• Title Page; Copyright; Contents; Introduction: The Culture of the Stalin Era in Historical Perspective; Chapter One: The Russian Avant-Garde: The Leap over Progress; White Humanity; Red Agitation; Chapter Two: The Stalinist Art of Living; Judgment Day for World Culture; The Typology of the Nonexistent; The Earthly Incarnation of the Demiurge; Chapter Three: Postutopian Art: From Myth to Mythology; The Lost Horizon; The Avant-Garde Artist as the â#x80;#x9C;Little Manâ#x80;#x9D;; Stalinâ#x80;#x99;s Best Pupils; Poet and Militiaman; A Cruel Talent; Chronicler of the Kremlin

From the ruins of communism, Boris Groys emerges to provoke our interest in the aesthetic goals pursued with such catastrophic consequences by its founders. Interpreting totalitarian art and literature in the context of cultural history, this brilliant essay likens totalitarian aims to the modernists' goal of producing world transformative art. In this new edition, Groys, revisits the debate that the book has stimulated since its first publication.
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• A city to be transformed
• Imagining a "cultured" Tashkent
• War and evacuation
• Central Asian lives at war
• The postwar Soviet city, 1945-1953
• Central Asian Tashkent and the postwar Soviet state
• Redesigning Tashkent after Stalin
• The Tashkent model
• Epilogue.

Paul Stronski tells the fascinating story of Tashkent, an ethnically diverse, primarily Muslim city that became the prototype for the Soviet-era reimagining of urban centers in Central Asia. Based on extensive research in Russian and Uzbek archives, Stronski shows us how Soviet officials, planners, and architects strived to integrate local ethnic traditions and socialist ideology into a newly constructed urban space and propaganda showcase. The Soviets planned to transform Tashkent from a "feudal city" of the tsarist era into a "flourishing garden, " replete with fountains, a lakeside resort, modern roadways, schools, hospitals, apartment buildings, and of course, factories. The city was intended to be a shining example to the world of the successful assimilation of a distinctly non-Russian city and its citizens through the catalyst of socialism. As Stronski reveals, the physical building of this Soviet city was not an end in itself, but rather a means to change the people and their society. Stronski analyzes how the local population of Tashkent reacted to, resisted, and eventually acquiesced to the city's socialist transformation. He records their experiences of the Great Terror, World War II, Stalin's death, and the developments of the Krushchev and Brezhnev eras up until the earthquake of 1966, which leveled large parts of the city. Stronski finds that the Soviets established a legitimacy that transformed Tashkent and its people into one of the more stalwart supporters of the regime through years of political and cultural changes and finally during the upheavals of glasnost.
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• INTRODUCTION--
• PART 1: PHENOMENAL KNOWLEDGE--
• 1. WHAT ROBOMARY KNOWS, DANIEL DENNET, TUFTS UNIVERSITY--
• 2. SO THIS IS WHAT IT'S LIKE: A DEFENSE OF THE ABILITY HYPOTHESIS, LAURENCE NEMIROW, DAVIS GRAHAM & STUBBS INCOME TAX, BENEFITS & ESTATE GROUP--
• 3. THE KNOWLEDGE ARGUMENT, DIAPHANOUSNESS, REPRESENTATIONALISM, FRANK JACKSON, AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, BRITISH ACADEMY, AUSTRALIAN ACADEMY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES IN AUSTRALIA, AND FAND INSTITUT INTERNATIONAL DE PHILOSOPHIE--
• 4. DOES REPRESENTATIONALISM UNDERMINE THE KNOWLEDGE ARGUMENT?, TORIN ALTER, THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA--
• 5. WHAT IS THIS THING YOU CALL COLOR: CAN A TOTALLY COLOR-BLIND PERSON KNOW ABOUT COLOR?, KNUT NORDBY, FORMERLY UNIVERSITY OF OSLO AND TELNOR COMMUNICATIONS, RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT--
• PART 2: PHENOMENAL CONCEPTS--
• 6. WHAT IS A PHENOMENAL CONCEPT?, JANET LEVIN, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA--
• 7. PHENOMENAL AND PERCEPTUAL CONEPTS, DAVID PAPINEAU, KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY--
• 8. PHENOMENAL CONCEPTS AND THE MATERIALIST CONSTRAINT, JOSEPH LEVINE, THE UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AT AMHERST--
• 9. PHENOMENAL CONCEPTS AND THE EXPLANATORY GAP, DAVID CHALMERS, AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY--
• 10. DIRECT REFERENCE AND DANCING QUALIA, JOHN HAWTHORNE, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY--
• 11. PROPERTY DUALISM, PHENOMENAL CONCEPTS, AND THE SEMANTIC PREMISE, STEPHEN WHITE, TUFTS UNIVERSITY--
• 12. MAX BLACK'S OBJECTION TO MIND-BRAIN IDENTITY, NED BLOCK, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY--
• 13. GRASPING PHENOMENAL PROPERTIES, MARTINE NIDA-RUMELIN, UNIVERSITY OF FRIBOURG.
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• PREFACE TO THE SECOND PAPERBACK EDITION-- NOTE ON THE TEXT-- LIST OF PLATES-- LIST OF MAPS-- INTRODUCTION--
• 1. Historys cruel tricks--
• 2. Reviving the dream--
• 3. The drama of reform--
• 4. Waiting for the end of the world--
• 5. Survival and cannibalism in the rust belt--
• 6. Democracy without liberalism?--
• 7. Idealism and treason-- EPILOGUE-- NOTES-- FURTHER READING-- INDEX.
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Featuring extensive revisions to the text as well as a new introduction and epilogue-bringing the book completely up to date on the tumultuous politics of the previous decade and the long-term implications of the Soviet collapse-this compact, original, and engaging book offers the definitive account of one of the great historical events of the last fifty years. Combining historical and geopolitical analysis with an absorbing narrative, Kotkin draws upon extensive research, including memoirs by dozens of insiders and senior figures, to illuminate the factors that led to the demise of Communism and the USSR. The new edition puts the collapse in the context of the global economic and political changes from the 1970s to the present day. Kotkin creates a compelling profile of post Soviet Russia and he reminds us, with chilling immediacy, of what could not have been predicted-that the world's largest police state, with several million troops, a doomsday arsenal, and an appalling record of violence, would liquidate itself with barely a whimper. Throughout the book, Kotkin also paints vivid portraits of key personalities. Using recently released archive materials, for example, he offers a fascinating picture of Gorbachev, describing this virtuoso tactician and resolutely committed reformer as "flabbergasted by the fact that his socialist renewal was leading to the system's liquidation"-and more or less going along with it. At once authoritative and provocative, Armageddon Averted illuminates the collapse of the Soviet Union, revealing how "principled restraint and scheming self interest brought a deadly system to meek dissolution." Acclaim for the First Edition: "The clearest picture we have to date of the post-Soviet landscape." --The New Yorker "A triumph of the art of contemporary history. In fewer than 200 pagesKotkin elucidates the implosion of the Soviet empire-the most important and startling series of international events of the past fifty years-and clearly spells out why, thanks almost entirely to the 'principal restraint' of the Soviet leadership, that collapse didn't result in a cataclysmic war, as all experts had long forecasted." -The Atlantic Monthly "Concise and persuasive The mystery, for Kotkin, is not so much why the Soviet Union collapsed as why it did so with so little collateral damage." --The New York Review of Books.
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• Acknowledgments ix
• Chapter 1: Late Socialism An Eternal State 1
• Chapter 2: Hegemony of Form Stalin's Uncanny Paradigm Shift 36
• Chapter 3: Ideology Inside Out Ethics and Poetics 77
• Chapter 4: Living "Vnye" Deterritorialized Milieus 126
• Chapter 5: Imaginary West The Elsewhere of Late Socialism 158
• Chapter 6: Tr ue Colors of Communism King Crimson, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd 207
• Chapter 7: Dead Irony Necroaesthetics, "Stiob, " and the Anekdot 238 Conclusion 282 Bibliography 299 Index 319.
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Soviet socialism was based on paradoxes that were revealed by the peculiar experience of its collapse. To the people who lived in that system the collapse seemed both completely unexpected and completely unsurprising. At the moment of collapse it suddenly became obvious that Soviet life had always seemed simultaneously eternal and stagnating, vigorous and ailing, bleak and full of promise. Although these characteristics may appear mutually exclusive, in fact they were mutually constitutive. This book explores the paradoxes of Soviet life, during the period of "late socialism" (1960s-1980s) through the eyes of the last Soviet generation. Focusing on the major transformation of the 1950s at the level of discourse, ideology, language, and ritual, Alexei Yurchak traces the emergence of multiple unanticipated meanings, communities, relations, ideals, and pursuits that this transformation subsequently enabled. His historical, anthropological, and linguistic analysis draws on rich ethnographic material from Late Socialism and the post-Soviet period. The model of Soviet socialism that emerges provides an alternative to binary accounts that describe that system as a dichotomy of official culture and unofficial culture, the state and the people, public self and private self, truth and lie - and ignore the crucial fact that, for many Soviet citizens, the fundamental values, ideals, and realities of socialism were genuinely important, although they routinely transgressed and reinterpreted the norms and rules of the socialist state.
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"Revolution on My Mind" is a stunning revelation of the inner world of Stalin's Russia. We see into the minds and hearts of Soviet citizens who recorded their lives during an extraordinary period of revolutionary fervour and state terror. Writing a diary, like other creative expression, seems nearly impossible amid the fear and distrust of totalitarian rule; but as Jochen Hellbeck shows, diary-keeping was widespread, as individuals struggled to adjust to Stalin's regime. Rather than protect themselves against totalitarianism, many men and women bent their will to its demands, by striving to merge their individual identities with the collective and by battling vestiges of the old self within. We see how Stalin's subjects, from artists to intellectuals and from students to housewives, absorbed directives while endeavouring to fulfil the mandate of the Soviet revolution - re-creation of the self as a builder of the socialist society. Thanks to a newly discovered trove of diaries, we are brought face to face with individual life stories - gripping and unforgettably poignant. The diarists' efforts defy our liberal imaginations and our ideals of autonomy and private fulfilment. These Soviet citizens dreamed differently. They coveted a morally and aesthetically superior form of life, and were eager to inscribe themselves into the unfolding revolution. "Revolution on My Mind" is a brilliant exploration of the forging of the revolutionary self, a study without precedent that speaks to the evolution of the individual in mass movements of our own time.
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• Introduction
• Part One. Empire, Nation, and the Scientific State
• 1. Toward a Revolutionary Alliance
• 2. The National Idea versus Economic Expediency
• Part Two. Cultural Technologies of Rule and the Nature of Soviet Power
• 3. The 1926 Census and the Conceptual Conquest of Lands and Peoples
• 4. Border-Making and the Formation of Soviet National Identities
• 5. Transforming "The Peoples of the USSR": Ethnographic Exhibits and the Evolutionary Timeline
• Part Three. The Nazi Threat and the Acceleration of the Bolshevik Revolution
• 6. State-Sponsored Evolutionism and the Struggle against German Biological Determinism
• 7. Ethnographic Knowledge and Terror
• Epilogue
• Appendixes Bibliography Index.
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When the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, they set themselves the task of building socialism in the vast landscape of the former Russian Empire, a territory populated by hundreds of different peoples belonging to a multitude of linguistic, religious, and ethnic groups. Before 1917, the Bolsheviks had called for the national self-determination of all peoples and had condemned all forms of colonization as exploitative. After attaining power, however, they began to express concern that it would not be possible for Soviet Russia to survive without the cotton of Turkestan and the oil of the Caucasus. In an effort to reconcile their anti-imperialist position with their desire to hold on to as much territory as possible, the Bolsheviks integrated the national idea into the administrative-territorial structure of the new Soviet state. In Empire of Nations, Francine Hirsch examines the ways in which former imperial ethnographers and local elites provided the Bolsheviks with ethnographic knowledge that shaped the very formation of the new Soviet Union. The ethnographers-who drew inspiration from the Western European colonial context-produced all-union censuses, assisted government commissions charged with delimiting the USSR's internal borders, led expeditions to study "the human being as a productive force, " and created ethnographic exhibits about the "Peoples of the USSR." In the 1930s, they would lead the Soviet campaign against Nazi race theories . Hirsch illuminates the pervasive tension between the colonial-economic and ethnographic definitions of Soviet territory; this tension informed Soviet social, economic, and administrative structures. A major contribution to the history of Russia and the Soviet Union, Empire of Nations also offers new insights into the connection between ethnography and empire.
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• 1. From Georgia to Russia
• 2. Revolutions and Civil War
• 3. Struggle for Power
• 4. `Revolution from Above'
• 5. Famine and Terror
• 6. War
• 7. Gotterdammerung.
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This profile looks at how Stalin, despite being regarded as intellectually inferior by his rivals, managed to rise to power and rule the largest country in the world, achievieving divine-like status as a dictator. Through recently uncovered research material and Stalin's archives in Moscow, Kuromiya analyzes how and why Stalin was a rare, even unique, politician who literally lived by politics alone. He analyses how Stalin understood psychology campaigns well and how he used this understanding in his political reign and terror. Kuromiya provides a convincing, concise and up-to-date analysis of Stalin's political life.
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• List of Illustrations ix List of Tables xi Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: Making Sense of War 7 PART I: DELINEATING THE BODY POLITIC 41 One Myth and Power: The Making of a Postwar Elite 43 Two "Living Up to the Calling of a Communist": Purification of the Rank and File 82 PART II: DELINEATING THE BODY SOCIOETHNIC 127 Three Excising Evil 129 Four Memory of Excision, Excisionary Memory 191 PART III: THE MAKING OF A POSTWAR SOVIET NATION 237 Five Integral Nationalism in the Trial of War 239 Six Peasants to Soviets, Peasants to Ukrainians 298 Afterword: A Soviet World without Soviet Power, a Myth of War without War 364 Bibliography 387 Index 411.
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In "Making Sense of War" Amir Weiner reconceptualizes the entire historical experience of the Soviet Union from a new perspective, that of World War II. Breaking with the conventional interpretation that views World War II as a post-revolutionary addendum, Weiner situates this event at the crux of the development of the Soviet - not just the Stalinist - system. Through a richley detailed look at Soviet society as a whole, and at one Ukranian region in particular, the author shows how World War II came to define the ways in which members of the political elite as well as ordinary citizens viewed the world and acted upon their beliefs and ideologies.
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• Ch. 1. Environmental Activism and Social Identity
• Ch. 2. Archipelago of Freedom
• Ch. 3. The Road to "Liquidation": Conservation in the Postwar Years
• Ch. 4. Zapovedniki in Peril, 1948-1950
• Ch. 5. Liquidation: The Second Phase, 1950
• Ch. 6. The Deluge, 1951
• Ch. 7. In the Throes of Crisis: VOOP in Stalin's Last Years
• Ch. 8. Death and Purgatory
• Ch. 9. VOOP after Stalin: Survival and Decay
• Ch. 10. Resurrection
• Ch. 11. A Time to Build
• Ch. 12. A Time to Meet
• Ch. 13. More Trouble in Paradise: Crises of the Zapovedniki in the Khrushchev Era
• Ch. 14. Student Movements: Catalysts for a New Activism
• Ch. 15. Three Men in a Boat: VOOP in the Early 1960s
• Ch. 16. Storm over Baikal
• Ch. 17. Science Doesn't Stand Still
• Ch. 18. Environmental Struggles in the Era of Stagnation
• Ch. 19. Environmental Activism under Gorbachev.

While researching Russia's historical efforts to protect nature, the author unearthed a trail of documents that raised fundamental questions about the Soviet political system. These documents attested to the survival of a critical-minded, scientist-led movement through the Stalin years and beyond. Using information from the documents, it appeared that within scientific societies alternative visions for land use, resource exploitation, habitat protection and development were sustained. In contrast to known Soviet practices, these scientific societies prided themselves on their traditions of free elections, foreign contacts and a pre-revolutionary heritage. The object of the book is to explain the intricacies of environmental activism under Stalin and his successors, portraying activists not as "do-or-die" resisters to the system, nor as inoffensive do-gooders. They were individuals who carved out independent social and professional identities within a system that prescribed official models of behaviour, ethics, norms and identity for all.
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This study is the first of its kind: a street-level inside account of what Stalinism meant to the masses of ordinary people who lived it. Stephen Kotkin was the first American in 45 years to be allowed into Magnitogorsk, a city built in response to Stalin's decision to transform the predominantly agricultural nation into a 'country of metal'. With unique access to previously untapped archives and interviews, Kotkin forges a vivid and compelling account of the impact of industrialization on a single urban community. Kotkin argues that Stalinism offered itself as an opportunity for enlightenment. The utopia it proffered, socialism, would be a new civilization based on the repudiation of capitalism. The extent to which the citizenry participated in this scheme and the relationship of the state's ambitions to the dreams of ordinary people form the substance of this fascinating story. Kotkin tells it deftly, with a remarkable understanding of the social and political system, as well as a keen instinct for the details of everyday life. Kotkin depicts a whole range of life: from the blast furnace workers who labored in the enormous iron and steel plant, to the families who struggled with the shortage of housing and services. Thematically organized and closely focused, "Magnetic Mountain" signals the beginning of a new stage in the writing of Soviet social history.
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• I: The origins
• Why Socialism?
• Any why in Russia first?
• II: The experiment
• The road to October: 1917
• A regime is born: war communism, 1918-1921
• The road not take: NEP, 1921-1928
• And they built socialism: 1929-1935
• Purge and consolidation: 1935-1939
• III: The empire
• The fortunes of war: 1939-1953
• Reform communism I: Khrushchev's Moscow spring, 1953-1964
• And the bill came due: Brezhnev and Nomenklatura communism, 1964-1982
• IV: The end
• Reform communism II: Gorbachev and Perestroika, 1982-1988
• From Perestroika to collapse: 1989-1991
• The perverse logic of Utopia
• The legacy

Writing as "Z" in the world-famous article "To the Stalin Mausoleum", Malia predicted the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union. In this brilliant narrative, he evokes both the tragedy and desperate delusion that characterized the 74-year Soviet experiment with socialism to reveal why that system held such appeal for the Russians and why they refused to let go for so long. Previously announced.
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This book discusses utopian ideals and experimentation before, during, and after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Richard Stites grounds his study in the larger field of Russia's social, intellectual, and cultural history, examining party programmes, economic policy, and moral practices to recreate the vast tableau of revolutionary life. Above all, he reveals how people expressed revolutionary sentiment through myth, ritual, symbol, cult, and community.
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Stite's book received the 1990 Vucinich Prize, awarded by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies for the best book published in 1989 in the field of Russian and East European studies. "The presentation is dynamic, fascinating, indeed brilliant, as well as fully expert...It is also a highly readable book...The book has already received much critical attention and great acclaim...In Revolutionary Dreams, we have a brilliantly presented historical work which is both pioneering and fundamental in its important field." - Nicholas V Riasanovsky (speech made on presentation of the Vucinich Prize).
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