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260 books match the query 'Soviet Union' and 4 start with i

cover of Imperial Russia and the Struggle for Latin American Independence, 1808–1828

Imperial Russia and the Struggle for Latin American Independence, 1808–1828

By Russell H. Bartley

University of Texas Press, 1978

This study, the first of its kind in English, examines Russian responses to the independence movement in Latin America during the early nineteenth century. From a strictly presentist perspective, the investigation of this subject contributes to the historiography of colonialism and of Latin America's relations with the major world powers. In addition, it rounds out the story of foreign interests in the emancipation of Spanish and Portuguese America, while at the same time shedding new light on the history of Russian overseas expansion.

The study probes the major determinants of Russian responses to the struggle for independence of colonial Latin America and evaluates, from a European perspective, the actual impact of tsarist policy on the course of those historic events. Drawing on a wide range of printed materials and on hitherto unused manuscript sources from the archives and libraries of Spain, Portugal, Brazil, and the USSR, it isolates Russian New World objectives during the first decades of the nineteenth century and relates those objectives to the formulation of tsarist policy toward the insurgent Iberian colonies.

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cover of Importing the European Army: The Introduction of European Military Techniques and Institutions in the Extra-European World, 1600-1914

Importing the European Army

The Introduction of European Military Techniques and Institutions in the Extra-European World, 1600-1914

David B. Ralston

University of Chicago Press, 1996

In a study that extends well beyond military history, David B. Ralston documents the ways in which five different countries—Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, China, and Japan—refashioned their armed forces along European lines during the three centuries after 1600. The appropriation of Western military institutions in countries outside of Europe was, Ralston argues, the major force driving these countries to adopt European administrative, economic, and cultural modes.

Following the same format in his discussion of each country, Ralston makes this central theme in world history easily accessible to students while offering scholars a sophisticated understanding of the exact nature of the changes brought about by Europeanizing military reforms.

David B. Ralston, associate professor of history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the author of The Army of the Republic.
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cover of In Stalin's Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction

In Stalin's Time

Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction

Vera S. Dunham

Duke University Press, 1990

This new edition of In Stalin’s Time, which brings back into print Vera Dunham’s 1976 landmark study of popular fiction in the Soviet Union during the Stalin regime, is updated to include new material by the author and a new introduction by Richard Sheldon. Dunham describes how the middle-brow or postwar establishmentarian literature of the Stalinist period was a product of a “Big Deal” intended to propagate values and establish an alliance between the regime and the middle class. Both descriptive and analytical, Dunham’s complex picture of “high totalitarianism” not only reveals insights into the details of Soviet life but illuminates important theoretical questions about the role of literature in the political structure of Soviet society.
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cover of In the Jaws of the Crocodile: A Soviet Memoir

In the Jaws of the Crocodile

A Soviet Memoir

Emil Draitser

University of Wisconsin Press, 2021

Emil Draitser dreamed of becoming a writer. Born to a working-class Jewish family in the USSR on the eve of World War II, he came of age during the Brezhnev era, often considered the nadir of Soviet culture. Bored with an engineering job, he found refuge in writing, attracting the attention of a Moscow editor who encouraged him to try his hand at satire. He spent the next decade contributing to Crocodile, the major Party-sponsored magazine known for its sharp-tongued essays and caustic cartoons. After he got in trouble for criticizing an important Soviet official, he began weighing the heavy decision of whether to emigrate.

In this captivating memoir, Draitser explores what it means to be a satirist in a country lacking freedom of expression. His experience provides a window into the lives of a generation of artists who were allowed to poke fun and make readers laugh, as long as they toed a narrow, state-approved line. In the Jaws of the Crocodile also includes several of Draitser’s wry pieces translated into English for the first time.
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