Alexander II's Great Reforms of the early 1860s unleashed hopes among Russians for a true civil society resulting in increased political freedom. An attempt on the Tsar's life in 1866 put an abrupt end to these hopes, trapping Russian political life within a vicious circle of political reaction, growing disillusionment with government, and ......
Stalin's Forced Labour System in the Light of the Archives
Throughout the Stalin era and after, the Gulag system of forced labor blighted the Soviet Union. Millions were incarcerated in its camps, some to be eventually released, many to die imprisoned and faceless. For decades, histories of the camp system have relied on the experiences of those who suffered within them for their main source of ......
Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin improvised a system of ""asymmetric federalism"" to help maintain its successor state, the Russian Federation.
Persecution of religious groups by the Soviet state was no secret. Soviet ideology was explicitly materialist and anti- religious; the state made no apology for its repression of religion. Here, for the first time in English, are the actual documents tracing that repression, clearly revealing the struggle between religious forces and the Russian ......
War, Conquest, and Catastrophe, 1939-1945, Volume 3
Provides a comprehensive history of Soviet Jewry during World War II At the beginning of the twentieth century, more Jews lived in the Russian Empire than anywhere else in the world. After the Holocaust, the USSR remained one of the world's three key centers of Jewish population, along with the United States and Israel. While a great deal is ......
"This book describes the joy and problems in life of the multilayered Soviet Jewish society during the years between Josef Stalin's demise in March 1953, and Moscow's breaking of diplomatic relations with Israel in June 1967"
The last five years have brought such extraordinary changes to Germany and Europe as to make the previous forty years of Cold War existence seem deceptively placid and well- ordered by comparison. The collapse of communist rule in East Germany in the midst of massive demonstrations against the Honecker regime in late 1989 were only the beginning. ......
Sufi Responses to the Russian Advance in the North Caucasus
After the first war in Chechnya in 1994 the world discovered the warlike Muslim peoples intent on liberating themselves from domination by a distant Russian government. This work focuses on the impact of the Sufi brotherhoods to analyze the formation of resistance in Chechnya and Daghestan.
The authors explain the contradictory images of the Chechen people - from gun-smuggling gangsters to savage but noble warriors fighting for justice - by placing the images in context and describing the history of the region.