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One of the most astounding aftershocks of the collapse of the Soviet Union was the massive immigration of Russian Jews to Israel. Today, Russian speakers constitute one-sixth of Israel's total population. No other country in the world has absorbed such a prodigious number of immigrants in such a short period. The implications of this phenomenon are immense both locally (given the geopolitical situation in the Middle East) and globally (as multicultural and multiethnic states become the rule rather than the exception). For a growing number of immigrants worldwide, the experience of living across different cultures, speaking different languages, and accommodating different--and often incompatible--identities is a daily reality. This reality is a challenge to the scholar striving to understand the origin and nature of cultural identity. Languages can be learned, economic constraints overcome, social mores assimilated. But identity persists through generations, setting immigrants and their children apart from their adoptive country.The story of the former Russians in Israel is an illuminating example of this global trend. The Russian Jews who came to Israel were initially welcomed as prodigal sons coming home. Their connection to their "historical motherland" was seemingly cemented not only by their Jewish ethnicity, but also by a potent Russian influence upon Zionism. The first Zionist settlers in Palestine were mostly from Russia and Poland, and Russian literature, music, and sensibility had had a profound effect upon the emerging Hebrew culture. Thus, it seemed that while facing the usual economic challenges of immigrations, the "Russians," as they came to be known, would have little problem acclimatizing in Israel. The reality has been quite different, marked by mutual incomprehension and cultural mistranslation. While achieving a prominent place in Israeli economy, the Russians in Israel have faced discrimination and stereotyping. And their own response to Israeli culture and society has largely been one of rejection and disdain. If Israel has failed to integrate the newcomers, the newcomers have shown little interest in being integrated. Thus, the story of the post-Soviet Jews in Israel illustrates a general phenomenon of cultural divergence, in which history carves different identities out of common stock. Besides marking a turning point in the development of Israel, it belongs to the larger picture of the contemporary world, profoundly marked by the collapse of the catastrophic utopias of Nazism and Communism. And yet this story has not adequately been dealt with by the academy. There have been relatively few studies of the Russian immigration to Israel and none that situates the phenomenon in a cultural, rather than purely sociological, context. Elana Gomel's book, The Pilgrim Soul: Being Russian in Israel, is an original and exciting investigation of the Russian community in Israel. It analyzes the narratives through which Russian Jewry defines itself and connects them to the legacy of Soviet history. It engages with such key elements of the Russian-Israeli identity as the aversion from organized religion, the challenge of bilingualism, the cult of romantic passion, and even the singular fondness for science fiction. It provides factual information on the social, economic, and political situation of the Russians in Israel but relates the data to an overall interpretation of the community's cultural history. At the same time, the book goes beyond the specificity of its subject by focusing on the theoretical issues of identity formation, historical trauma, and utopian disillusionment.The Pilgrim Soul is an important book for all collections in cultural studies, ethnic and immigrant studies, Israeli studies, and Soviet studies. It will appeal to a variety of readers interested in the issues of immigration, multiculturalism, and identity formation. ... Read more

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The Armory Chamber, a part of the Moscow Kremlin historical and cultural complex, is the oldest museum in Russia. Its collection consists of the rarest productions of Russian and foreign masters, a trove of weapons and equestrian equipment. This lavishly illustrated, full-color book is sure to appeal to those who value fine craftsmanship and seek deeper insight into the great struggles and conflicts of the past. ... Read more

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In the midst of the violent, revolutionary turmoil that accompanied the last decade of tsarist rule in the Russian Empire, many Jews came to reject what they regarded as the apocalyptic and utopian prophecies of political dreamers and religious fanatics, preferring instead to focus on the promotion of cultural development in the present. Jewish Public Culture in the Late Russian Empire examines the cultural identities that Jews were creating and disseminating through voluntary associations such as libraries, drama circles, literary clubs, historical societies, and even fire brigades. Jeffrey Veidlinger explores the venues in which prominent cultural figures -- including Sholem Aleichem, Mendele Moykher Sforim, and Simon Dubnov -- interacted with the general Jewish public, encouraging Jewish expression within Russia's multicultural society. By highlighting the cultural experiences shared by Jews of diverse social backgrounds -- from seamstresses to parliamentarians -- and in disparate geographic locales -- from Ukrainian shtetls to Polish metropolises -- the book revises traditional views of Jewish society in the late Russian Empire.

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This work is about the swift process of acculturation of antisemitism in Japana Shintoist/Buddhist society with no Jews in the decade following the First World War due to the impact of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Major Japanese primary sources related to the subject are introduced in detail and analyzed in the book for the first time in any language: the 1921 Imai TokioYoshino Sakuz impromptu debate, Higuchi Tsuyanoskes best-seller Yudayaka [The Jewish Peril], the March 1929 roundtable on the Jewish Problem organized by the Heibon publishing house, and writings by Ariga Seika, Soebe Inchinoske, Yamanaka Minetar, Kinoshta Masao, and others. This is also the case with most materials mentioned in the section on Japanese awareness of antisemitism before and during the First World War. In addition, the author proposes, defines, and demonstrates the applicability of the term Conspiracy and Scapegoating Antisemitism to both non-Japanese and Japanese milieux. ... Read more

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In "Memory Eternal", Sergei Kan combines anthropology and history, anecdote and theory to portray the encounter between the Tlingit Indians and the Russian Orthodox Church in Alaska in the late 1700s and to analyze the indigenous Orthodoxy that developed over the next 200 years. As a native speaker of Russian with eighteen years of fieldwork experience among the Tlingit, Kan is uniquely qualified to relate little-known material from the archives of the Russian church in Alaska to Tlingit oral history and his own observations.By weighing the one body of evidence against the other, he has reevaluated this history, arriving at a persuasive new concept of 'converged agendas' - the view that the Tlingit and the Russians tended to act in mutually beneficial ways but for entirely different reasons throughout the period of their contact with one another. The Russian-American Company began operations in southeastern Alaska in the 1790s. Against a description of Tlingit culture at the time of the Russians' arrival, Kan examines Russian Orthodox theology, ritual practice, and missionary methods, and the Tlingit response to them.An uneasy symbiosis characterized the early era of the Russian-American Company, when the trading relationship outweighed any spiritual or social rapprochement.A second, major focus of Kan's study is the Tlingit experience with American colonial domination. He attributes a sudden revival of Tlingit interest in Orthodoxy in the 1880s as their attempt to maintain independence in the face of concerted efforts by the newcomers (and especially Presbyterian missionaries) to Americanize them."Memory Eternal" shows the colonial encounter to be both a power struggle and a dialogue between different systems of meaning. It portrays Native Alaskans not as helpless victims but as historical agents who attempted to adjust to the changing reality of their social world without abandoning fundamental principals of their precolonial sociocultural order or their strong sense of self-respect. Sergei Kan is professor of anthropology and Native American studies at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. ... Read more

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THIS 28 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: Story of the Gypsies, by Konrad Bercovici. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 0766130789. ... Read more

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Patty Gray explores why the local Chukotko people's "indigenous rights movement," which asserts that Chukotko people should enjoy a privileged cultural or political space, has been unsuccessful.Gray analyzes the movement as a continuation of Soviet tendencies rather than something comparable to Native Rights movements in the Russian Far North. She argues that the intellectuals leading the movement are dominantly urban and educated at Soviet schools, while the population they represent is largely rural and poorly educated. ... Read more

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This book examines the beliefs and views of those who identified themselves as "democrats" during the Gorbachev era in Soviet politics, and traces the development of those beliefs in the post-Soviet era. It bases its analysis on attitudes towards the Soviet state, beliefs about the ideal future democracy, and beliefs about Russia's place in the world. Lukin also places ideology of Russian democrats into the context of Russian and world intellectual history. ... Read more

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Russian youth culture has been a subject of great interest to researchers since 1991, but most studies to date have failed to consider the global context. Looking West? engages theories of cultural globalization to chart how post-Soviet Russia's opening up to the West has been reflected in the cultural practices of its young people. Visitors to Russia's cities often interpret the presence of designer clothes shops, Internet cafes, and a vibrant club scene as evidence of the 'Westernization' of Russian youth. As Looking West? shows, however, the younger generation has adopted a 'pick and mix' strategy with regard to Western cultural commodities that reflects a receptiveness to the global alongside a precious guarding of the local. The authors show us how young people perceive Russia to be positioned in current global flows of cultural exchange, what their sense of Russia's place in the new global order is, and how they manage to 'live with the West' on a daily basis. Looking West? represents an important landmark in Russian-Western collaborative research. Hilary Pilkington and Elena Omel'chenko have been at the heart of an eight-year collaboration between the University of Birmingham (U.K.) and Ul'ianovsk State University (Russia). This book was written by Pilkington and Omel'chenko with the team of researchers on the project--Moya Flynn, Ul'iana Bliudina, and Elena Starkova. ... Read more

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In spite of the central role played by worker-atheists in the revolutionary narratives of 1905 and 1917, the majority of Russian workers in the late Imperial era continued to view their lives and the society around them through the prism of religious belief, even in St. Petersburg, the most secularized and radical city in the Empire. This book is devoted to their story; while by no means overlooking those who abandoned their faith, it gives voice and visibility to workers who reacted to the material and spiritual poverty of the "modern" factory in fundamentally religious, though often un-Orthodox, ways. Drawing on a wide range of archival and published sources, this study explores the extent to which the various components of workers' religious identity--their practices, sensibilities, communities, and beliefs about God, self, and society--were transformed by the experience of urban factory life. At the same time, it looks at the myriad ways in which the spiritual needs and demands of the working-class laity precipitated changes in the practice of Orthodoxy--how rituals were adapted, identities reshaped, and communities restructured--enabling the faith to "survive" in the urban factory environment not just as an archaic remnant of rural consciousness and practice, but as an evolving and sometimes essential dimension of worker culture. No less importantly, this book focuses on the response of the Orthodox clergy to workers' religious and spiritual struggles, with particular emphasis on the moral complexities posed by the crisis of labor in 1905. Finally, "Working Souls" highlights the religious dimensions of the emerging labor and revolutionary movements, and in so doing, reveals important intellectual and moral parallels between the popular spiritual and political revolutions of 1905-17. ... Read more

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Perestroika and the end of the Soviet Union transformed every aspect of life in Russia, and as hope began to give way to pessimism, popular culture came to reflect the anxiety and despair felt by more and more Russians. Free from censorship for the first time in Russia's history, the popular culture industry (publishing, film, and television) began to disseminate works that featured increasingly explicit images and descriptions of sex and violence.

In Overkill, Eliot Borenstein explores this lurid and often-disturbing cultural landscape in close, imaginative readings of such works as You're Just a Slut, My Dear! (Ty prosto shliukha, dorogaia!), a novel about sexual slavery and illegal organ harvesting; the Nympho trilogy of books featuring a Chechen-fighting sex addict; and the Mad Dog and Antikiller series of books and films recounting, respectively, the exploits of the Russian Rambo and an assassin killing in the cause of justice. Borenstein argues that the popular cultural products consumed in the post-perestroika era were more than just diversions; they allowed Russians to indulge their despair over economic woes and everyday threats. At the same time, they built a notion of nationalism or heroism that could be maintained even under the most miserable of social conditions, when consumers felt most powerless.

For Borenstein, the myriad depictions of deviance in pornographic and also detectiv fiction, with their patently excessive and appalling details of social and moral decay, represented the popular culture industry's response to the otherwise unimaginable scale of Russia's national collapse. "The full sense of collapse," he writes, "required a panoptic view that only the media and culture industry were eager to provide, amalgamating national collapse into one master narrative that would then be readily available to most individuals as a framework for understanding their own suffering and their own fears." ... Read more

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In a small village beside a reed-lined lake in the Russian north, a cluster of farmers has lived for centuries -- in the time of tsars and feudal landlords; Bolsheviks and civil wars; collectivization and socialism; perestroika and open markets. Solovyovo is about the place and power of social memory. Based on extensive anthropological fieldwork in that single village, it shows how villagers configure, transmit, and enact social memory through narrative genres, religious practice, social organization, commemoration, and the symbolism of space. Margaret Paxson relates present-day beliefs, rituals, and practices to the remembered traditions articulated by her informants. She brings to life the everyday social and agricultural routines of the villagers as well as holiday observances, religious practices, cosmology, beliefs and practices surrounding health and illness, the melding of Orthodox and communist traditions and their post-Soviet evolution, and the role of the yearly calendar in regulating village lives. The result is a compelling ethnography of a Russian village, the first of its kind in modern, North American anthropology.

Customer Reviews (3)

detailed and respectful
This is a very scholarly work by an accomplished archeologist. I am not sure the book completes a theme, although there is an attempt in the afterword to reconcile the vast amount of information gathered in the volume. Despite it's setting in a tiny Russian village in post-glasnostRussia, I never particularly thought of this as a Russian study so much as a study of collective memory and culture among a group of isolated people for whom change can be more easily measured. Although the detail might strike some as tedious, I had no deadline and found it to be full of fascinating observations. The author spent a total of 17 months in Solovoyo, staying several months at a time with an elderly farming couple. The couple took her in as a daughter, she shared in their lives and labor and became "one's own" (one of them.) Paxson documented the villagers' stories and explanations of cultural memory with academic fervor and unfailing respect. Also, being fluent in the Russian language, she was able to convey the complexities of meaning imbedded in words and their prefixes, suffixes and conjugations. The use of language is very important in the conveying of culture. I have studied Russian just enough to appreciate Paxson's understanding of the subtleties of that language.

In Solovoyo a spiritual world is intermingled with the physical. Words are treated as substance; they take up space, have physical effects. "Sometimes confrontation with the miracle world can happen by simply awakening it...by weighty and dangerous words. Such words are snatched up and can result in calling into form that which had no form, causing a chain of events that can be dangerous and even deadly."

The description of illness is marked by the language of weight and weightiness. "Envy will destroy the soul... It's heavy. There is a heaviness that oppresses..."Healing involves a lightening of the weight.

The theme of the powerful and danger-fraught crossing of thresholds is explored --marriage, the space at the edge of the village and the beginning of the forest, birth, returning to the church, the lifting of oppression.

The scientization of healing during the Soviet era did not totally eliminate the power of the healing sorcerer from previous centuries. In fact, it was her observation of the partial, but strong survival of healing through sorcery that first interested Paxson in the study of collective memory in the Russian village. Her host was the village healer, and she observed a steady stream of visitors seeking relief from physical and psychological maladies. This included family squabbles, chronic ailments, and cows who would not give milk. The healer often advised people to seek the advice of a medical doctor --which involved long bus trips into larger towns and stays in inadequate hospitals--but he also dispensed remedies which might appear to be laughably primitive, but which also invoked the healing energies of the afflicted.The villagers' theories about disease and luck appear as the accumulation of hundreds of years of experience, and sometimes not very much in conflict with modern medical theories, as for instance the ideas about early trauma being the source of chronic physical and psychological ailments--a theory which is coming into it's own again in western medicine.

Another theme studied is the calendar, by what powers -political and natural--it is shaped, the morphing of holidays to the purposes of political powers, the resistance to change on the part of the dominated.These are not new themes in the study of cultures, but they are explored to the point of tedium in Ms Paxson's work. Only if you find these details interesting will you be able to stick with the volume. I did find it that interesting.

The strength in quiet strength.
Margaret Paxson's book is an opening onto the endurance of the rural Russian's psyche.
Solovyovo speaks of the Being found within a specific portion of the Russian society that carried their past into the present as the everyday of their existence. The world turned topsy-turvy around Solovyovo and sometimes bled into the village but the people took those events and made them their own.

Not intending be cliche' or become fairy tale sentimental over "the old country" but as a Russian I will state there are intrinsic values of beliefs and emotions that are deeply populated within our mysterious Soul. Those things that in their infinite parts or pieces we carry alongside us no matter how many years or generations removed from the Russian Soil. Years after coming to America the early Twentieth Century immigrant generations chose to a certain extent to keep our Russian-ness or Slavic ways publically closed so as to be perceived as more "American." Too much of our ethnic essence was only quietly passed from lineage to lineage among the svoi and much of the richness of the Russian heart and mind was lost to the public consciousness. Whereas Margaret Paxson, initially chuzhoi, reveals to the reader a group that received everything the Tsars or Soviets placed upon their village, they consummed that history and carried it forward in an evolution that held true to their essence. It wasn't always pretty but it was what it was as the village took what they had and moved with it.

Perhaps those individuals descended from Rodina Mat - Mati Syra Zemila (The Motherland / Mother Russia / Moist Mother Earth) may find the connections and answers to their own ancestral callings by relating to the social memory both clean - unclean, dark - light lived and recorded within the lives of Solovyovo.

I have recommended and gifted this book to friends and in-laws to show a side of Russia that isn't consumed by warheads and perhaps to create an understanding of where the internal spark and light came from as to why I do the things I do be they emotional, metaphysical or spiritual - the other Russian Trinity.

Bolshoi spasibo Margaret Paxson

Original thesis!
The author lived among eleven denizens of a village in north Russia.This cultural anthropological work is of use to both the scholar and layman.Mores and folkways are eloquently discussed.Did the American Peace Corps Volunteers who served in Russia have similar experiences? ... Read more

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In contemporary armies, violence among soldiers seems to be a universal phenomenon found in both professional and drafted armies. However, the comparison of violent practices in various armies around the world allows us to identify specific features linked to those countries' sociological, political or anthropological contexts. Hazing, for example, seems to be more violent in the armies of transitional societies (Russia, Eastern Europe, Latin America), where social tensions encountered by citizens in their daily lives are carried over to, and sometimes intensified in, the military. The comparison of Russian dedovshchina with the situation in other countries makes it possible to identify universal, transitional and national characteristics of military violence. Contents: Konstantin Bannikov on the consequences of the spread throughout society of archaic violence produced by the Russian army; Anna Colin Lebedev on the perception of military violence in Russian society; Anton Oleynik on informal relationships among prisoners and conscripts; Kirill Podrabinek on the reasons of the prevalence of dedovshchina in the post-Soviet context; Igor Obraztsov on the historical roots of dedovshchina; Vadim Mikhailin on the role of language in the military milieu; Julie Elkner on the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers; Bakit Katchekeyev on hazing in the Kyrgyz army; Irakli Sesiashvili on hazing in the Georgian army; Hana Cervinkova on hazing in the Czech army; James Wither on bullying in the British army; Eduardo Paes-Machado & Carlos Linhares de Albuquerque on hazing in the Brazilian police; Joris Van Bladel on dedovshchina and the all-volunteer force. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

TEXTBOOK
THIS BOOK WAS RECOMMENDED BY AMAZON. I THINK THIS WAS BECAUSE I BOUGHT SEVERAL BOOKS ON ALASKAN WILDERNESS AND NATIVES. I THOUGHT THIS BOOK WOULD BE AN INTERESTING NATIVE CONTINUUM.

THE DESCRIPTION GIVEN ON THE AMAZON WEBSITE WAS ACCURATE BUT INCOMPLETE.

THE BOOK IS A STIFFLY WRITTEN TEXTBOOK STUDY WITH MANY STUDY REFERENCES. THE PICTURES ARE POOR. THE PRINT IS SMALL. THE WRITING NEEDS EDITING.

THERE IS A LOT OF REFERENCE TO POLITICS AND COMMUNISM.


IF I HAD THIS REVIEW OR A BETTER GLANCE THROUGH THE BOOK FIRST, I WOULDN'T HAVE BOUGHT IT.

A glimpse of life in a Russian Arctic village
Anna Kerttula was the first American anthropologist to conduct long-term fieldwork in Chukotka, which is located in eastern Russia just across the Bering Strait from Alaska. She comes from a background that gives her a unique and very valuable perspective on Chukotka: she was raised in a rural Alaskan family, and visited many Alaskan Inuit and Yup'ik villages as a child. All that time, she was acutely aware of the presence of Chukotka and its Native villages just out of reach beyond what was dubbed the "ice curtain" between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. She dreamed of going there, and was finally able to do so as a graduate student in anthropology. In the Soviet period, because Chukotka was so close to the United States, it was a carefully-guarded closed region -- even Russians had to have special permission to travel there. Kerttula began her fieldwork in the village of Sireniki on Chukotka's coast in 1989, two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, so she had the rare opportunity to experience life there before the drastic changes that came in the 1990s. She describes for us many different aspects of the lives of the Yup'iks, Chukchis, and Russian "Newcomers" who live in this village -- their occupations of reindeer herding and sea mammal hunting for the Soviet collective farm in the village; their ideas about social relationships, marriage and family, etc.; the symbolic importance of the tundra and the sea. It is a fascinating glimpse of daily life on the eve of the Soviet Union's demise. This is an excellent introduction for anyone interested in the Russian Arctic (a.k.a. Siberia)-- it is well-written, accessible, and full of fascintating profiles of the inhabitants of this small village. Lots of good black and white photos, too. ... Read more

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Hedrick Smith has done what we all wish we could do: he has gone to Russia and spoken to the people. Over steaming samovars, in cramped flats, and on dirt-floors, he has spoken to peasants and bureaucrats, artists and officials. He has studied their customs and their governments and shares his fascinating insights and fresh perspectives with us.
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Customer Reviews (14)

Soviet Russia in living colors
The author combines a deep understanding of the people in the Soviet Russia with an easy-going writing style.

This book covers a multitude of experiences foreigners didn't normally get to have in Soviet Russia.As an American journalist who speaks decent(?) Russian, Hendrick Smith both partakes in the Soviet Russia's shiny facade created specifically for Western consumption, and engages into normal Soviet reality, that is, normal for Russian citizens.He and his family meet and befriend people in the true Russian friendships - where secrets are discussed, unorthodox ideas are shared, and yes, lots of vodka is consumed.

And then there are reflections and comparisons and cleverly and generously supplied statistics from official Russian-approved sources and guesstimates by western researchers about the scale of things in Soviet Russia.

This books discusses both Soviet and American propaganda of the 70s, but the story itself is fair and earnest and told by a kind and involved observer.

Revealing Look at Soviet Union circa 1970's
Journalist Hendrick Smith spent several years in Russia and wrote what he observed and experienced.Readers see life under the Soviet system circa 1970's.Soviet freedom meant working, speaking freely if you never criticized the government, and voting for the one candidate the Communist Government listed on the ballot - with Election Day a holiday and the government reminding you to vote. As the author shows, the Soviet government didn't hide its suspicions; imagine needing an internal passport (listing your ethnicity) to travel within Russia.Of course, no travel was permitted outside Russia and perhaps its Warsaw Pact satellites.Readers also learn about centralized planning, shortages, inefficiencies, block housing, and long lines at the stores.In short, we get a revealing look at where communism tragically began in 1917, and would collapse less than two decades later.Perhaps most telling is when Mr. Smith recognized his ever-present tail from the secret police, and wordlessly handed the snoop an ice cream cone from a street vendor.Having visited East Germany and Communist China, I felt that stifling concern one feels when desiring to speak freely.In China, it was amusing to see our Chinese guide/interpreters, forbidden to speak openly of their nation's politics, freely join our group debate about Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, and the U.S. Government.

I gave this dated book just four stars because the author might have reduced his manuscript by some 50 pages.Still, this is a nicely revealing, still-relevant look at Soviet Russia.

what does it mean to live in a different culture
This book does an excellent job of explaining that. Smith discusses how Americans and Russians operate on different premises about human nature.Americans believe that people can govern themselves based on internal restraints. So not many external restraints are needed. Russians believe that people are naturally unruly and anarchic and need a strong hand to restrain them. Some of the most interesting parts of the books are those explaining how the Russians, though hating communism and lack of freedom and being spied upon, were nostalgic for Stalin at the same time. Although by American standards, the Russians were very obedient to authority, the Russians themselves, as Smith tells it, often complained that things were falling apart and that people needed more discipline. The book is a fascinating look at how different peoples think differently.

Another good part and fascinating to Americans are the chapters on shopping.People stand in line for everything, including groceries. Sometimes the store runs out of whatever it is, bread, sausages, olives, before they get to you.Peoplecarry with them lists of friends' and families' shoe sizes and clothing sizes so that if they run into something desirable they can buy it before it is all gone. If you see a line of people waiting to buy something, you get in line even if you don't know what it is, just in case it is something good, perhaps a better quality of shoe or bra or kid overalls that are usually not available.

Another interesting part is about the arts and how seriously many Russians take books and poetry, the ballet, how much they appreciate the arts, and also the constraints under which artists create.

Also good is the part about what happens to people that somehow, even unintentionally, displease someone in power, say a party member.Not only are they punished by losing jobs and status, their children cannot get into good schools or get good positions.The whole family becomes undesirables. If they have a nice apartment, they may have to leave it. And this is not as bad as being locked up or sent to Siberia.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
I actually read "The Russians" waaaay back in the late '70's.I was a young woman in her 20's.Obviously I was deeply touched by Hedrick Smith's account of Communist Russia, or I wouldn't be trolling the reviews of his book 30 years later.Although I am not a scholar of anything Russian -- of anything for that matter -- I recognized Smith's book as a well-researched and very credible account of Russian life.

The reason for Reagan's quote as the title for my review?Because when Reagan was given such great press (still is) for his supposed influence in the fall of the Soviet Empire and the end of the Cold War, I thought (back then) that Reagan had nothing to do with the collapse of the USSR -- it was inevitable.Afterall, I had read "The Russians" and Hedrick Smith had all but foretold of it's demise in his descriptions of Communist Russian society -- not that he explicitly wrote that the Soviets would implode.

A fascinating mosaic of a huge and conflicted empire.
Hendrick Smith is a New York Times correspondent that spent the years 1970-75 living in and among the Soviet people, studying both the people and the culture.As much as a westerner could he immersed himself in many aspects of their lives interviewing workers, peasants, government beaurocrats, physicists, writers, movie producers, dissidents and students.He came away with a picture of a passionate and conflicted people; at times warm and hospitible, fearful and paranoid, petty and tyrannical, cynical and apathetic, and proud and loyal.In a country where the state is in overwhelming control of nearly every aspect of their lives, where a stroke of the pen from a government beaurocrat could destroy a man's life for the slightest misstep, the Russian are hardy souls that have found many ingenious ways to cope and survive.

In a supposedly classless utopia Smith shows us a country deeply divided by class distinctions, much more so than anywhere in the west.With a haughtiness that rivals the most snobbish western aristocrat, the cultural elite enjoy a life that is completely out of reach of the common man.They get to shop at special stores, stocked to the gills with imported goods from all over the world (Soviet made items considered beneath them) while the rest of the country spends on average 22 hours a week per household standing in line for basic necessities.The blatant corruption and hypocrisy is startling, but don't you dare voice it.Smith claims that just a few weeks of this type of living would wither away the will of your average American, and I believe him.

Only a westerner living among the Soviet people could write such a book.He tells of his 11-year-old daughter, enrolled in a Soviet public school, coming home and practising military drills taught as a regular part of the curriculum, or repeating songs and slogans extolling the `Great Leninist State' and condemning America without really comprehending the meaning of anything she's saying.Soviets are taught from an early age to simply parrot the idealogical dogma that is fed to them on an almost daily basis without digging too deeply.The Russians are so used to being lied to by their own government that they assume all nations lie to their people, and the Soviet government uses this political cynicisim as an effective means of control.

Although many of these `facts' about life in the USSR are fairly common knowledge in America (especially if you grew up during the Reagan years), Smith puts a human face on it that transforms this grey, drab, and seemingly monotonous totalitarian state into a vivid and colorful mosaic of a sincere, intelligent and deeply conflicted people with a communal inferiority complex
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English summary: Contents include: Weniger, G. C. - How modern were the Neanderthals?; Mischka, C. - Geomagnetic prospection of Neolithic and Copper-Age settlements in Romania; Krauss, R. - Karanovo and the South-Eastern European system of chronology in current assessment; Demidenko, S. V. - On the cast bronze cauldron from the Bestau "Hoard", Northern Caucasus; Gomolka-Fuchs, G. - Notes on early Christianity of the East Germans in the area along the Vltava and Eastern Romania; Schultze, E. and Strocen, B. - Pottery with oval facets. An analysis of the chronology of the Cernjachov civilization. Papers in German.German description:Aus dem Inhalt:Weniger, G. C. - Wie modern waren Neandertaler? Mischka, C. - Geomagnetische Prospektion neolithischer und kupferzeitlicher Siedlungen in RumanienKrauss, R. - Karanovo und das sudosteuropaische Chronologiesystem aus heutiger SichtDemidenko, S. V. - Zum gegossenen Bronzekessel aus dem Bestau-Hort, NordkaukasienGomolka-Fuchs, G. - Bemerkungen zum fruhen Christentum der Ostgermanen im Gebiet der Moldau und OstrumaniensSchultze, E. und Strocen, B. - Keramik mit ovalen Facetten. Eine Untersuchung zur Chronologie der Cernjachov-Kulturund weitere Beitrage. ... Read more