resistance and change. These essays examine the social and cultural dimensions of NEP in urban and rural Russia in the years before Stalin and rapid industrialization. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Russia in Revolution S. A. Smith, 2017-01-19 The Russian Revolution of 1917 transformed the face of the Russian empire, politically, economically, socially, and culturally, and also profoundly affected the course of world history for the rest of the twentieth century. Historian S. A. Smith presents a panoramic account of the history of the Russian empire, from the last years of the nineteenth century, through the First World War and the revolutions of 1917 and the establishment of the Bolshevik regime, to the end of the 1920s, when Stalin simultaneously unleashed violent collectivization of agriculture and crash industrialization upon Russian society. Drawing on recent archivally-based scholarship, Russia in Revolution pays particular attention to the varying impact of the Revolution on the various groups that made up society: peasants, workers, non-Russian nationalities, the army, women and the family, young people, and the Church. In doing so, it provides a fresh way into the big, perennial questions about the Revolution and its consequences: why did the attempt by the tsarist government to implement political reform after the 1905 Revolution fail; why did the First World War bring about the collapse of the tsarist system; why did the attempt to create a democratic system after the February Revolution of 1917 not get off the ground; why did the Bolsheviks succeed in seizing and holding on to power; why did they come out victorious from a punishing civil war; why did the New Economic Policy they introduced in 1921 fail; and why did Stalin come out on top in the power struggle inside the Bolshevik party after Lenin's death in 1924. A final chapter then reflects on the larger significance of 1917 for the history of the twentieth century -- and, for all its terrible flaws, what the promise of the Revolution might mean for us today. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: The Shortest History of the Soviet Union Sheila Fitzpatrick, 2022-09-06 In 1917, Bolshevik revolutionaries came to power in the war-torn Russian Empire in a way that defied all predictions, including their own. Scarcely a lifespan later, in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed as accidentally as it arose. The decades between witnessed drama on an epic scale—the chaos and hope of revolution, famines and purges, hard-won victory in history’s most destructive war, and worldwide geopolitical conflict, all entwined around the dream of building a better society. This book is a lively and authoritative distillation of this complex history, told with vivid details, a grand sweep, and wry wit. The acclaimed historian Sheila Fitzpatrick chronicles the Soviet Age—its rise, reign, and unexpected fall, as well as its afterlife in today’s Russia. She underscores the many ironies of the Soviet experience: An ideology that claimed to offer humanity the reins of history wrangled with contingency. An avowedly internationalist and anti-imperialist state birthed an array of nationalisms. And a vision of transcending economic and social inequality and injustice gave rise to a country that was, in its way, surprisingly normal. Moving seamlessly from Lenin to Stalin to Gorbachev to Putin, The Shortest History of the Soviet Union provides an indispensable guide to one of the twentieth century’s great powers and the enduring fascination it still exerts. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: The End of Tsarist Russia D. C. B. Lieven, 2015 Originally published in Great Britain under the title Towards the flame: empire, war and the end of tsarist Russia. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Access to History: Revolution and dictatorship: Russia, 1917–1953 for AQA Michael Lynch, 2020-04-27 Exam board: AQA Level: AS/A-level Subject: History First teaching: September 2015 First exams: Summer 2016 (AS); Summer 2017 (A-level) Put your trust in the textbook series that has given thousands of A-level History students deeper knowledge and better grades for over 30 years. Updated to meet the demands of today's A-level specifications, this new generation of Access to History titles includes accurate exam guidance based on examiners' reports, free online activity worksheets and contextual information that underpins students' understanding of the period. - Develop strong historical knowledge: In-depth analysis of each topic is both authoritative and accessible - Build historical skills and understanding: Downloadable activity worksheets can be used independently by students or edited by teachers for classwork and homework - Learn, remember and connect important events and people: An introduction to the period, summary diagrams, timelines and links to additional online resources support lessons, revision and coursework - Achieve exam success: Practical advice matched to the requirements of your A-level specification incorporates the lessons learnt from previous exams - Engage with sources, interpretations and the latest historical research: Students will evaluate a rich collection of visual and written materials, plus key debates that examine the views of different historians |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Power and Possession in the Russian Revolution Anne O'Donnell, 2024-01-16 Most histories of economic life explore how markets are built. This book looks instead at how they have been dismantled. Soon after the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, they began the process of transforming the economy, and indeed all of society, in accordance with communist ideology. Asserting their authority and creating a Soviet republic involved confiscating property and demolishing existing systems of exchanging goods. At a national level, industries like transport and banking were brought under state control. At the local level, everything from apartments to personal possessions were subject to seizure. In analyzing the confiscation of property and its redistribution, historian Anne O'Donnell focuses on the lived experience of revolution, drawing upon archival sources such as popular petitions, neighborhood meeting transcripts, audits of state agencies, and testimony in court cases. Telling the stories of both people who were dispossessed and the bureaucrats who inventoried and managed the property that now belonged to the state, O'Donnell reveals the making of an illiberal state, arguing that Soviet statecraft was built upon imperfect attempts to install new forms of valuation consistent with communist principles through chaotic property seizures. The work also offers a novel look at the everyday life of revolutionary Russia-- |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Stalin's Peasants Sheila Fitzpatrick, 1994 Drawing on Soviet archives, especially the letters of complaint with which peasants deluged the Soviet authorities in the 1930s, this work analyzes peasants' strategies of resistance and survival in the new world of the collectivized village |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Everything was Forever, Until it was No More Alexei Yurchak, 2006 Drawing on diaries, correspondence, interviews and memoirs, and applying historical, anthropological and linguistic analyses, this text explores late Soviet period (1960s-80s) through the eyes of the last Soviet generation. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: On Stalin's Team Sheila Fitzpatrick, 2015-09-15 The first chronicle of Stalin's inner political and social circle—from a leading Soviet historian Stalin was the unchallenged dictator of the Soviet Union for so long that most historians have dismissed the officials surrounding him as mere yes-men and political window dressing. On Stalin's Team overturns this view, revealing that behind Stalin was a group of loyal men who formed a remarkably effective team with him from the late 1920s until his death in 1953. Drawing on extensive original research, Sheila Fitzpatrick provides the first in-depth account of this inner circle and their families. She vividly describes how these dedicated comrades-in-arms not only worked closely with Stalin, but also constituted his social circle. Stalin's team included the wily security chief Beria; Andreev, who traveled to provincial purges while listening to Beethoven on a portable gramophone; and Khrushchev, who finally disbanded the team four years after Stalin's death. Taking readers from the cataclysms of the Great Purges and World War II to the paranoia of Stalin's final years, On Stalin's Team paints an entirely new picture of Stalin within his milieu—one that transforms our understanding of how the Soviet Union was ruled during much of its existence. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Language and Metaphors of the Russian Revolution Lonny Harrison, 2020-12-16 This panoramic history of the Russian intelligentsia provides a uniquely cross-disciplinary look at the language of the Russian Revolution from its origins through fruition in early Soviet society. Harrison examines storms, floods, and harvest metaphors in selected works of fiction and analyzes the use of language as a weapon of class war. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union 1921-1934 Sheila Fitzpatrick, 2002-05-16 A history of Soviet education policy 1921-34, this is a sequel to the author's highly praised Commissariat of Enlightenment. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Historically Inevitable? Tony Brenton, 2016-06-23 Marx held that the progression of society from capitalism to communism was 'historically inevitable'. In Russia in 1917, it seemed that Marx's theory was being born out in reality. But was the Russian Revolution really inevitable? This collection of fourteen contributions from the world's leading Russian scholars attempts to answer the question by looking back at the key turning points of the revolution. From the Russo-Japanese conflict of 1904-5 through to the appropriation of church property in 1922, and focusing especially on the incredible chain of events in 1917 leading to the October Revolution itself, Historically Inevitable? is a forensic account of Russia's road to revolution. Each contribution gives not only a fast-paced, incisive narrative account of an individual aspect of Revolution but also, for the first time, an intriguing counter-factual analysis of what might have gone differently. Featuring Richard Pipes on the Kornilov affair, Orlando Figes on the October Revolution, Dominic Lieven on foreign intervention and Martin Sixsmith on the attempted assassination of Lenin in 1918, Historically Inevitable? explains how each of these moments, more through blind luck than any historical inevitability, led to the creation of the world's first communist state. Tony Brenton's afterword to the volume draws parallels between the Revolution and the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and places the events of 1917 in the context of more recent events in Russia and the Crimea. Featuring contributions from: Donald Crawford - Sean McMeekin - Dominic Lieven - Orlando Figes - Richard Sakwa - Douglas Smith - Martin Sixsmith - Simon Dixon - Boris Kolonitsky - Richard Pipes - Edvard Radzinsky - Catriona Kelly - Erik Landis - Evan Mawdsley |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Revolutionary Russia Robert Weinberg, Laurie Bernstein, 2011 This book provides a visually-stimulating survey of revolutionary Russia, from the collapse of the autocracy in 1917 to the consolidation of the Stalinist system in the 1930s. The focus of the narrative is on how the effort to build communism in Russia affected the lives of ordinary people.The authors have collected far flung documents, photographs, posters, and objects and strung them into a narrative with introductions to each chapter and document, sidebars, and detailed photo captions. While the main text tantalizes readers with the great vision, conflict, hopes, and horrors ofthis much-mythologized part of modern history, the backmatter provides resources for further exploration. Topics include the prelude to revolution, the Bolshevik rise to power, the fate of the royal family, peasant resistance to Bolshevik policies, Stalin's revolution from above, the GreatTerror, and a picture essay on women's liberation. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: The Cultural Front Sheila Fitzpatrick, 2018-08-06 When Lenin asked, Who will beat whom? (Kto kogo?), he had no plan to wage revolutionary class war in culture. Many young Communists thought differently, however. Seeking in the name of the proletariat to wrest cultural hegemony from the intelligentsia, they turned culture into a battlefield in the 1920s. But was this, as Communist militants thought, a genuine class struggle between proletarian Communists and the bourgeois intelligentsia? Or was it, as the intelligentsia believed, an onslaught by the ruling Communist Party on the eternal principles of cultural autonomy and intellectual freedom? In this volume, one of the foremost historians of the Soviet Union chronicles the fierce battle on the cultural front from the October Revolution through the Stalinist 1930s. Sheila Fitzpatrick brings together ten of her essays—two previously unpublished and all revised for inclusion here—which illuminate key arenas of the prolonged struggle over cultural values and institutional control. Individual essays deal with such major issues as the Cultural Revolution, the formation of the new Stalinist elite, and socialist realism, as well as recounting colorful episodes including the uproar over Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, arguments over sexual mores, and the new consumerism of the 1930s. Closely examining the cultural elites and orthodoxies that developed under Stalin, Fitzpatrick offers a provocative reinterpretation of the struggle's final outcome in which the intelligentsia, despite its loss of autonomy and the debasement of its culture, emerged as a partial victor. The Cultural Front is essential reading for anyone interested in the formative history of the Soviet Union and the dynamic relationship between culture and politics. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: White Russians, Red Peril Sheila Fitzpatrick, 2021-03-30 Over 20,000 ethnic Russians migrated to Australia after World War II – yet we know very little about their experiences. Some came via China, others from refugee camps in Europe. Many preferred to keep a low profile in Australia, and some attempted to ‘pass’ as Polish, West Ukrainian or Yugoslavian. They had good reason to do so: to the Soviet Union, Australia’s resettling of Russians amounted to the theft of its citizens, and undercover agents were deployed to persuade them to repatriate. Australia regarded the newcomers with wary suspicion, even as it sought to build its population by opening its door to more immigrants. Making extensive use of newly discovered Russian-language archives and drawing on a lifetime’s study of Soviet history and politics, award-winning author Sheila Fitzpatrick examines the early years of a diverse and disunited Russian-Australian community and how Australian and Soviet intelligence agencies attempted to track and influence them. While anti-Communist ‘White’ Russians dreamed a war of liberation would overthrow the Soviet regime, a dissident minority admired its achievements and thought of returning home. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Stalin's Apologist S. J. Taylor, 2020 Short, unattractive, hobbling about Stalin's Moscow on a wooden leg, Walter Duranty was an unlikely candidate for the world's most famous foreign correspondent. Yet for almost twenty years his articles filled the front page of The New York Times with gripping coverage of the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. A witty, engaging, impish character with a flamboyant life-style, he was a Pulitzer Prize winner, the individual most credited with helping to win the U.S. recognition for the Soviet regime, and the reporter who had predicted the success of the Bolshevik state when all others claimed it was doomed. But, as S.J. Taylor reveals in this provocative biography, Walter Duranty played a key role in perpetrating some of the greatest lies history has ever known. Stalin's Apologist deftly unfolds the story of this accomplished but sordid and tragic life. Drawing on sources ranging from newspapers to private letters and journals to interviews with such figures as William Shirer and W. Averell Harriman, Taylor's vivid narrative unveils a figure driven by ambition, whose early success reporting on Bolshevik Russia--he was foremost in predicting Stalin's rise to power--established his international reputation, fed his overconfident contempt for his colleagues, and indeed led him to identify with the Soviet dictator. Thus during the great Ukrainian famine of the early 1930s, which Stalin engineered to crush millions of peasants who resisted his policies, Duranty dismissed other correspondents' reports of mass starvation and, though secretly aware of the full scale of the horror, effectively reinforced the official cover-up of one of history's greatest man-made disasters. Later, he took the rigged show trials of Stalin's Great Purges at face value, blithely accepting the guilt of the victims. He believed himself the leading expert on the Soviet Union, and his faith in his own insight drew him into a downward spiral of distortions and untruths, typified by his memorable excuse for Stalin's crimes, You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. Taylor brilliantly captures the full range of Duranty's astonishing life, from his participation in the Satanic orgies of Aleister (the Beast) Crowley, to his dramatic front-line reporting during World War I, to his epic womanizing and heavy drug and alcohol abuse. It is the bitter, ironic story of a man who had the rare opportunity to bring to light the suffering of the millions of Stalin's victims, but remained a prisoner of vanity, self-indulgence, and success. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: The Politics of Culture in Soviet Azerbaijan, 1920-40 Audrey Altstadt, 2016-06-23 The early Soviet Union’s nationalities policy involved the formation of many national republics, within which nation building and modernization were undertaken for the benefit of backward peoples. This book, in considering how such policies were implemented in Azerbaijan, argues that the Soviet policies were in fact a form of imperialism, with nation building and modernization imposed firmly along Soviet lines. The book demonstrates that in Azerbaijan, and more widely among western Turkic peoples, the Volga and Crimean Tatars, there were before the onset of Soviet rule, well developed, forward looking, secular, national movements, which were not at all backward and were different from the Soviets. The book shows how in the period 1920 to 1940 the two different visions competed with each other, with eventually the pre-Soviet vision of Azerbaijani culture losing out, and the Soviet version dominating in a new Soviet Azerbaijani culture. The book examines the details of this Sovietization of culture: in language policy and the change of the alphabet, in education, higher education and in literature. The book concludes by exploring how pre-Soviet Azerbaijani culture survived to a degree underground, and how it was partially rehabilitated after the death of Stalin and more fully in the late Soviet period. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: The Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution Lara Douds, James Harris, Peter Whitewood, 2020-01-23 How did a regime that promised utopian-style freedom end up delivering terror and tyranny? For some, the Bolsheviks were totalitarian and the descent was inevitable; for others, Stalin was responsible; for others still, this period in Russian history was a microcosm of the Cold War. The Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution reasons that these arguments are too simplistic. Rather, the journey from Bolshevik liberation to totalitarianism was riddled with unsuccessful experiments, compromises, confusion, panic, self-interest and over-optimism. As this book reveals, the emergence (and persistence) of the Bolshevik dictatorship was, in fact, the complicated product of a failed democratic transition. Drawing on long-ignored archival sources and original research, this fascinating volume brings together an international team of leading scholars to reconsider one of the most important and controversial questions of 20th-century history: how to explain the rise of the repressive Stalinist dictatorship. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Why Communism Failed Jasper Becker, 2022-11-01 Communism was destroyed not from without, but from within-by a persistent failure to make its economic theories work in practice. But what exactly did go wrong with its central planning? Until the last moment, top western economists claimed that Communism was superior to western models. Even now, centralized Marxist planning retains its admirers, especially among the young. With the benefit of new archival research, we can finally grasp how falsified and manipulated statistics blindfolded Communist governments and confused western leaders, leading to staggering errors of judgement. Both sides believed that East Germany had a stronger economy than West Germany; that North Korea would overtake South Korea; that Mao's China was a paradise for its starving peasants. Those who warned that a dearth of reliable economic data would condemn central planning to irrational misallocation of investment and labor were ignored or belittled. But, ultimately, they were vindicated. Jasper Becker answers the big question: what accounts for the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union, China and everywhere else? And why don't present debates acknowledge that failure? This unconventional history of Communism and the Cold War explains why the same old clash of theories is continuing to shape the world today. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: The Generation of Power Anne D. Rassweiler, 1988-11-03 Dneprostroi, a dam and power plant that was one of the most monumental construction projects of the Bolsheviks' First Five-Year Plan, was a milestone in American-Soviet cooperation and the fruit of the labor of more than 60,000 workers. Little known in the West, Dneprostroi was famous in the USSR--as the largest earth dam in Europe in the 1930s, it represented the first of the giant projects so favored by Stalin. Anne Rassweiler's informative history of this project reveals new aspects of the struggle between Trotsky and Stalin, the debate on the use of foreign advisers, the importance of foreign technology, and the devastating effects of collectivization on the industrial projects of the First Five-Year Plan. Her study also provides insight into the entry of women into the industrial work force and the interaction between party leaders, party membership, and enterprise officials as they sought to realize one of the most ambitious projects in Soviet history. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Our Daily Bread Kate Transchel, Elena Osokina, 2015-03-04 Drawing on newly available archival materials including official documents, reports, and personal accounts, this remarkable study presents a detailed picture of the living standards of various social groups in prewar Soviet Russia, and the role of state-controlled distribution of food and goods as a tool of the Stalinist dictatorship. The study offers a new perspective not only on the period of collectivization, industrialization, and terror but also on the regime's most rudimentary method of controlling human behavior and reshaping the social order. In her conclusion the author analyzes the long-term impacts of the Stalinist dictatorship of distribution, from bureaucratization to rural depopulation to the emergence of a distinctive type of black-market economy. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: The Great War in Russian Memory Karen Petrone, 2011-07-14 Karen Petrone shatters the notion that World War I was a forgotten war in the Soviet Union. Although never officially commemorated, the Great War was the subject of a lively discourse about religion, heroism, violence, and patriotism during the interwar period. Using memoirs, literature, films, military histories, and archival materials, Petrone reconstructs Soviet ideas regarding the motivations for fighting, the justification for killing, the nature of the enemy, and the qualities of a hero. She reveals how some of these ideas undermined Soviet notions of military honor and patriotism while others reinforced them. As the political culture changed and war with Germany loomed during the Stalinist 1930s, internationalist voices were silenced and a nationalist view of Russian military heroism and patriotism prevailed. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Inside Lenin's Government Lara Douds, 2018-02-22 Lara Douds examines the practical functioning and internal political culture of the early Soviet government cabinet, the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom), under Lenin. This study elucidates the process by which Sovnarkom's governmental decision-making authority was transferred to Communist Party bodies in the early years of Soviet power and traces the day-to-day operation of the supreme state organ. The book argues that Sovnarkom was the principal executive body of the early Soviet government until the Politburo gradually usurped this role during the Civil War. Using a range of archival source material, Lara Douds re-interprets early Soviet political history as a period where fledging 'Soviet' rather than simply 'Communist Party' power was attempted, but ultimately failed when pressures of Civil War and socio-economic dislocation encouraged the centralising and authoritarian rather than democratic strand of Bolshevism to predominate. Inside Lenin's Government explores the basic mechanics of governance by looking at the frequency of meetings, types of business discussed, processes of decision-making and the administrative backdrop, as well as the key personalities of Sovnarkom. It then considers the reasons behind the shift in executive power from state to party in this period, which resulted in an abnormal situation where, as Leon Trotsky commented in 1923, 'leadership by the party gives way to administration by its organs'. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Communities of the Converted Catherine Wanner, 2011-05-02 After decades of official atheism, a religious renaissance swept through much of the former Soviet Union beginning in the late 1980s. The Calvinist-like austerity and fundamentalist ethos that had evolved among sequestered and frequently persecuted Soviet evangelicals gave way to a charismatic embrace of ecstatic experience, replete with a belief in faith healing. Catherine Wanner's historically informed ethnography, the first book on evangelism in the former Soviet Union, shows how once-marginal Ukrainian evangelical communities are now thriving and growing in social and political prominence. Many Soviet evangelicals relocated to the United States after the fall of the Soviet Union, expanding the spectrum of evangelicalism in the United States and altering religious life in Ukraine. Migration has created new transnational evangelical communities that are now asserting a new public role for religion in the resolution of numerous social problems. Hundreds of American evangelical missionaries have engaged in church planting in Ukraine, which is today home to some of the most active and robust evangelical communities in all of Europe. Thanks to massive assistance from the West, Ukraine has become a hub for clerical and missionary training in Eurasia. Many Ukrainians travel as missionaries to Russia and throughout the former Soviet Union. In revealing the phenomenal transformation of religious life in a land once thought to be militantly godless, Wanner shows how formerly socialist countries experience evangelical revival. Communities of the Converted engages issues of migration, morality, secularization, and global evangelism, while highlighting how they have been shaped by socialism. This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of the Pennsylvania State University. Learn more at the TOME website, available at: openmonographs.org. The open access edition is available at Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Mandelstam's Worlds Andrew Kahn, 2020-07-28 Rightly appreciated as a 'poet's poet', Mandelstam has been habitually read as a repository of learned allusion. Yet as Seamus Heaney observed, his work is 'as firmly rooted in both an historical and cultural context as real as Joyce's Ulysses or Eliot's Waste Land.' Great lyric poets offer a cross-section of their times, and Mandelstam's poems represent the worlds of politics, history, art, and ideas about intimacy and creativity. The interconnections between these domains and Mandelstam's writings are the subject of this book, showing how engaged the poet was with the history, social movements, political ideology, and aesthetics of his time. The importance of the book also lies in showing how literature, no less than history and philosophy, enables readers to confront the huge upheaval in outlook can demand of us; thinking with poetry is to think through the moral compromise and tension felt by individuals in public and private contexts, and to create out of art experience in itself. The book further innovates by integrating a new, comprehensive discussion of the Voronezh Notebooks, one of the supreme achievements of Russian poetry. This book considers the full political dimension of works that explore the role of the poet as a figure positioned within society but outside the state, caught between an ideal of creative independence and a devotion to the original, ameliorative ideals of the revolution. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Showcasing the Great Experiment Michael David-Fox, 2011-12-22 During the 1920s and 1930s thousands of European and American writers, professionals, scientists, artists, and intellectuals made a pilgrimage to experience the Soviet experiment for themselves. Showcasing the Great Experiment explores the reception of these intellectuals and fellow-travelers and their cross-cultural and trans-ideological encounters in order to analyze Soviet attitudes towards the West. Many of the twentieth century's greatest writers and thinkers, including Theodore Dreiser, André Gide, Paul Robeson, and George Bernard Shaw, notoriously defended Stalin's USSR despite the unprecedented violence of its prewar decade. While many visitors were profoundly affected by their Soviet tours, so too was the Soviet system. The early experiences of building showcases and teaching outsiders to perceive the future-in-the-making constitute a neglected international part of the emergence of Stalinism at home. Michael David-Fox contends that each side critically examined the other, negotiating feelings of inferiority and superiority, admiration and enmity, emulation and rejection. By the time of the Great Purges, these tensions gave way to the dramatic triumph of xenophobia and isolationism; whereas in the twenties the new regime assumed it had much to learn from Western modernity, by the Stalinist thirties the Soviet order was declared superior in all respects. Drawing on the declassified archival records of the agencies charged with crafting the international image of communism, David-Fox shows how Soviet efforts to sell the Bolshevik experiment abroad through cultural diplomacy shaped and were, in turn, shaped by the ongoing project of defining the Soviet Union from within. These interwar Soviet methods of mobilizing the intelligentsia for the international ideological contest, he argues, directly paved the way for the cultural Cold War. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Russia in World History Barbara Alpern Engel, Janet Martin, 2015-05-01 Over the course of twelve centuries, Russia's peoples overcame the constant challenges posed by geography, climate, availability of natural resources, and devastating foreign invasions to become the world's second largest land empire and the largest in modern history. This energetic introduction to Russia's history follows the development of local tribes into a federation of principalities centered at Kiev, the shift of power to Moscow and the centralization of the state, and Russia's pursuit of imperial ambitions. It examines the circumstances that led to the foundation of the world's first communist society in 1917, and traces the global consequences of Russia's extensive confrontation with the United States. Russia's arduous and costly climb to great power gains a personal dimension through the stories of individual women and men-pivotal figures as well as common people-illuminating the human consequences of sweeping historical change. Peoples of many ethnicities became part of the Russian empire and suffered or benefitted from its leaders' efforts to meld a multiethnic polity into a coherent political entity. This book examines how Russia served as a conduit for people, ideas, and commodities - owing between east and west, north and south and how it came to play an increasingly important role on a global scale. |
the russian revolution sheila fitzpatrick chapter summaries: Revolution, Counterrevolution and Assassination Through World War II Robert C. Cottrell, 2024-12-13 Since the French Revolution, the quest for revolutionary transformation and the fear of such change became deeply ingrained in the global landscape through World War II. Modern revolutions inspired counterrevolutions that strove to turn back time to an allegedly purer, finer, more moral period than the upheaval and anarchy linked to a revolutionary epoch. Revolutions often occurred through violence, and entailed a disruption of existing social, economic and political orders. Counterrevolutions were equally guilty, and frequently more so, of horrific bloodletting in the name of restoring law and order, often by shredding legal and ethical norms. Drawing from a vast array of sources both primary and secondary, this first of a two-volume set presents a highly detailed narrative of an unholy trinity: revolution, counterrevolution and assassination. Combining intellectual, political, social and cultural history, this book highlights international protagonists, movements and ideas supporting the radical or reactionary upheaval of society, and the means that have been used to do so. |
Russia - Wikipedia
Russia, [b] or the Russian Federation, [c] is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the largest country in the world, and extends across eleven time zones, sharing land borders …
Russia | History, Flag, Population, Map, President, & Facts ...
3 days ago · Russia, country that stretches over a vast expanse of eastern Europe and northern Asia. Once the preeminent republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.; …
Russian language and alphabet - Omniglot
Russian is an Eastern Slavic language spoken mainly in Russia and many other countries by about 260 million people, 150 million of whom are native speakers. Russian is an official …
Russia - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Russia (Russian: Россия, romanized:Rossiya, [rɐˈsʲijə]), or the Russian Federation, [b][16] is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It has land from the Baltic Sea to the Bering …
Russia’s Summer Offensive in Ukraine Gains Ground With New ...
3 days ago · Russian forces have been trying to capture Chasiv Yar for two years, since the nearby city of Bakhmut fell in the spring of 2023. So long as Chasiv Yar remains contested, …
The Russian Language - Русский язык - In Russian and English
“The Russian language is great and mighty” – wrote Lev Tolstoy (Leo Tolstoy). That is the first thing that comes into the head of a Russian when they talk about their native language. …
Top 10 Russian Classes Near Me in Elgin, IA - AmazingTalker
Find the 10 best local private Russian courses in Elgin, IA now! Learn Russian at home, nearby or via skype online. Starting from $9/hr. More than 8427 reviews & 95% satisfaction rates. For …
Russia - Wikipedia
Russia, [b] or the Russian Federation, [c] is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the largest country in the world, and extends across eleven time zones, sharing land borders …
Russia | History, Flag, Population, Map, President, & Facts ...
3 days ago · Russia, country that stretches over a vast expanse of eastern Europe and northern Asia. Once the preeminent republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.; …
Russian language and alphabet - Omniglot
Russian is an Eastern Slavic language spoken mainly in Russia and many other countries by about 260 million people, 150 million of whom are native speakers. Russian is an official …
Russia - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Russia (Russian: Россия, romanized:Rossiya, [rɐˈsʲijə]), or the Russian Federation, [b][16] is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It has land from the Baltic Sea to the Bering …
Russia’s Summer Offensive in Ukraine Gains Ground With New ...
3 days ago · Russian forces have been trying to capture Chasiv Yar for two years, since the nearby city of Bakhmut fell in the spring of 2023. So long as Chasiv Yar remains contested, …
The Russian Language - Русский язык - In Russian and English
“The Russian language is great and mighty” – wrote Lev Tolstoy (Leo Tolstoy). That is the first thing that comes into the head of a Russian when they talk about their native language. …
Top 10 Russian Classes Near Me in Elgin, IA - AmazingTalker
Find the 10 best local private Russian courses in Elgin, IA now! Learn Russian at home, nearby or via skype online. Starting from $9/hr. More than 8427 reviews & 95% satisfaction rates. For …