Natasha's Dance : A Cultural History of Russia

Natasha's Dance : A Cultural History of Russia

Arts & Photography

ORLANDO FIGES

History & Criticism

Penguin??Books

Crimea: The Last Crusade

History

Military

Drawing on a huge range of sources - letters, memoirs, conversations - Orlando Figes tells the story of how Russians tried to endure life under Stalin. Those who shaped the political system became, very frequently, its victims. Those who were its victims were frequently quite blameless. "The Whisperers" recreates the sort of maze in which Russians found themselves, where an unwitting wrong turn could either destroy a family or, perversely, later save it: a society in which everyone spoke in whispers - whether to protect themselves, their families, neighbours or friends - or to inform on them.

Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia

Europe

BRAND NEW, Exactly same ISBN as listed, Please double check ISBN carefully before ordering.

Revolutionary Russia 1891 1991

Penguin Books, Ltd.

Shipped from UK, please allow 10 to 21 business days for arrival. Good, EX-LIBRARY COPY. A good, clean and sound copy in black cloth boards, gold gilt title on spine, with a good dust jacket. Library stamps/labels on ffeps and dedication page. Corners bumped, worn at edges and upper/lower spine, some creasing on DJ. A people's tragedy: the Russian Revolution, 1891-1924. xx, 923 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.. . First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape, 1996. Includes bibliographical references (p. [862]-894) and index.. .

A People's Tragedy

Jonathan Cape Ltd.

Just Send Me Word

Russia

Interpreting the Russian Revolution: The Language and Symbols of 1917

Boris Kolonitskii

Boris Kolonitsk

Yale University Press

Natasha's Dance is Orlando Figes's epic, richly evocative and unparalleled exploration of Russia, its culture and people. Vast in scale and woven through with extraordinary stories and characters, it ranges from the splendor of eighteenth-century St. Petersburg to the power of Stalinist propaganda, from folk art to the magic rituals of Asiatic shamans, from the poetry of Pushkin to the music of Musorgsky and the films of Eisenstein, bringing to life an extraordinary cast of serf artists and aristocrats, revolutionaries and exiles, priests and libertines. Figes's book takes its title from a famous scene in War and Peace, where the young and beautiful Countess Natasha hears a popular melody and, instinctively aware of the peasant rhythm and steps, beings to dance to it. Tolstoy shows that however grand and foreign-educated they might be, at heart the Russians are Russians. Here Orlando Figes explores the meaning of Natasha's dance: the often contradictory impulses and shared sensibilities that have given rise to one of the world's most dazzling cultures. He shows how, perhaps more than any othehr country, Russia's sense of identity is embodied in its culture: not only its great poetry, music, books and paintings, but also in its common ideas, customs, habits and beliefs.

Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia

Allen Lane.

From the "master of historical narrative" (Financial Times), a dazzling, richly detailed, panoramic work--the first to document the genesis of a continent-wide European culture The nineteenth century in Europe was the first age of cultural globalization--an epoch when mass communications and high-speed rail travel brought Europe together, overcoming national barriers and creating a truly pan-European canon of artistic, musical, and literary works. By 1900, people across the continent were reading the same books, looking at the same art, and attending the same opera performances. Acclaimed historian Orlando Figes moves from Parisian salons to German spa towns to Russian country houses, exploring the interplay of money and art that made this unification possible. At the book's center is an intimate love triangle: the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev; the Spanish prima donna Pauline Viardot; and her husband Louis Viardot, a connoisseur and political activist. Their passionate, ambitious lives caught up an astonishing array of artists and princes, poets, composers, and impresarios--Delacroix, Chopin, the Schumanns, Hugo, Flaubert, Dickens, and Dostoyevsky, among them. As Figes observes, nearly all of civilization's great advances have come when people, ideas, and artistic creations circulate freely between nations. Surprising, beautifully written, spanning a continent and a century, The Europeans offers the first international history of European culture--and a compelling argument for the benefits of cosmopolitanism.

The Europeans: Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture

Blackstone Publishing

From “the great storyteller of Russian history” (Financial Times), a brilliantly colored account of the myths that have shaped and reshaped Russia’s identity and politics from its founding\nWho were the Rus, the ancient tribe from which the Russians trace their origins? Were they Baltic Slavs, hailing from within the territory that would become Russia? Or were they Vikings from Scandinavia, who came in from the outside to organize chaotic warring groups? Russians initially embraced the former theory, following a surge in nationalist sentiment, but autocrats, including Catherine the Great, came to trumpet the latter, which supported the notion that the Russian people are incapable of self-governance. Both sides were using history to create myths, narratives of national identity that could be deployed for their own political ends.\nThe Story of Russia is about how the Russians defined themselves—and repeatedly reinvented such definitions along the way. Moving from Russia’s agrarian beginnings in the first millennium to subsequent periods of monarchy, totalitarianism, and perestroika, all the way up to Vladimir Putin and his use of myths of Russian history to bolster his regime, celebrated historian Orlando Figes examines the ideas that have guided the country’s actions: the need for autocracy to rule Russia’s vast land; the veneration of the “Holy Tsar” and the cult of the leader; the belief in an essentially Russian collectivist spirit; and the oscillation between Russia’s European and Eurasian character.\nWith beautiful writing and alluring perspectives, The Story of Russia is as much about the myths and ideologies that have shaped Russian history—about the ways the Russians have interpreted their past—as it is about the events, institutions, social groups, and leaders that have made that history. And as modern Russia retreats from Europe, this authoritative account of Russia’s past might well elucidate its future.

Story of Russia

Bloomsbury Publishing

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