perestroikas conversation intelligence institutions

books:

Russian Talk: Culture and Conversation During Perestroika

1 review
Nancy Ries

Cornell University Press, 1997

Insights into daily Soviet life through conversation
Ries's book has become one of the must-cite books among anthropologists working in Russia or the xSSR. This is one of the first, if not the first ethnographic work based on research in an urban setting. Anthropologists typically head to the tundra or the villages, but most Russians live in very large cities. She presents an ethnography of conversations, usually in the kitchen around drinking ...

Angels in America

1 review
Tony Kushner

Nick Hern Books, 1994

Pushed me out of my comfort zone
I think this might have been the first piece of gay literature that I've ever read. Or at least it's the longest. It's definitely written by a gay guy. It has more characters than any other non-musical play that I've ever read. It was dizzying, and was similar to how I imagine a drag show like Le Cage would go. It had Mormons in it, but it wasn't about Mormons. I think that only three ...

The "Children of Perestroika" Come of Age: Young People of Moscow Talk About Life in the New Russia

1 review
Deborah Adelman

M.E. Sharpe, 1994

Children of Perestroika Come of Agr
Bought the book as a gift and the recipient said it was just what he was looking for

The Perestroika Deception : Memoranda to the Central Intelligence Agency

6 reviews
Anatoliy Golitsyn

Edward Harle Ltd, 1998

Communism is NOT dead
Anatoliy Golitsyn worked inside the system, inside the KGB. He predicted what later has become reality - Russia clearly staged the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the KGB financed all so called dissidents that run the Eastern European governments, Golitsyn has analized the strategic communist plan in detail and yet our government is not listening and our so called media is not paying ...

Perestroika: A Marxist Critique

1 review
Sam Marcy

Ww Pub, 1990

Must reading to understand the USSR's collapse
A unique book, written as the events unfolded in the USSR. Sam Marcy, Marxist thinker and organizer analyzed the events before the fall of the Soviet Union. Marcy argues that Gorbachev's economic reforms, known as perestroika, were hurting the Soviet workers, breeding greater inequality and increasing antagonisms among the many nationalities in the USSR. "...must reading for all who wish to ...

Perestroika of Soviet agriculture: The peasant view

1 review
Ethel Dunn

National Council for Soviet and East European Research, 1991

The best resource for Puccini's operas
William Ashbrook's "The Operas of Puccini" is an accurate, gracefully written, and thoroughly interesting account of its subject. For each opera, Ashbrook methodically examines literary sources, discusses relevant biographical evidence, and analyzes musical "fingerprints" of Puccini's style. Ashbrook clearly loves his subject (which cannot be said for Charles Osborne, whose similar but ...

Perestroika!: The Raucous Rebellion in Political Science

1 review

Yale University Press, 2005

Thank you, Prof. Monroe, for tackling the taboo
An excellent overview of the debate that strikes at the wizened heart of a once-mighty discipline. The descent of political science (as practiced in the USA) into method-driven, statistical irrelevance reached a breaking point just a few years ago: the tide is now turning, thanks in no small measure to this book.

Neotraditionalism in the Russian North: Indigenous Peoples and the Legacy of Perestroika (Circumpolar ...

1 review

University of Washington Press, 1999

Interesting and timeless
Aleksandr Pika is a great northern anthropologist, and I am greatful that his work has been translated into English. This book is an excellent study of USSR policy as it has affected (and continues to affect) Native Siberians.

Perestroika Versus Socialism: Stalinism and the Restoration of Capitalism in the USSR

1 review
David North

Mehring Books, Incorporated, 1989

A Prescient Assessment of Gorbachev
This book is exceptional in one important respect: it foresaw, at a time when few other "specialists" in the field of Soviet studies did, the disastrous and reactionary consequences of Gorbachev's policies. The author, dismissing the clieches of the mass media, argues that Gorbachev "perestroika" represented a climactic episode in the Stalinist counterrevolution against the socialist principles ...

Religion in the New Russia: The Impact of Perestroika on the Varieties of Religious Life in the Soviet Union

1 review
Jim Forest

Crossroad Pub Co, 1990

Glimpse of glasnost PLUS Jim Forest's journey to Orthodox Christianity
Jim Forest has been Protestant, Catholic, worked with Dorothy Day at the Catholic Worker, was a Vietnam Era peace activist, an author, and then when he went to look into the state of all religions in the late 1980s in the Soviet Union (by then he was living in the Netherlands), he discovered Eastern Orthodox Christianity sounded like Truth to boot! Obviously some of this is dated today, although ...

Seven Years that Changed the World: Perestroika in Perspective

1 review
Archie Brown

Oxford University Press, USA, 2009

The best account about the end of the cold war
Archie Brown has written the best account about the end of the Cold War. According to Brown it was Gorbachev and not either Reagan or the democrats in Eastern Europe that were responsible for the fall of Gorbachev. Brown contradicts the thesis by Timothy Garton Ash which states that the events in Poland in the late seventies and early eighties were responsible for the fall of Communism by stating ...

The Awakening of the Soviet Union

1 review
Geoffrey Hosking

Harvard University Press, 1990

The country that came in from the cold
"Ever since Krushchev eased the (Stalinist) terror in the late '50s . . . there have been warnings that we were misunderstanding" the USSR, writes Geoffrey Hosking, a University of London historian of Russia. This is true. Various memoirs, such as "Hustling on Gorky Street," which was the autobiography of a petty hoodlum in South Russia, indicated that the new, milder Communist totalitarianism ...

Time and Revolution: Marxism and the Design of Soviet Institutions

1 review
Stephen E. Hanson

The University of North Carolina Press, 1997

An important work!
This is an excellent and innovative examination of the effects the Marxist approach to time had on the Soviet Union. A masterful blend of historical and philosophical discourse--a great read!

In the Soviet House of Culture: A Century of Perestroikas

5 reviews
Bruce Grant

Princeton University Press, 1995

Landmark ethnography of Siberian accessible to non-academics
In the House of Soviet Culture is the first recipient of the American Ethnological Society Book Prize for First Book, and rightfully so, for Bruce Grant has given us a great ethnography of the Nivkh on Sakhalin Island, combining his own experiences on the island with detailed historical analysis. Masterfully combining fieldwork and oral history with archival and published historical materials, ...

Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika

15 reviews
Tony Kushner

Theatre Communications Group, 1993

Strange bedfellows
If you haven't yet read it, please read the prequel to this play, `Angels in America, Pt. 1: Millennium Approaches' prior to this one. The staging is a bit different, similar in style (rapid scene changes, minimalist set, etc.) but it starts out with the wreckage from the Angel's entry in the previous play. Kushner described this play as a comedy, but I cannot see it that way. Except for irony ...

Steeltown, USSR: Soviet Society in the Gorbachev Era

1 review
Stephen Kotkin

University of California Press, 1991

now dated, but still quite good!
Quite excellent view of the late-Soviet reality through the eyes of one Russian industrial town. Very engaging narrative. Highly recommended, along with the venerable classic THE RUSSIANS by Hedrick Smith. In fact I would recommend this book before I would recommend's Hedrick Smith's follow up book THE NEW RUSSIANS, in all honesty. STEELTOWN, USSR is truer in spirit and kinship to the earlier ...

Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Part One: Millennium Approaches Part Two: Perestroika

44 reviews
Tony Kushner

Theatre Communications Group, 2003

A Wonderful Read
After watching the Angels in America DVD, I wanted to see how it was originally as a play, and it does not disappoint. In many ways, I think it's a better experience reading this play than it was to see it on my tiny television. Angels in America is essentially a theatrical work, and the miniseries came off just as that, a filmed stage play, espcially in Part 1: Millenium Approaches, so that it ...

Soviet Military Expenditure and Economic Change Under Perestroika

1 review
Saadet Deger, Somnath Sen

Oxford University Press, 1994

Dr.Azeem Alam Khan Consultant Dermatologist Dammam KSA
I bought this wonderful book a month ago,read it carefully.It's a small,compact, up to date book with all the basic information regarding common skin disorders. It is quite informative,pictures are clear and nice,sections,diagrams and Illustrations are well arranged.I recommend this book to all dermatologists,medical students and health professionals.

The Turning Point

1 review
Nikolai Shmelev, Vladimir Popov

Doubleday, 1989

Death of Central Economic Planning
The authors, two Leninist economists from the (then) Soviet Union, drive the last nail into the coffin of central economic planning, also known as the command economy. While still favoring Socialism (collective ownership of the means of production; as in Lenin's New Economic Policy of the middle 1920's), they point out in great detail why individual enterprises and individual workers must be ...

Perestroika Sunset

12 reviews
Alan Stang

Patton House, 2000

What's the REAL Vietnam POW/MIA story?
Alan Stang delivers a scathing denouncement of the United States Government and its part in the MIA/POW cover-up and related issues during the Vietnam war and the Communist plot to block efforts to search for these men. We have already heard rumors that such a plot existed, and at least one politician in this story has to be based on a real person. Read the book, you'll recognize him. I came ...

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