The Russia Reader: History, Culture, Politics

The World Readers

by Adele Marie Barker (Editor), Bruce Grant (Editor), Rebecca Ruth Gould (Contributor)

Letters recording the reactions of ordinary Russians to the Revolution as events unfolded in 1917, an account of the day-to-day scramble to make a living after the end of the Soviet Union, and excerpts from a sixteenth-century manual instructing elite Muscovites on proper household management— The Russia Reader brings these and many other selections together in this introduction to the history, culture, and politics of the world’s largest country, from the earliest written accounts of the Russian people to today. Conveying the texture of everyday life alongside experiences of epic historical events, the book is filled with the voices of men and women, rulers and revolutionaries, peasants, soldiers, literary figures, émigrés, journalists, and scholars. Most of the selections are by Russians, and thirty are translated into English for the first time. Illustrated with maps, paintings, photographs, posters, and cartoons, The Russia Reader incorporates song lyrics, jokes, anecdotes, and folktales, as well as poems, essays, and fiction by writers including Akhmatova, Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, and Tolstoi. Transcripts from the show trials of major Party figures and an account of how staff at the Lenin Library in Moscow were instructed to interact with foreigners are among the many selections based on personal memoirs and archival materials only recently made available to the public. From a tenth-century emissary’s description of his encounters in Kyivan Rus’, to a scientist’s recollections of her life in a new research city built from scratch in Siberia during the 1950s, to a novelist’s depiction of the decadence of the “New Russians” in the 2000s, The Russia Reader is an extraordinary introduction to a vast and varied country.

Genres: History, Russia, Nonfiction, World History, European History

784 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Adele Barker is the author and editor of five books on Russian literature and culture. She has taught at the universities of Arizona and Washington. Most recently, she received a UCross Fellowship for her work and a Fulbright Senior Scholar grant to teach and write in Sri Lanka.

Reviews

[Beau Martin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Everything I was able to read was insightful and well chosen but I must give 1 star because in the digital version about 30% of the content is missing because “Duke university press doesn’t have online rights for this material.” It’s truly asinine to publish such an important work in a neutered form.
Not to mention the irony of 40 pages of copyright-blocked work in between accounts of Soviet censorship.

[Zeke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've had this book out from the library since last November. Yes, it took me that long to read it. I'd sometimes leave it aside for weeks. Easy to do, since it's a collection of essays, poetry and archival documents.
Astonishing breadth and depth. It's one of the few books that I really want to own. It's one I'd like to have, just to refer back to and maybe re-read sections.