Bøger om Rusland

With these essays, the writers help to put the mass of changes in the former USSR and the Eastern Bloc into a larger historical and sociological perspective by considering the social complexity which surrounds any political and economic system. Seen in this light, it is easier to understand why the surgical implants of the free market into Eastern Bloc and former Soviet countries have not been accepted.

This book focuses upon significant aspects of Stalinism as a system in the USSR. It sheds new light on established questions and addresses issues that have never before been raised in the study of Stalinism.

The book discusses how Russia's security policy has been and is being applied in specific cases, including the present war in Ukraine, the Russian anti-satellite program and Russia's contemporary Afghan policy.

This book explores how queerness and representations of queerness in media and culture are responding to the shifting socio-political, cultural and legal conditions in post-Soviet Russia, especially in the light of the so-called 'antigay' law of 2013. Based on extensive original research, the book outlines developments historically both before and after the fall of the Soviet Union and provides the background to the 2013 law. It discusses the proliferating alternative visions of gender and sexuality, which are increasingly prevalent in contemporary Russia. The book considers how these are represented in film, personal diaries, photography, theatre, protest art, fashion and creative industries, web series, news media and how they relate to the 'traditional values' rhetoric. Overall, the book provides a rich and detailed, yet complex insight into the developing nature of queerness in contemporary Russia.

This book examines what came to determine the local power and character of the Communist party-state at the level of the national non-Russian republics. It discusses how, although the Soviet Union looked centralised and monolithic to outsiders, local party-states formed their own fiefdoms and had very considerable influence over many policies areas within their republics. It argues that local party-states were shaped by two decisive relationships - to the central Communist party in Moscow and to local constituencies, especially to the local intelligentsia and the creative professions who constituted the local party-states' biggest potential adversaries. It shows how local party-states negotiated stability and their own survival, and contends that the effects of "Sovietisation" continue to be felt in the independent states which succeeded the republics, particularly in the field of the relationship with Moscow, which remains of immense importance to these countries.

This book covers the developing and important issue of the role and place of Islam in the increasingly complex dynamics of Russian politics. This is achieved by examining various aspects of Islam and Muslims in Russia from a multidisciplinary perspective.