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A prince in one of Russia's most exalted noble families, Grigorii N. Trubetskoi was a unique and contradictory figure during World War I. A lifelong civil servant and publicist, he began his diplomatic career in Constantinople, where he served as first secretary of the embassy there for several years. He became one of the leaders of an...

From the time the word kul-tura entered the Russian language in the early nineteenth century, Russian arts and letters have thrived on controversy. This book examines the development of a public discourse on national self-representation in nineteenth-century Russia, as it was styled by the visual arts and in popular journalism.

Examines the forces that attracted many social and intellectual leaders of 18th-century Russia to Freemasonry as an instrument for change and progress. The author reveals how Freemasonry became a part of a larger social transformation that saw the development of literary circles and social clubs.

Examines attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs about the production and consumption of food in Russia from the late 18th century through the mid 19th century. This book looks at the way individuals sought to define their nationality not only against outside influences, but also by incorporating those outside influences into a national whole.

A courageous woman recounts her journey from aristocrat to revolutionary in nineteenth-century Russia.

The first decade of Alexander II's reign is known in Russian history as the Era of the Great Reforms, a time recognized as the major period of social, economic, and institutional transformation between the reign of Peter the Great and the Revolution of 1905. Coming directly after the notoriously repressive last decade of the Nicholas era, the appearance of such dramatic reform has led scholars to seek its causes in dramatic events. Surely some great, even cataclysmic, force must have driven Alexander II and his advisers to initiate what appears to be such an astonishing change in policy. In their search for the origins of these Great Reforms, historians generally have focused upon two phenomena. The first of these was Russia's defeat in the Crimean War by a relatively small, ineptly commanded Allied expeditionary force. The second was the serf revolts, which increased dramatically in the 1850s. From these events, most historians have concluded that the economic failings of serfdom, the problem of preserving domestic peace, and the need to restore Russia's tarnished military prestige were the major forces that convinced Alexander II's government to embark upon a new reformist path. As Lincoln's examination of the long-unstudied Russian archival evidence shows, there are good reasons to question whether such crises of policy and failings of Russia's servile economy impelled Alexander II and his advisers along a previously uncharted reformist path after the Crimean War. Further, in light of the Russian bureaucracy's slowness in drafting much less complex administrative reforms during the previous century, Lincoln argues that the Great Reform legislation simply was too complex and required too much sophisticated knowledge about the Empire's economic, administratvive, and judicial affairs to have been formulated in the brief half-decade after the war's end.

In 1996 the author left the relative stability of the United States for the chaos of post-Soviet Russia, and stayed. In this book, each chapter is an episode - spanning from several hours to several days - of his journeys to the far North, Moscow, the Ural Mountains, the Solovetsky Islands, and a southern stretch of the Volga River.

Lovers, companions, and husband and wife, Catherine and Prince Grigory Potemkin were also close political partners. This work reveals the complexity of Catherine and Potemkin's personal relationship in light of changes in matters of state, foreign relations, and military engagements. It gives insights into Catherine's passions, and her world.

This work explores how early Soviet language culture gave rise to unparalleled verbal creativity and utopian imagination, while sowing the seeds for perhaps the most notorious forms of Orwellian "newspeak" known to the modern era.

How did educated 18th-century Russians view society? In this study, historian Elise Wirtschafter turns to literary plays to reconstruct the social thinking of the past and to discover how Russians of the Enlightenment understood themselves.

Russian monarchs have long been regarded as majestic and despotic, ruling mute and servile subjects in a vast empire isolated from the rest of Europe. Challenging this view, Whittaker uncovers a political dialogue about the nature and limitations of monarchy in 18th-century Russia.

Dmitrii Ivanoich Rostislavov was a mathematician, teacher and social critic in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Translated into English for the first time, his observations on daily life reveal the cultural milieu and issues of his time.

Scarred by Europe's wars, Hungary produces a number of the 20th century's leading intellectuals, many of whom lived outside their native land in exile. This text argues that the great debate over communism was at the crux of the lives and thought of the Hungarian intellectuals in exile.

The lubok - a broadside or poster - played an important role in Russia's cultural history. Evolving as a medium for communication, the prints were adapted to express political propaganda. This book examines the use of such prints to stir patriotic fervor during times of war, from Napoleon's failed attempt to conquer Russia to Hitler's invasion.

The transformation of the Russian nobility between 1861 and 1914 has often been attributed to the anachronistic attitudes of its members and their failure to adapt to social change. Becker challenges this idea of "the decline of the nobility." He argues that the privileged estate responded positively to change and greatly influenced their nation's political and economic destiny.

Nikolai Nikolaevich was a key figure in Imperial Russia and one of its foremost soldiers. At the outbreak of World War I, Nicholas II appointed him Supreme Commander of the Russian Army. Based on archival research in seven countries, this biography covers the Grand Duke's entire life, examining both his private life and his professional career.

By the mid-1990s, shuttle trade - a practice in which individual peddlers travel abroad and then return with foreign merchandise in their suitcases for resale-constituted the backbone of Russian consumer trade and was a substantial source of revenue. This book assesses the reasons why women were attracted to this business.

Suitable for scholars and general readers alike, this title presents a perspective on the Soviet Union through the history of a sport closely tied to the homeland.

How did Odessans understand the city and their place in it? What did modernization mean in Odessa? Answering such questions, this book reveals the inner life of Odessa, in the years before WWI from the perspective of those who lived there. It is useful for those interested in urban culture, social history, the Jewish experience, and modern Russia.

What drove Russia to its disastrous war with Japan in 1904? This book attempts to find the answer in Russia's erratic and confused diplomacy. It explains how the key to understanding tsarist involvement in East Asia lies in the ideologies of the Russians who competed to impose their visions of imperial destiny on the East.

Alexander I was a ruler with high aspirations for the people of Russia. Cosseted as a young grand duke by Catherine the Great, he ascended to the throne in 1801 after the brutal assassination of his father. This biography focuses on the complex forces that shaped Alexander's tumultuous reign.

A title that examines the ferocious public debates of the 1870s on higher dimensional mathematics and the workings of seance phenomena, discusses the world of cheap instruction manuals and popular occult journals, and looks at haunted houses, which brought together the rural settings and the urban masses that obsessed over them.

From 1505 to 1689, Russia's Tsars chose their wives through an elaborate ritual: the bride-show. Alongside accounts of sordid boyar plots against brides and the multiple marriages of Ivan the Terrible, this book offers an analysis of the show's role in the complex politics of royal marriage in early modern Russia.