James Heinzen
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780300175257
- eISBN:
- 9780300224764
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300175257.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
Traditions of official corruption inherited from the Soviet and late Imperial eras have continued to touch Russian life since the collapse of the USSR. This study is the first archive-based, ...
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Traditions of official corruption inherited from the Soviet and late Imperial eras have continued to touch Russian life since the collapse of the USSR. This study is the first archive-based, historical study of bribery and corruption in the Soviet Union for this period. A study of the solicitation and offering of bribes forms the heart of this research. Bribery (vziatochnichestvo)—typically defined in law as gifts in cash or in kind intended to influence public officials to the benefit of the giver—represents the paradigmatic variety of corruption. This study takes a novel approach to the phenomenon of the bribe, examining it as an integral part of an unofficial yet essential series of relationships upon which much of Soviet society and state administration relied in order to function, as it gradually became part of the fabric of everyday life. The book examines three major, related themes. The book’s first theme, “The Landscape of Bribery,” concerns the nature and varieties of bribery, while painting a sociological portrait of the people involved. Whom did prosecutors accuse of such crimes? The second major topic addresses the regime’s attempts to understand the causes of bribery, and then to wipe it out through centrally directed anti-corruption “campaigns.” “The view from below,” which examines popular perceptions and understandings of bribery, constitutes the third dimension of the study. Focusing on bribery among police, court, and other law enforcement employees, this phase explores the imprecise and shifting line that separated “acceptable” from “unacceptable” behavior.Less
Traditions of official corruption inherited from the Soviet and late Imperial eras have continued to touch Russian life since the collapse of the USSR. This study is the first archive-based, historical study of bribery and corruption in the Soviet Union for this period. A study of the solicitation and offering of bribes forms the heart of this research. Bribery (vziatochnichestvo)—typically defined in law as gifts in cash or in kind intended to influence public officials to the benefit of the giver—represents the paradigmatic variety of corruption. This study takes a novel approach to the phenomenon of the bribe, examining it as an integral part of an unofficial yet essential series of relationships upon which much of Soviet society and state administration relied in order to function, as it gradually became part of the fabric of everyday life. The book examines three major, related themes. The book’s first theme, “The Landscape of Bribery,” concerns the nature and varieties of bribery, while painting a sociological portrait of the people involved. Whom did prosecutors accuse of such crimes? The second major topic addresses the regime’s attempts to understand the causes of bribery, and then to wipe it out through centrally directed anti-corruption “campaigns.” “The view from below,” which examines popular perceptions and understandings of bribery, constitutes the third dimension of the study. Focusing on bribery among police, court, and other law enforcement employees, this phase explores the imprecise and shifting line that separated “acceptable” from “unacceptable” behavior.
Agnès Nilüfer Kefeli
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801452314
- eISBN:
- 9780801454776
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801452314.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
This introductory chapter explores the transformative possibilities of reading Shakespeare for women, both collectively and individually, by combining work on women's clubs with recent work on the ...
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This introductory chapter explores the transformative possibilities of reading Shakespeare for women, both collectively and individually, by combining work on women's clubs with recent work on the role of reading for individual and collective agency. It focuses on the variety of ways Shakespeare was read by American club women in order to suggest some of the repercussions of their literate practices for individual women, for groups, and for their communities in the decades around the fin de siècle. Women readers in large cities and small towns across America helped spread the idea that Shakespeare was for everyone, not just cultural elites in metropolitan areas. The efforts of club women to improve their communities also established Shakespeare as a local foundation of American culture and as a marker for learning, self-improvement, civilization, and entertainment for a broad array of populations.Less
This introductory chapter explores the transformative possibilities of reading Shakespeare for women, both collectively and individually, by combining work on women's clubs with recent work on the role of reading for individual and collective agency. It focuses on the variety of ways Shakespeare was read by American club women in order to suggest some of the repercussions of their literate practices for individual women, for groups, and for their communities in the decades around the fin de siècle. Women readers in large cities and small towns across America helped spread the idea that Shakespeare was for everyone, not just cultural elites in metropolitan areas. The efforts of club women to improve their communities also established Shakespeare as a local foundation of American culture and as a marker for learning, self-improvement, civilization, and entertainment for a broad array of populations.
Christine E. Evans
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780300208481
- eISBN:
- 9780300208962
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300208481.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
This book—the first full-length study of Soviet Central Television to draw extensively on archival sources, interviews, and television recordings—challenges the idea that mass culture in the Soviet ...
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This book—the first full-length study of Soviet Central Television to draw extensively on archival sources, interviews, and television recordings—challenges the idea that mass culture in the Soviet Union during the Brezhnev era was dull and formulaic. The book follows the history of Central Television in the Soviet Union from the mid-1960s through the late 1970s and early 1980s. Tracing the emergence of play, conflict, and competition on Soviet news programs, serial films, and variety and game shows, the book shows that Central Television's most popular shows were experimental and creative, laying the groundwork for Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms and the post-Soviet media system. It shows that the highly televisual Putin era represents the culmination of a long Soviet—now Russian—“era of television” that began in the late 1950s.Less
This book—the first full-length study of Soviet Central Television to draw extensively on archival sources, interviews, and television recordings—challenges the idea that mass culture in the Soviet Union during the Brezhnev era was dull and formulaic. The book follows the history of Central Television in the Soviet Union from the mid-1960s through the late 1970s and early 1980s. Tracing the emergence of play, conflict, and competition on Soviet news programs, serial films, and variety and game shows, the book shows that Central Television's most popular shows were experimental and creative, laying the groundwork for Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms and the post-Soviet media system. It shows that the highly televisual Putin era represents the culmination of a long Soviet—now Russian—“era of television” that began in the late 1950s.
Michael Khodarkovsky
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801449727
- eISBN:
- 9780801462894
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801449727.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
Russia's attempt to consolidate its authority in the North Caucasus has exerted a terrible price on both sides since the mid-nineteenth century. This book tells a concise and compelling history of ...
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Russia's attempt to consolidate its authority in the North Caucasus has exerted a terrible price on both sides since the mid-nineteenth century. This book tells a concise and compelling history of the mountainous region between the Black and Caspian seas during the centuries of Russia's long conquest (1500–1850s). The history of the region unfolds against the background of one man's life story, Semën Atarshchikov (1807–1845). Torn between his Chechen identity and his duties as a lieutenant and translator in the Russian army, Atarshchikov defected, not once but twice, to join the mountaineers against the invading Russian troops. His was the experience more typical of Russia's empire-building in the borderlands than the better-known stories of the audacious kidnappers and valiant battles. It is a history of the North Caucasus as seen from both sides of the conflict, which continues to make this region Russia's most violent and vulnerable frontier.Less
Russia's attempt to consolidate its authority in the North Caucasus has exerted a terrible price on both sides since the mid-nineteenth century. This book tells a concise and compelling history of the mountainous region between the Black and Caspian seas during the centuries of Russia's long conquest (1500–1850s). The history of the region unfolds against the background of one man's life story, Semën Atarshchikov (1807–1845). Torn between his Chechen identity and his duties as a lieutenant and translator in the Russian army, Atarshchikov defected, not once but twice, to join the mountaineers against the invading Russian troops. His was the experience more typical of Russia's empire-building in the borderlands than the better-known stories of the audacious kidnappers and valiant battles. It is a history of the North Caucasus as seen from both sides of the conflict, which continues to make this region Russia's most violent and vulnerable frontier.
Barbara Alpern Engel
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801449512
- eISBN:
- 9780801460692
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801449512.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
Russia's Great Reforms of 1861 were sweeping social and legal changes that aimed to modernize the country. In the following decades, rapid industrialization and urbanization profoundly transformed ...
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Russia's Great Reforms of 1861 were sweeping social and legal changes that aimed to modernize the country. In the following decades, rapid industrialization and urbanization profoundly transformed Russia's social, economic, and cultural landscape. This book explores the personal, cultural, and political consequences of these dramatic changes, focusing on their impact on intimate life and expectations and the resulting challenges to the traditional, patriarchal family order, the cornerstone of Russia's authoritarian political and religious regime. The widely perceived “marriage crisis” had far-reaching legal, institutional, and political ramifications. The book draws on archival documentation to explore changing notions of marital relations, domesticity, childrearing, and intimate life among ordinary men and women in imperial Russia. It illustrates the human consequences of the marriage crisis and reveals that the new and more individualistic values of the capitalist marketplace and commercial culture challenged traditional definitions of gender roles and encouraged the self-creation of new social identities. The book captures the intimate experiences of women and men of the lower and middling classes in their own words, documenting instances not only of physical, mental, and emotional abuse but also of resistance and independence. These changes challenged Russia's rigid political order, forcing a range of state agents, up to and including those who spoke directly in the name of the tsar, to rethink traditional understandings of gender norms and family law.Less
Russia's Great Reforms of 1861 were sweeping social and legal changes that aimed to modernize the country. In the following decades, rapid industrialization and urbanization profoundly transformed Russia's social, economic, and cultural landscape. This book explores the personal, cultural, and political consequences of these dramatic changes, focusing on their impact on intimate life and expectations and the resulting challenges to the traditional, patriarchal family order, the cornerstone of Russia's authoritarian political and religious regime. The widely perceived “marriage crisis” had far-reaching legal, institutional, and political ramifications. The book draws on archival documentation to explore changing notions of marital relations, domesticity, childrearing, and intimate life among ordinary men and women in imperial Russia. It illustrates the human consequences of the marriage crisis and reveals that the new and more individualistic values of the capitalist marketplace and commercial culture challenged traditional definitions of gender roles and encouraged the self-creation of new social identities. The book captures the intimate experiences of women and men of the lower and middling classes in their own words, documenting instances not only of physical, mental, and emotional abuse but also of resistance and independence. These changes challenged Russia's rigid political order, forcing a range of state agents, up to and including those who spoke directly in the name of the tsar, to rethink traditional understandings of gender norms and family law.
Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780300197990
- eISBN:
- 9780300220667
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300197990.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
A classic of modern Persian literature, Charand-o Parand (Stuff and Nonsense) is a work familiar to every literate Iranian. Originally a series of newspaper columns written by scholar and satirist ...
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A classic of modern Persian literature, Charand-o Parand (Stuff and Nonsense) is a work familiar to every literate Iranian. Originally a series of newspaper columns written by scholar and satirist Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda, the pieces poke fun at mullahs, the shah, and the old religious and political order during the Constitutional Revolution in Iran (1906–11). The chapters were the Daily Show of their era. The columns were heatedly debated in the Iranian parliament, and the newspaper was shut down on several occasions for its criticism of the religious establishment. Translated by two distinguished scholars of Persian language and history, this book makes Dehkhoda's entertaining political observations available to English readers for the first time.Less
A classic of modern Persian literature, Charand-o Parand (Stuff and Nonsense) is a work familiar to every literate Iranian. Originally a series of newspaper columns written by scholar and satirist Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda, the pieces poke fun at mullahs, the shah, and the old religious and political order during the Constitutional Revolution in Iran (1906–11). The chapters were the Daily Show of their era. The columns were heatedly debated in the Iranian parliament, and the newspaper was shut down on several occasions for its criticism of the religious establishment. Translated by two distinguished scholars of Persian language and history, this book makes Dehkhoda's entertaining political observations available to English readers for the first time.
Faith Hillis
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801452192
- eISBN:
- 9780801469268
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801452192.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
This book recovers an all-but-forgotten chapter in the history of the Tsarist Empire and its southwestern borderlands. The right bank, or west side, of the Dnieper River—which today is located at the ...
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This book recovers an all-but-forgotten chapter in the history of the Tsarist Empire and its southwestern borderlands. The right bank, or west side, of the Dnieper River—which today is located at the heart of the independent state of Ukraine—was one of the Russian Empire's last territorial acquisitions, annexed only in the late eighteenth century. Yet over the course of the nineteenth century, this region generated a powerful Russian nationalist movement. The southwest's Russian nationalists sought to empower the ordinary Orthodox residents of the borderlands and to diminish the influence of their non-Orthodox minorities. Right-bank Ukraine would seem unlikely terrain to nourish a Russian nationalist imagination. It was among the empire's most diverse corners, with few of its residents speaking Russian as their native language or identifying with the culture of the Great Russian interior. Nevertheless, as the book shows, by the late nineteenth century, Russian nationalists had established a strong foothold in the southwest's culture and educated society; in the first decade of the twentieth, they secured a leading role in local mass politics. By 1910, right-bank activists expanded their sights beyond the borderlands, hoping to spread their nationalizing agenda across the empire. Exploring why and how the empire's southwestern borderlands produced its most organized and politically successful Russian nationalist movement, the book puts forth a new interpretation of state–society relations under tsarism as she reconstructs the role that a peripheral region played in attempting to define the essential characteristics of the Russian people and their state.Less
This book recovers an all-but-forgotten chapter in the history of the Tsarist Empire and its southwestern borderlands. The right bank, or west side, of the Dnieper River—which today is located at the heart of the independent state of Ukraine—was one of the Russian Empire's last territorial acquisitions, annexed only in the late eighteenth century. Yet over the course of the nineteenth century, this region generated a powerful Russian nationalist movement. The southwest's Russian nationalists sought to empower the ordinary Orthodox residents of the borderlands and to diminish the influence of their non-Orthodox minorities. Right-bank Ukraine would seem unlikely terrain to nourish a Russian nationalist imagination. It was among the empire's most diverse corners, with few of its residents speaking Russian as their native language or identifying with the culture of the Great Russian interior. Nevertheless, as the book shows, by the late nineteenth century, Russian nationalists had established a strong foothold in the southwest's culture and educated society; in the first decade of the twentieth, they secured a leading role in local mass politics. By 1910, right-bank activists expanded their sights beyond the borderlands, hoping to spread their nationalizing agenda across the empire. Exploring why and how the empire's southwestern borderlands produced its most organized and politically successful Russian nationalist movement, the book puts forth a new interpretation of state–society relations under tsarism as she reconstructs the role that a peripheral region played in attempting to define the essential characteristics of the Russian people and their state.
Pauline Fairclough
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780300217193
- eISBN:
- 9780300219432
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300217193.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
This book explores the evolving role of music in shaping the cultural identity of the Soviet Union in a revelatory work that counters certain hitherto accepted views of an unbending, unchanging state ...
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This book explores the evolving role of music in shaping the cultural identity of the Soviet Union in a revelatory work that counters certain hitherto accepted views of an unbending, unchanging state policy of repression, censorship, and dissonance that existed in all areas of Soviet artistic endeavour. Newly opened archives from the Leninist and Stalinist eras have shed new light on Soviet concert life, demonstrating how the music of the past was used to help mold and deliver cultural policy, how ‘undesirable’ repertoire was weeded out during the 1920s, and how Russian and non-Russian composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Pëtr Chaykovskiy, Richard Wagner, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Sergey Rachmaninov were ‘canonised’ during different, distinct periods in Stalinist culture. The book's study of the ever-shifting Soviet musical–political landscape identifies 1937 as the start of a cultural Cold War, rather than occurring post-World War II, as is often maintained, while documenting the efforts of musicians and bureaucrats during this period to keep musical channels open between Russia and the West.Less
This book explores the evolving role of music in shaping the cultural identity of the Soviet Union in a revelatory work that counters certain hitherto accepted views of an unbending, unchanging state policy of repression, censorship, and dissonance that existed in all areas of Soviet artistic endeavour. Newly opened archives from the Leninist and Stalinist eras have shed new light on Soviet concert life, demonstrating how the music of the past was used to help mold and deliver cultural policy, how ‘undesirable’ repertoire was weeded out during the 1920s, and how Russian and non-Russian composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Pëtr Chaykovskiy, Richard Wagner, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Sergey Rachmaninov were ‘canonised’ during different, distinct periods in Stalinist culture. The book's study of the ever-shifting Soviet musical–political landscape identifies 1937 as the start of a cultural Cold War, rather than occurring post-World War II, as is often maintained, while documenting the efforts of musicians and bureaucrats during this period to keep musical channels open between Russia and the West.
Diane P. Koenker
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801451539
- eISBN:
- 9780801467738
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801451539.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
The Bolsheviks took power in Russia in 1917 armed with an ideology centered on the power of the worker. From the beginning, however, Soviet leaders also realized the need for rest and leisure within ...
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The Bolsheviks took power in Russia in 1917 armed with an ideology centered on the power of the worker. From the beginning, however, Soviet leaders also realized the need for rest and leisure within the new proletarian society and over subsequent decades struggled to reconcile the concept of leisure with the doctrine of communism, addressing such fundamental concerns as what the purpose of leisure should be in a workers’ state and how socialist vacations should differ from those enjoyed by the capitalist bourgeoisie. This book offers a sweeping and insightful history of Soviet vacationing and tourism from the Revolution through perestroika. It shows that from the outset, the regime insisted that the value of tourism and vacation time was strictly utilitarian. Both the sedentary vacation and tourism were part of the regime’s effort to transform the poor and often illiterate citizenry into new Soviet men and women. The book emphasizes a distinctive blend of purpose and pleasure in Soviet vacation policy and practice and explores a fundamental paradox: a state committed to the idea of the collective found itself promoting a vacation policy that increasingly encouraged individual autonomy and selfhood. The history of Soviet tourism and vacations tells a story of freely chosen mobility that was enabled and subsidized by the state. While the book focuses primarily on Soviet domestic vacation travel, it also notes the decisive impact of travel abroad (mostly to other socialist countries) which shaped new worldviews, created new consumer desires, and transformed Soviet vacation practices.Less
The Bolsheviks took power in Russia in 1917 armed with an ideology centered on the power of the worker. From the beginning, however, Soviet leaders also realized the need for rest and leisure within the new proletarian society and over subsequent decades struggled to reconcile the concept of leisure with the doctrine of communism, addressing such fundamental concerns as what the purpose of leisure should be in a workers’ state and how socialist vacations should differ from those enjoyed by the capitalist bourgeoisie. This book offers a sweeping and insightful history of Soviet vacationing and tourism from the Revolution through perestroika. It shows that from the outset, the regime insisted that the value of tourism and vacation time was strictly utilitarian. Both the sedentary vacation and tourism were part of the regime’s effort to transform the poor and often illiterate citizenry into new Soviet men and women. The book emphasizes a distinctive blend of purpose and pleasure in Soviet vacation policy and practice and explores a fundamental paradox: a state committed to the idea of the collective found itself promoting a vacation policy that increasingly encouraged individual autonomy and selfhood. The history of Soviet tourism and vacations tells a story of freely chosen mobility that was enabled and subsidized by the state. While the book focuses primarily on Soviet domestic vacation travel, it also notes the decisive impact of travel abroad (mostly to other socialist countries) which shaped new worldviews, created new consumer desires, and transformed Soviet vacation practices.
David L. Hoffmann
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801446290
- eISBN:
- 9780801462832
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801446290.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
Under Joseph Stalin's leadership, the Soviet government carried out a massive number of deportations, incarcerations, and executions. Paradoxically, at the very moment that Soviet authorities were ...
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Under Joseph Stalin's leadership, the Soviet government carried out a massive number of deportations, incarcerations, and executions. Paradoxically, at the very moment that Soviet authorities were killing thousands of individuals, they were also engaged in an enormous pronatalist campaign to boost the population. Even as the number of repressions grew exponentially, Communist Party leaders enacted sweeping social welfare and public health measures to safeguard people's well-being. Extensive state surveillance of the population went hand in hand with literacy campaigns, political education, and efforts to instill in people an appreciation of high culture. This book examines the Party leadership's pursuit of these seemingly contradictory policies in order to grasp fully the character of the Stalinist regime. To analyze Soviet social policies, the book places them in an international comparative context. It explains Soviet technologies of social intervention as one particular constellation of modern state practices. These practices developed in conjunction with the ambitions of nineteenth-century European reformers to refashion society, and they subsequently prompted welfare programs, public health initiatives, and reproductive regulations in countries around the world. The mobilizational demands of World War I impelled political leaders to expand even further their efforts at population management, via economic controls, surveillance, propaganda, and state violence. Born at this moment of total war, the Soviet system institutionalized these wartime methods as permanent features of governance. Party leaders, whose dictatorship included no checks on state power, in turn attached interventionist practices to their ideological goal of building socialism.Less
Under Joseph Stalin's leadership, the Soviet government carried out a massive number of deportations, incarcerations, and executions. Paradoxically, at the very moment that Soviet authorities were killing thousands of individuals, they were also engaged in an enormous pronatalist campaign to boost the population. Even as the number of repressions grew exponentially, Communist Party leaders enacted sweeping social welfare and public health measures to safeguard people's well-being. Extensive state surveillance of the population went hand in hand with literacy campaigns, political education, and efforts to instill in people an appreciation of high culture. This book examines the Party leadership's pursuit of these seemingly contradictory policies in order to grasp fully the character of the Stalinist regime. To analyze Soviet social policies, the book places them in an international comparative context. It explains Soviet technologies of social intervention as one particular constellation of modern state practices. These practices developed in conjunction with the ambitions of nineteenth-century European reformers to refashion society, and they subsequently prompted welfare programs, public health initiatives, and reproductive regulations in countries around the world. The mobilizational demands of World War I impelled political leaders to expand even further their efforts at population management, via economic controls, surveillance, propaganda, and state violence. Born at this moment of total war, the Soviet system institutionalized these wartime methods as permanent features of governance. Party leaders, whose dictatorship included no checks on state power, in turn attached interventionist practices to their ideological goal of building socialism.
