Russia Before The 'Radiant Future'

Essays in Modern History, Culture, and Society

Michael Confino

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781845459932
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

One of the major historians of prerevolutionary Russia has collected in this volume some of his most important essays. Written over a number of years, these pioneering works have been revised and updated and are complemented by others being published for the first time. Thematically, they cover major subjects in Imperial Russian history and in historical writing, such as ideas and their role in historical change; the intelligentsia, the nobility, and peasant society; and historiography. The twelve essays raise cardinal questions about current scholarship on Russian history before the upheavals of 1917 and offer original interpretations that are of interest to the educated layman as well as the professional historian.

Table of contents

• RUSSIA BEFORE THE “RADIANT FUTURE”
• Contents
• Foreword
• A Note on Transliteration and Dates
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction — The Discipline and I
• Part One — The Fate of Ideas in History
• Chapter 1 — Alexander Herzen and Isaiah Berlin on Russia's Elusive Counter-Enlightenment
• Chapter 2 — Russian and Western European Roots of Soviet Totalitarianism
• Chapter 3 — Traditions, Old and New: Aspects of Protest and Dissent in Modern Russia
• Part Two — Social Groups in Comparative Perspective
• Chapter 4 — On Intellectuals and Intellectual Traditions in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Russia
• Chapter 5 — The Nobility in Russia and Western Europe: Contrasts and Similarities
• Chapter 6 — Comparing Russian Serfdom and American Slavery
• Chapter 7 — Agrarian Crisis, Urbanization, and the Russian Peasants at the End of the Old Regime, 1880s–1920s
• Part Three — Approaches to the History of Russia
• Chapter 8 — Reinventing the Enlightenment: Western Images of Eastern Realities in the Eighteenth Century
• Chapter 9 — Political Murder in Russian Culture: Comparisons and Counterfactuals
• Chapter 10 — Current Events and the Representation of the Past: Issues in Russian Historical Writing
• Afterword
• Selected Bibliography
• Index