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Russia's Legal Fictions
by Harriet MuravLegal scholars and literary critics have shown the significance of storytelling, not only as part of the courtroom procedure, but as part of the very foundation of law. Russia's Legal Fictions examines the relationship between law, narrative and authority in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russia. The conflict between the Russian writer and the law is a well-known feature of Russian literary life in the past two centuries. With one exception, the authors discussed in this book--Sukhovo-Kobylin, Akhsharumov, Suvorin, and Dostoevsky in the nineteenth century and Solzhenitsyn and Siniavskii in the twentieth--were all put on trial. In Russia's Legal Fictions, Harriet Murav starts with the authors' own writings about their experience with law and explores the history of these Russian literary trials, including censorship, libel cases, and one case of murder, in their specific historical context, showing how particular aspects of the culture of the time relate to the case. The book explores the specifically Russian literary and political conditions in which writers claim the authority not only as the authors of fiction but as lawgivers in the realm of the real, and in which the government turns to the realm of the literary to exercise its power. The author uses specific aspects of Russian culture, history and literature to consider broader theoretical questions about the relationship between law, narrative, and authority. Murav offers a history of the reception of the jury trial and the development of a professional bar in late Imperial Russia as well as an exploration of theories of criminality, sexuality, punishment, and rehabilitation in Imperial and Soviet Russia.
Russia's Liberal Media: Handcuffed but Free (Routledge Research in Journalism)
by Vera Slavtcheva-PetkovaThis book examines the challenges and pressures liberal journalists face in Putin's Russia. It presents the findings of an in-depth qualitative study, which included ethnographic observations of editorial meetings during the conflict in Ukraine. It also provides a theoretical framework for evaluating the Russian media system and a historical overview of the development of liberal media in the country. The book focuses on some of Russia’s most influential liberal national news outlets: "the deadliest" newspaper Novaya Gazeta, "Russia’s last independent radio station" Radio Echo of Moscow (Ekho Moskvy) and US Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The fieldwork included ethnographic observations of editorial meetings, long interviews with editors and journalists as well as documentary analysis. The monograph makes theoretical contributions to three main areas: 1. Media systems and terms of reference. 2. Journalism: cultures, role conceptions, and relationship with power, culture and society. 3. Mediatisation of conflict and nationhood.
Russian Bible Wars
by Stephen K. BataldenAlthough biblical texts were known in Church Slavonic as early as the ninth century, translation of the Bible into Russian came about only in the nineteenth century. Modern scriptural translation generated major religious and cultural conflict within the Russian Orthodox church. The resulting divisions left church authority particularly vulnerable to political pressures exerted upon it in the twentieth century. Russian Bible Wars illuminates the fundamental issues of authority that have divided modern Russian religious culture. Set within the theoretical debate over secularization, the volume clarifies why the Russian Bible was issued relatively late and amidst great controversy. Stephen Batalden's study traces the development of biblical translation into Russian and of the 'Bible wars' that then occurred in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Russia. The annotated bibliography of the Russian Bible identifies the different editions and their publication history.
Russian Children's Literature and Culture (Children's Literature and Culture)
by Marina Balina Larissa RudovaSoviet literature in general and Soviet children’s literature in particular have often been labeled by Western and post-Soviet Russian scholars and critics as propaganda. Below the surface, however, Soviet children’s literature and culture allowed its creators greater experimental and creative freedom than did the socialist realist culture for adults. This volume explores the importance of children’s culture, from literature to comics to theater to film, in the formation of Soviet social identity and in connection with broader Russian culture, history, and society.
Russian Formalism: A Metapoetics
by Peter SteinerRussian Formalism, one of the twentieth century's most important movements in literary criticism, has received far less attention than most of its rivals. Examining Formalism in light of more recent developments in literary theory, Peter Steiner here offers the most comprehensive critique of Formalism to date. Steiner studies the work of the Formalists in terms of the major tropes that characterized their thought. He first considers those theorists who viewed a literary work as a mechanism, an organism, or a system. He then turns to those who sought to reduce literature to its most basic element—language—and who consequently replaced poetics with linguistics. Throughout, Steiner elucidates the basic principles of the Formalists and explores their contributions to the study of poetics, literary history, the theory of literary genre, and prosody. Russian Formalism is an authoritative introduction to the movement that was a major precursor of contemporary critical thought.
Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays, Second Edition (Regents Critics)
by Gary Saul Morson Lee T. Lemon Marion J. ReisThe Russian formalists emerged from the Russian Revolution with ideas about the independence of literature. They enjoyed that independence until Stalin shut them down. By then, however, they had produced essays that remain among the best defenses ever written for both literature and its theory. Included here are four essays representing key points in the formalists’ short history. Victor Shklovsky’s pioneering “Art as Technique” (1917) defines the literary as a way to make us see familiar things as if for the first time. His 1921 essay on Tristram Shandy makes that eccentric novel the centerpiece for a theory of narrative. A section from Boris Tomashevsky’s “Thematics” (1925) inventories the elements of stories. In “The Theory of the ‘Formal Method’” (1927), Boris Eichenbaum defends Russian Formalism against various attacks. An able champion, he describes Formalism’s evolution, notes its major figures and works, clears away decayed axioms, and rescues literature from “primitive historicism” and other dangers. These essays set a course for literary studies that led to Prague structuralism, French semiotics, and postmodern poetics. Russian Formalist Criticism has been honored as a Choice Outstanding Academic Book of the Year by the American Library Association.
Russian Function Words: Conjunctions, Interjections, Parenthetical Words, Particles, and Prepositions
by Marina Rojavin Alexander RojavinRussian Function Words: Meanings and Use is a collection of 463 prepositions, conjunctions, particles, interjections, and parenthetical words. This book provides a semantic, syntactic, and stylistic analysis of each word, accompanying the explanation with examples of the word’s usage in discourse in contemporary, everyday Russian and analogous translations into English. Consequently, it allows users to develop an understanding of contemporary grammatical, lexical, and stylistic norms, with the aim of mastering these critical words. This book also includes a multitude of idioms and sayings that users will learn to use in the appropriate context. Intermediate and advanced students, instructors, and translators will find this a useful supplement to their existing resources. It also serves as a helpful reference for independent learners at all levels.
Russian Historiography from 1880 to 1905: Pavel N. Miliukov and the Moscow School (New Perspectives on Central and Eastern European Studies #6)
by Thomas M. BohnIn Russian historiography, the Moscow School’s paradigm shift from political and legal history to social and economic history was markedly driven by Pavel Miliukov (1859-1943), the late leader of the Constitutional Democrats and foreign minister of the Provisional Government. Russian Historiography from 1880 to 1905 develops a narrative of historical sociology’s advancement through the Moscow School under Miliukov’s influence and provides a window into his decision making as a political figure who based his leadership not on public opinion but on the effectiveness of historical processes.
Russian Learners' Dictionary: 10,000 Russian Words in Frequency Order
by Nicholas BrownThis dictionary contains 10,000 Russian words in order of importance starting with the most common and finishing with words that occur about 8 times in a million. All the words have English translations, many have examples of usage and the entries include information on stress and grammatical irregularities. There is also a complete alphabetical index to the words in the list.A learner who knows all or most of these 10,000 words can be regarded as competent in Russian for all normal purposes. The list takes you from a beginner's core vocabulary through to postgraduate level.
Russian Learners' Dictionary: 10,000 Russian Words in Frequency Order
by Nicholas BrownThis dictionary contains 10,000 Russian words in order of importance starting with the most common and finishing with words that occur about 8 times in a million. All the words have English translations, many have examples of usage and the entries include information on stress and grammatical irregularities. There is also a complete alphabetical index to the words in the list.A learner who knows all or most of these 10,000 words can be regarded as competent in Russian for all normal purposes. The list takes you from a beginner's core vocabulary through to postgraduate level.
Russian Literature Since 1991
by Evgeny DobrenkoRussian Literature since 1991 is the first comprehensive, single-volume compendium of modern scholarship on post-Soviet Russian literature. The volume encompasses broad, complex and diverse sources of literary material - from ideological and historical novels to experimental prose and poetry, from nonfiction to drama. Written by an international team of leading experts on contemporary Russian literature and culture, it presents a broad panorama of genres in post-Soviet literature such as postmodernism, magical historicism, hyper-naturalism (in drama), and the new lyricism. At the same time, it offers close readings of the most prominent works published in Russia since the end of the Soviet regime and elimination of censorship. The collection highlights the interdisciplinary context of twenty-first-century Russian literature and can be widely used both for research and teaching by specialists in and beyond Russian studies, including those in post-Cold War and post-communist world history, literary theory, comparative literature and cultural studies.
Russian Literature and the Classics (Routledge Harwood Studies in Russian and European Literature)
by Paul Allen Miller Peter I. Barta David H. J. LarmourRussian Literature and the Classics attempts to fill a gap. To date there has been no book-length, systematic study of the impact of antiquity on Russian literature and culture. While by no means claiming to offer a comprehensive approach, the authors focus on various aspects of the influence which the Classics have had on Russian literature at particularly significant junctures - the beginning of the nineteenth century; the age of the great Russian realist novel; the "Silver Age"; Stalin's terror; the "Thaw" after 1956; and the period just before the collapse of Soviet society. In their introductory essay the editors offer an overview of the Classical Tradition. In it, they provide an insight into the contrasting ways in which that tradition manifested itself in the literatures of Western Europe and of Russia.
Russian Literature from Pushkin to the Present Day (Routledge Library Editions: Russian and Soviet Literature #12)
by Richard HareThis book, first published in 1947, examines the truly vital and enduring qualities of the leading Russian writers, as literature and as interesting documents of phases of Russian history. This is one of the most striking features of Russian literature since Pushkin – it treated artistically social and political issues that in the more prosperous and stable Western world were dealt with through journalism, mainly. This book analyses Russian literature’s propensity for providing reassurance and guidance to withstand the harsher elements of Russian society by examining some of its leading writers.
Russian Literature, 1995-2002
by Norman N. ShneidmanWriters have a difficult time making a living in contemporary Russia. Market-driven publishing companies have pushed serious domestic prose to the fringes of their output and few people have money to buy books. The disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 led Russian society to become polarized between an increasingly prosperous minority and a very poor majority. This divide is also mirrored within the writing community, with some writers supporting conservative, nationalist pro-Soviet thinking, and others, liberal, democratic, pro-Western thought.N.N. Shneidman, in the tradition of his previous volumes ? Soviet Literature in the 1970s; Soviet Literature in the 1980s; Russian Literature, 1988?1994 ? investigates the Russian literary scene with special emphasis on the relationship between thematic substance and the artistic quality of recently published prose. Despite the many challenges besetting it, Shneidman argues convincingly that literary activity in Russia continues to be dynamic and vibrant. The future development of Russian literature may depend on general economic, political, and social factors, but a new generation of talented writers is fast moving past older forms of ideology and embracing new ways of thinking about Russia.
Russian Literature: 1988-1994
by Norman N. ShneidmanThe collapse of the Soviet Union brought about radical changes in the Russian literary world. With the state's relinquishment of control over literary production, writers acquired freedom of expression and publication. State publishing houses, now self-supporting enterprises, stopped printing money-losing books and turned to foreign detective novels and erotic literature, effecting a considerable shift in popular taste. The writer, no longer a producer of ideology, has been recast as a struggling competitor in a free-market environment. Focusing on the current Russian literary scene, Russian Literature, 1988-1994 examines these recent changes. Beginning with a general overview of the political, intellectual, and social atmosphere in the country and its effect on artistic creativity, Shneidman surveys the period's literature. He considers the work of succeeding generations of prose fiction writers: the 'old guard,' the writers of the intermediate generation, and the younger authors of perestroika, whose works first appeared in print after Gorbachev's ascent to power. The writing of this last group is divided into three categories: novels written in the style of conventional Russian realism; works that combine realistic prose with modernist narrative techniques; and the body of work that constitutes Russian post-modernism. Exploring artistic and social issues in an integrated manner, the volume will be of interest not only to students of Russian literature but also to those concerned with the culture and social life of the former Soviet Union.
Russian Literature: A Very Short Introduction
by Catriona KellyRather than presenting a conventional chronology of Russian literature, this book explores the place and importance in Russian culture of all types of literature. How and when did a Russian national literature come into being? What shaped its creation? How have the Russians regarded their literary language? The book uses the figure of Pushkin--'the Russian Shakespeare'--as a recurring example, as his work influenced every Russian writer who came after him, whether they wrote prose or verse. It furthermore examines why Russian writers are venerated, how they've been interpreted inside Russia and beyond, and the influences of the folk tale tradition, orthodox religion, and the West.
Russian Modernism in the Memories of the Survivors: The Duvakin Interviews, 1967–1974
by Margarita Marinova Slav N. GratchevIn the late 1960s and early 1970s, Soviet philologist, literary dissident, and university professor Viktor Duvakin made it his mission to interview the members of the artistic avant-garde who had survived the Russian Revolution, Stalin’s purges, and the Second World War. Based on archival materials held at the Moscow State University Library, Russian Modernism in the Memories of the Survivors catalogues six interviews conducted by Duvakin. The interviewees talk about their most intimate life experiences and give personal accounts of their interactions with famous writers and artists such as Vsevolod Meyerhold, Sergei Eisenstein, and Marina Tsvetaeva. They offer insights into the world of Russian emigrants in Prague and Paris, the uprising against the Communist government, what it was like to work at the United Nations after the Second World War, and other important aspects of life in the Soviet Union and Europe during the first half of the twentieth century. Archival photographs, as well as hundreds of annotations to the text, are included to help readers understand the historical and cultural context of the interviews. The unique and previously unpublished materials in Russian Modernism in the Memories of the Survivors will be of great interest to anyone who wants to learn more about this fascinating period in Soviet history.
Russian Montparnasse: Transnational Writing in Interwar Paris (Palgrave Studies in Modern European Literature)
by Maria RubinsThis book reassesses the role of Russian Montparnasse writers in the articulation of transnational modernism generated by exile. Examining their production from a comparative perspective, it demonstrates that their response to urban modernity transcended the Russian master narrative and resonated with broader aesthetic trends in interwar Europe.
Russian Music at Home and Abroad: New Essays
by Richard TaruskinThis new collection views Russian music through the Greek triad of "the Good, the True, and the Beautiful" to investigate how the idea of "nation" embeds itself in the public discourse about music and other arts with results at times invigorating, at times corrupting. In our divided, post–Cold War, and now post–9/11 world, Russian music, formerly a quiet corner on the margins of musicology, has become a site of noisy contention. Richard Taruskin assesses the political and cultural stakes that attach to it in the era of Pussy Riot and renewed international tensions, before turning to individual cases from the nineteenth century to the present. Much of the volume is devoted to the resolutely cosmopolitan but inveterately Russian Igor Stravinsky, one of the major forces in the music of the twentieth century and subject of particular interest to composers and music theorists all over the world. Taruskin here revisits him for the first time since the 1990s, when everything changed for Russia and its cultural products. Other essays are devoted to the cultural and social policies of the Soviet Union and their effect on the music produced there as those policies swung away from Communist internationalism to traditional Russian nationalism; to the musicians of the Russian postrevolutionary diaspora; and to the tension between the compelling artistic quality of works such as Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps or Prokofieff’s Zdravitsa and the antihumanistic or totalitarian messages they convey. Russian Music at Home and Abroad addresses these concerns in a personal and critical way, characteristically demonstrating Taruskin’s authority and ability to bring living history out of the shadows.
Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement, Second Edition (California Studies In 20th-century Music Ser. #2)
by Simon MorrisonAcclaimed for treading new ground in operatic studies of the period, Simon Morrison’s influential and now-classic text explores music and the occult during the Russian Symbolist movement. Including previously unavailable archival materials about Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky, this wholly revised edition is both up to date and revelatory. Topics range from decadence to pantheism, musical devilry to narcotic-infused evocations of heaven, the influence of Wagner, and the significance of contemporaneous Russian literature. Symbolism tested boundaries and reached for extremes so as to imagine art uniting people, facilitating communion with nature, and ultimately transcending reality. Within this framework, Morrison examines four lesser-known works by canonical composers—Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Scriabin, and Sergey Prokofiev—and in this new edition also considers Alexandre Gretchaninoff’s Sister Beatrice and Alexander Kastalsky’s Klara Milich, while also making the case for reviving Vladimir Rebikov’s The Christmas Tree.
Russian Postmodernism
by Mikhail N. Epstein Alexander A. Genis Slobodanka Millicent Vladiv-GloverRecent decades have been decisive for Russia not only politically but culturally as well. The end of the Cold War has enabled Russia to take part in the global rise and crystallization of postmodernism. This volume investigates the manifestations of this crucial trend in Russian fiction, poetry, art, and spirituality, demonstrating how Russian postmodernism is its own unique entity. It offers a point of departure and valuable guide to an area of contemporary literary-cultural studies insufficiently represented in English-language scholarship. This second edition includes additional essays on the topic and a new introduction examining the most recent developments.
Russian Prepositional Phrases: A Cognitive Linguistic Approach
by Marika KalyugaThe book presents a comprehensive study of Russian prepositions, with a focus on expressing spatial characteristics. It primarily deals with how metaphorical and metonymical transfers motivate the use of Russian prepositional phrases, explaining the collocations of prepositional phrases with verbs as a realisation of a conceptual metaphor or a metonymy. The author confronts a problem that is attracting growing attention within present-day linguistics: the semantics of prepositions and cases. The book seeks to clarify the conceptual motivations for the use of the combinations of Russian primary prepositional phrases, as well as to demonstrate how their spatial meanings are extended into non-spatial domains. This book incorporates an analysis of a large number of items, including 30 combinations of primary prepositions with cases. An original contribution, the book is of interest to teachers and students studying Slavic languages, and to cognitive linguists.
Russian Realisms: Literature and Painting, 1840–1890 (NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies)
by Molly BrunsonOne fall evening in 1880, Russian painter Ilya Repin welcomed an unexpected visitor to his home: Lev Tolstoy. The renowned realists talked for hours, and Tolstoy turned his critical eye to the sketches in Repin's studio. Tolstoy's criticisms would later prompt Repin to reflect on the question of creative expression and conclude that the path to artistic truth is relative, dependent on the mode and medium of representation. In this original study, Molly Brunson traces many such paths that converged to form the tradition of nineteenth-century Russian realism, a tradition that spanned almost half a century—from the youthful projects of the Natural School and the critical realism of the age of reform to the mature masterpieces of Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the paintings of the Wanderers, Repin chief among them. By examining the classics of the tradition, Brunson explores the emergence of multiple realisms from the gaps, disruptions, and doubts that accompany the self-conscious project of representing reality. These manifestations of realism are united not by how they look or what they describe, but by their shared awareness of the fraught yet critical task of representation. By tracing the engagement of literature and painting with aesthetic debates on the sister arts, Brunson argues for a conceptualization of realism that transcends artistic media. Russian Realisms integrates the lesser-known tradition of Russian painting with the familiar masterpieces of Russia's great novelists, highlighting both the common ground in their struggles for artistic realism and their cultural autonomy and legitimacy. This erudite study will appeal to scholars interested in Russian literature and art, comparative literature, art history, and nineteenth-century realist movements.
Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida
by Robert ChandlerFrom the reign of the Tsars in the early 19th century to the collapse of the Soviet Union and beyond, the short story has long occupied a central place in Russian culture. Included are pieces from many of the acknowledged masters of Russian literature - including Pushkin, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Solzhenitsyn - alongside tales by long-suppressed figures such as the subversive Kryzhanowsky and the surrealist Shalamov. Whether written in reaction to the cruelty of the bourgeoisie, the bureaucracy of communism or the torture of the prison camps, they offer a wonderfully wide-ranging and exciting representation of one of the most vital and enduring forms of Russian literature.
Russian Stories: A Dual-Language Book (Dover Dual Language Russian)
by Gleb StruveThe story, or novella, as a literary genre has a much shorter history in Russia than in some Western countries, but it has nevertheless produced important works by some of the greatest names in Russian literature. This dual-language volume contains 12 such stories — memorable tales by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Chekhov, Gogol, Turgenev, Bunin, and other masters. Each selection is presented here in the original Russian with an excellent literal English translation on the facing pages.Also included are linguistic and cultural notes, a Russian-English vocabulary, study questions and more. In addition, Professor Struve has supplied an enlightening introduction to the Russian short story, as well as concise biographical/critical introductions to each selection. An especially helpful feature for students of Russian is the presence of stress accents in the Russian text, a feature usually found only in primers.