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By Subject - Russia and East Europe/History

Title	Author	Description
“At the Price of the Republic”	James Ramon Felak	Slovak nationalist sentiment has been a constant presence in the history of Czechoslovakia, coming to head in the torrent of nationalism that resulted in the dissolution of the Republic on January 1, 1993. James Felak examines a parallel episode in the 1930s with Slovak nationalists achieved autonomy for Slovakia-but “at the price” of the loss of East Central Europe's only parliamentary democracy and the strengthening of Nazi power. View the Digital Edition
After Hitler, Before Stalin	James Ramon Felak	Examines the crucial postwar period in Slovakia, following Nazi occupation and ending with the Communist coup of February 1948. Centered on the major political role of the Catholic Church and its leaders, it offers a fascinating study of the interrelationship of Slovak Catholics, Democrats, and Communists. Felak views Communist policies toward Catholics and their strategies to court Catholic voters, and he chronicles the variety of political stances Catholics maintained during Slovakia's political turmoil. Kindle eBook Available
Bandits and Partisans	Erik Landis	In 1920, Aleksandr Antonov led an insurgency that became the largest armed peasant revolt against the Soviets during the civil war. Yet by 1921, the revolt had been crushed, and popular support for the movement had all but disappeared. Until now, details of this conflict have remained hidden. Erik Landis mines recently opened provincial and central Soviet archives and international collections to provide a depth of detail and historical analysis never before possible in this definitive account of the uprising. View the Digital Edition
Big Business in Russia	Jonathan Grant	A highly original study of the Putilov Works—the most famous industrial conglomerate in the Russian Empire during the late 19th century, and a major challenge to conventional wisdom on the nature of the Russian economy in the years before the Bolshevik revolution. View the Digital Edition
Bread upon the Waters	Robert Jones	Bread upon the Waters chronicles how the unparalleled effort put into the building of a wide infrastructure to support the provisioning of the newly created but physically isolated city of St. Petersburg profoundly affected all of Russia’s economic life and, ultimately, the historical trajectory of the Russian Empire as a whole.
Brezhnev's Folly	Christopher Ward	The first scholarly account of BAM (the Baikal-Amur Railway), Russia’s most ambitious public construction project to be attempted in the final decades leading up to the collapse of the USSR. This is a rich social history based on a combination of original scholarly research and interviews with many of those who worked on BAM. Kindle eBook Available
Building Socialism in Bolshevik Russia	Thomas Remington	A profile of the Bolshevik attempt to build a a new state by mobilizing the working class, in effect building society, that in the end resulted in failed institutions and weakened bureaucracy. View the Digital Edition
Captives of Revolution	Scott Smith	The Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) were the largest political party in Russia in the crucial revolutionary year of 1917. Heirs to the legacy of the People’s Will movement, the SRs were unabashed proponents of peasant rebellion and revolutionary terror, emphasizing the socialist transformation of the countryside and a democratic system of government as their political goals. They offered a compelling, but still socialist, alternative to the Bolsheviks, yet by the early 1920s their party was shattered and its members were branded as enemies of the revolution. In 1922, the SR leaders became the first fellow socialists to be condemned by the Bolsheviks as “counter-revolutionaries” in the prototypical Soviet show trial. Scott B. Smith presents both a convincing account of the defeat of the SRs and a deeper analysis of the significance of the political dynamics of the Civil War for subsequent Soviet history. Smith reveals a complex and nuanced picture of the postrevolutionary struggle and demonstrates that the Civil War—and in particular the struggle with the SRs—was the formative experience of the Bolshevik party and the Soviet state.
Celebrating Women	Choi Chatterjee	Choi Chatterjee analyzes both Bolshevik attitudes towards women and the invented state rituals surrounding Women’s Day to demonstrate the ways these celebrations helped construct gender notions in the Soviet Union. View the Digital Edition Kindle eBook Available
Curative Powers	Paula Michaels	Curative Powers combines post-colonial theory with ethnographic research to reconstruct how the Soviet government used medicine and public health policy to transform the society, politics, and culture of its outlying regions, specifically Kazakhstan. Winner of the 2003 Heldt Prize from the Association for Women in Slavic Studies. View the Digital Edition
Disabled in the Soviet Union	William McCagg	The essays in this collection chronicle the responses of the Soviet state and society to a variety of disabled groups and disabilities. View the Digital Edition
Elusive Equality	Melissa Feinberg	Examines debates over women’s rights in the first half of the twentieth century, to show how Czechs gradually turned away from democracy and established the separation of state and domestic issues, at the expense of personal freedoms. View the Digital Edition Kindle eBook Available
End of Peasantry?	Grigory Ioffe	Examines the dramatic recent decline of agriculture in post-Soviet Russia and the historic, technological, and geographic contributing factors. Views current agricultural reform programs that will profoundly impact the political and economic stability of Russia. View the Digital Edition
Equality and Revolution	Rochelle Goldberg Ruthchild	Ruthchild’s study reveals that Russian feminists were an integral force for revolution and social change, particularly during the monumental uprisings of 1905-1917. She analyzes the backgrounds, motivations, methods, activism, and organizational networks of early Russian feminists that came to challenge, and eventually bring down, the patriarchal tsarist regime. Kindle eBook Available
Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania	Maria Bucur	Maria Bucur explores the interactions between the science of eugenics and modernization efforts in Romania between World Wars I and II. View the Digital Edition Kindle eBook Available
Exile and Identity	Katherine Jolluck	Katherine Jolluck tells the story of thousands of Polish women exiled to the Soviet Union in 1939-41, and examines the ways in which their efforts to maintain their identities as respectable women and patriotic Poles helped them survive. View the Digital Edition
Factory and Community in Stalin’s Russia	Kenneth Straus	Kenneth Straus contemplates the question: Was there social support for the Stalin regime among the Soviet working class during the 1930s, and if so, why? In his well-researched answer he analyzes the daily lives of Soviet workers, and compares the ideologies of western and Soviet thought. View the Digital Edition
Forging Political Compromise	Daniel Miller	Historians have long claimed Czechoslovakia between the world wars as an island of democracy in a sea of dictatorships. The reasons for the survival of democratic institutions have never been fully explained. Miller pieces together the story of the party and its longtime leader, Antonín Svehla, who had an extraordinary capacity to mediate between political parties, factions, and individual political leaders. Miller shows how Svehla's official and behind-the-scenes activities in the parliament provided the new state with stability and continuity. View the Digital Edition
From Darkness to Light	Igal Halfin	In this interdisciplinary and controversial work, Igal Halfin takes an original and provocative stance on Marxist theory, and attempts to break down the divisions between history, philosophy, and literary theory. View the Digital Edition
Gender, Class, and the Professionalization of Russian City Teachers, 1860–1914	Christine Ruane	Ruane examines the issues of gender and class in the teaching profession of late imperial Russia, at a time when the vocation was becoming increasingly feminized in a zealously patriarchal society. Her research and insightful analysis broadens our knowledge of an emerging professional class, especially newly educated and emancipated women, during Russia's transition to a more modern society. View the Digital Edition
History of Liberalism in Russia	Victor Leontovitsch	Foreword by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn In this highly original study, Victor Leontovitsch offers a reinterpretation of liberalism in a uniquely Russian form. He documents the struggles to develop civil society and individual liberties in imperial Russia up until their ultimate demise in the face of war, revolution, and the collapse of the old regime. This is the first English-language translation of Leontovitsch’s monumental work, which was originally published to critical acclaim in German in 1957.
Intimate Enemies	Igal Halfin	Intimate Enemies examines the transformation of Bolshevik Party ideology, language, and power relations during the crucial period leading up to Stalin's seizure of power. Igal Halfin uncovers this evolution in the language of Bolshevism. This language defined the methods for judging true party loyalty-in what Halfin describes as an examination of the 'hermeneutics of the soul,' and became the basis for prosecuting the Party's enemies, particularly the “intimate enemies” within the Party itself. View the Digital Edition
Into the Cosmos	James Andrews	The launch of the Sputnik satellite in October 1957 changed the course of human history. In the span of a few years, Soviets sent the first animal into space, the first man, and the first woman. These events were a direct challenge to the United States and the capitalist model that claimed ownership of scientific aspiration and achievement. Into the Cosmos shows us the fascinating interplay of Soviet politics, science, and culture during the Khrushchev era, and how the space program became a binding force between these elements.
Inventing a Soviet Countryside	James Heinzen	A balanced, thorough examination of the political, social, and cultural aspects of the Bolsheviks’ efforts to modernize the Russian peasantry.
Jan Waclaw Machajski	Marshall Shatz	Jan Waclaw Machajski's (1866-1926) political doctrine, known as Makhaevism, was a synthesis of several revolutionary theories in Western and Eastern Europe: Marxism, anarchism, and syndicalism. His criticism of the intelligentsia and theory of a “new class” were influential to Communism and helped to create a hostility that culminated in Stalin's Great Purge of the 1930s. View the Digital Edition
KGB Campaign against Corruption in Moscow, 1982-1987	Luc Duhamel	Duhamel examines the KGB at its pinnacle of power during the anticorruption campaigns of 1982-1987, when it sought to break the Communist Party's stranglehold on Moscow's two largest trade organizations, which were built on a foundation of bribery and favoritism. Kindle eBook Available
Models of Nature	Douglas Weiner	Models of Nature studies the early and turbulent years of the Soviet conservation movement from the October Revolution to the mid-1930s—Lenin’s rule to the rise of Stalin. This new edition includes an afterword by the author that reflects upon the study's impact and discusses advances in the field since the book was first published.
Moscovia of Antonio Possevino, S.J.	Antonio Possevino S.J.	A descriptive account of the court of Tsar Ivan IV, in sixteenth-century Moscow, as seen through the eyes of papal envoy and Jesuit Antonio Possevino S.J. View the Digital Edition
National Communism in the Soviet Union, 1918-28	Baruch Gurevitz	A unique perspective on the question of how Marxism and the early Soviet Union dealt with issues of nationalism, viewed through The Jewish Communist Workers' Party, the Poale Zion. View the Digital Edition
Nature and National Identity after Communism	Katrina Schwartz	Winner of the 2008 First Place/Book Prizefrom the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies Examines the intersection of environmental politics, globalization, and national identity in post-Soviet Latvia. Views the country’s responses to European assistance and political pressure in nature management, biodiversity conservation, and rural development. View the Digital Edition Kindle eBook Available
Origins of the Czech National Renascence	Hugh LeCaine Agnew	Agnew argues that the celebrated Czech national revival of the mid-nineteenth century had its intellectual origins in the Enlightenment, and through contact with the larger Slavic world, where ethnic and cultural heritage were defined. View the Digital Edition
Other Animals	Jane Costlow	Other Animals examines the interaction of animals and humans in Russian literature, art, and life from the eighteenth century until the present. The chapters explore the unique nature of the Russian experience in a range of human-animal relationships through tales of cruelty, interspecies communion and compassion, and efforts to either overcome or establish the human-animal divide. Kindle eBook Available
Peasant Dreams and Market Politics	Jeffrey Burds	Examines how peasant migration—the movement of males to cities for wage labor—affected villages before the Bolshevik revolution. New Russian sources are utilized. View the Digital Edition
Plekhanov in Russian History and Soviet Historiography	Samuel Baron	Known as the “father of Russian Marxism”, Plekhanov’s writings were relegated to oblivion during the Stalin era. Samuel H. Baron assembles a number of Plekhanov’s essays and views his place in the history of Russia’s revolutionary movement, and his theoretical differences with Lenin, Stalin and later Soviet ideologies. View the Digital Edition
Portrait of a Russian Province	Catherine Evtuhov	Through this study of the province of Nizhnii Novgorod in the nineteenth century, far from the power centers of Petersburg or Moscow, Evtuhov demonstrates how almost everything we thought we knew about Russian society was wrong. Instead of ignorant peasants, we find skilled farmers, artisans and craftsmen, and tradespeople. Instead of a powerful central state, we discover effective local projects and initiative in abundance. Instead of universal ignorance we are shown a lively cultural scene. Most of all, instead of an all-defining Russian exceptionalism we find a world similar to many other European societies. Winner of the 2012 ASEEES Vucinich Book Prize
Prague Panoramas	Cynthia Paces	Examines the creation of symbols of Czech national identity in the public spaces of the city during the twentieth century. These “sites of memory” were attempts to form a cohesive sense of self for a country and a people torn by war, foreign occupation, and internal strife. Kindle eBook Available
Provincial Landscapes	Donald Raleigh	This collection of essays dedicated to recovering the local aspects of Soviet history is sure to force a major reevaluation of the nation’s first thirty-five years. View the Digital Edition
Red Atom	Paul Josephson	Reveals the history and death of the Soviet Union’s peaceful use of nuclear power through exploration of both the projects and the technocratic and political elite who were dedicated to increasing state power through technology. Paul Josephson illuminates the problems that can befall any society heavily invested in large-scale technology. View the Digital Edition
Russia’s Factory Children	Boris Gorshkov	The first English-language account of the changing role of children in the Russian workforce, from the onset of industrialization until the Communist Revolution of 1917, and an examination of the laws that would establish children's labor rights. Kindle eBook Available
Russian Empire and Grand Duchy of Muscovy	Jacques Margeret	Margeret offers a unique first-hand account of the political intrigues of turbulent seventeenth-century Russia. Writing for the French public, to whom Muscovy was virtually unknown, Margeret also describes Russian geography, climate, flora and fauna, customs, the Russian Orthodox Church, the military, and daily life at court. View the Digital Edition
Selling to the Masses	Marjorie Hilton	A captivating history of consumer culture in Russia from the 1880s to the early 1930s. Hilton highlights the critical role of consumerism as a vehicle for shaping class and gender identities, modernity, urbanism, and as a mechanism of state power in the transition from tsarist autocracy to Soviet socialism.
Sexual Revolution in Bolshevik Russia	Gregory Carleton	A comprehensive literary and social history of sexual attitudes and mores in the Soviet Union during the 1920s, that reveals the complex and often contradictory impulses and ideas that permeated the culture. View the Digital Edition Kindle eBook Available
Song of the Forest	Stephen Brain	The Soviets are often viewed as insatiable industrialists who saw nature as a force to be tamed and exploited. Song of the Forest counters this assumption, uncovering significant evidence of Soviet conservation efforts in forestry, particularly under Josef Stalin. Stephen Brain profiles the leading Soviet-era conservationists, agencies, and administrators, and their efforts to formulate forest policy despite powerful ideological differences.
Soviet Mass Festivals, 1917–1991	Malte Rolf	Originally published in German, Malte Rolf’s highly acclaimed work examines the creation and perpetuation of large-scale celebrations such as May Day, the anniversary of the October Revolution, Harvest Day, and others throughout the Soviet era. He chronicles the overt political agendas, public displays of power, forced participation, and widespread use of these events in the Soviet drive to eradicate existing cultural norms and replace them with new icons of Soviet ideology. Rolf shows how the new Red Calendar became an essential tool in redefining celebrations in the Soviet Union.
Stalin’s Railroad	Matthew Payne	Matthew Payne details the building and impact of the Turkestano-Siberian Railroad, one of the major construction projects of Stalin’s first Five Year Plan. View the Digital Edition
Stalin’s School	Larry Holmes	Larry Holmes brings a human dimension to the Soviet Union of the 1930s and a new understanding of Stalinism as a cultural and psychological phenomenon through interviews and archives from School No. 25, where the children of such prominant individuals as Stalin, Molotov, and Paul Robeson attended. View the Digital Edition
Stalinist Confessions	Igal Halfin	A study of the Great Purge in the setting of Leningrad Communist University, seen in the rhetoric of the accused and their accusors. Kindle eBook Available
Thaw Generation	Ludmilla Alexeyeva	Winner of the 2009 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought Read a press release about this book An insider's look at the Soviet dissident movement—the intellectuals who, during the Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras, dared to challenge an oppressive system and demand the rights guaranteed by the Soviet constitution. Fired from their jobs, hunted by the KGB, “tried,” and imprisoned, Alexeyeva and other activists, through their dedication and sacrifices, focused international attention on thuman rights in the USSR.
Troubled Waters	I. Michael Aronson	Aronson refutes the widely-held belief that the anti-Jewish pogroms of 1881 in Russia were supported by the Czar, or those within his inner circle. He instead looks to social, economic and political forces of the time, and recounts the fateful events of this year in great detail. View the Digital Edition
Under the Influence	Kate Transchel	This book examines a highly significant chapter in the history of the Russian state and society: how those in power in Russian understood the impact of drinking on the state policy and on Russia’s working classes between 1895 and 1932. View the Digital Edition Kindle eBook Available
Varieties of Marxist Humanism	James Satterwhite	Satterwhite analyzes the work of revisionist thinkers in four East European countries whose critique of the orthodox “official” Marxism laid the philosophical groundwork for the 1989-1990 upheavals in Eastern Europe and a reassessment of Marxist thought generally throughout the world. View the Digital Edition
Visions of Annihilation	Rory Yeomans	The fascist Ustasha regime and its militias carried out a ruthless campaign of ethnic cleansing that killed an estimated half million Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies, and ended only with the defeat of the Axis powers in World War II. In Visions of Annihilation, Rory Yeomans analyzes the Ustasha movement’s use of culture to appeal to radical nationalist sentiments and legitimize its genocidal policies. He shows how the movement attempted to mobilize poets, novelists, filmmakers, visual artists, and intellectuals as purveyors of propaganda and visionaries of a utopian society. Yeomans chronicles the foundations of the movement, its key actors and ideologies, and reveals the unique conditions present in interwar Croatia that led to the rise of fascism.
Writing the Siege of Leningrad	Cynthia Simmons	Writing the Siege of Leningrad tells of women’s experiences keeping the city alive and functioning during the 900 day Siege of Leningrad. Utilizing the words and descriptions of these women, Cynthia Simmons and Nina Perlina tell the story of a previously overlooked section of the population.
Yugoslavia	Dennison Rusinow	This volume presents reports from Dennison Rusinow, a member of the American Universities Field Staff, on major political developments and life in Yugoslavia during the Cold War. View the Digital Edition Kindle eBook Available