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Bronze Horseman, The
Paullina Simons Manufacturer: HarperTorch ProductGroup: Book Binding: Mass Market Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 0061031127 Release Date: 2002-10-01 |
Book Description
From the author of the international bestseller Tully comes an epic tale of passion, betrayal, and survival in World War II Russia. Leningrad, 1941: The European war seems far away in this city of fallen grandeur, where splendid palaces and stately boulevards speak of a different age, when the city was known as St. Petersburg. Now two sisters, Tatiana and Dasha Metanov, live in a cramped apartment, sharing one room with their brother and parents. Such are the harsh realities of Stalin's Russia, but when Hitler invades the country, the siege of its cities makes the previous severe conditions seem luxurious.
Against this backdrop of danger and uncertainty, Tatiana meets Alexander, an officer in the Red Army whose self-confidence sets him apart from most Russian men and helps to conceal a mysterious and troubled past.
Once the relentless winter and the German army's blockade take hold of the city, the Metanovs are forced into ever more desperate measures to survive. With bombs falling and food becoming scarce, Tatiana and Alexander are drawn to each other in an impossible love that threatens to tear her family apart and reveal his dangerous secret -- a secret as destructive as the war itself. Caught between two deadly forces, the lovers find themselves swept up in a tide of history at a turning point in the century that made the modern world.
Mesmerizing from the very first page to the final, breathtaking end, The Bronze Horseman brings alive the story of two indomitable, heroic spirits and their great love that triumphs over the devastation of a country at war.
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"Special PerfectBound e-book exclusive feature! Paullina Simons's tribute to her still-living grandparents, survivors of Russia's twentieth century from World War I and the Russian Revolution through the siege of Leningrad and the regimes of Lenin and Stalin. From the author of the international bestseller Tully comes an epic tale of passion, betrayal, and survival in World War II Russia. Leningrad, 1941: The European war seems far away in this city of fallen grandeur, where splendid palaces and stately boulevards speak of a different age, when the city was known as St. Petersburg. Now two sisters, Tatiana and Dasha Metanov, live in a cramped apartment, sharing one room with their brother and parents. Such are the harsh realities of Stalin's Russia, but when Hitler invades the country, the siege of its cities makes the previous severe conditions seem luxurious. Against this backdrop of danger and uncertainty, Tatiana meets Alexander, an officer in the Red Army whose self-confidence sets him apart from most Russian men and helps to conceal a mysterious and troubled past. Once the relentless winter and the German army's blockade take hold of the city, the Metanovs are forced into ever more desperate measures to survive. With bombs falling and food becoming scarce, Tatiana and Alexander are drawn to each other in an impossible love that threatens to tear her family apart and reveal his dangerous secret--a secret as destructive as the war itself. Caught between two deadly forces, the lovers find themselves swept up in a tide of history at a turning point in the century that made the modern world. Mesmerizing from the very first page to the final, breathtaking end, The Bronze Horseman brings alive the story of two indomitable, heroic spirits and their great love that triumphs over the devastation of a country at war."Customer Reviews:
The best book ever!.......2007-07-19
GREAT!!!!.......2007-05-15
LOVED IT.......2007-03-09
Loved this amazing story!!.......2007-03-01
The Bronze Horseman.......2007-01-11
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The Bronze Horseman: Falconet's Monument to Peter the Great
Alexander M. Schenker Manufacturer: Yale University Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover ASIN: 0300097123 |
Book Description
This book is the first comprehensive treatment in any language of the most consequential work of art ever to be executed in Russia-the equestrian monument to Peter the Great, or The Bronze Horseman, as it has come to be known since it appeared in Alexander Pushkin's poem bearing that title. The author deals with the cultural setting that prepared the ground for the monument and provides life stories of those who were involved in its creation: the sculptors Etienne-Maurice Falconet and Marie-Anne Collot, the engineer Marin Carburi, the diplomat Dmitry Golitsyn, and Catherine's "commissar" for culture, Ivan Betskoi. He also touches upon the extraordinary resonance of the monument in Russian culture, which, since the unveiling in 1782, has become the icon of St. Petersburg and has alimented the so-called "St. Petersburg theme" in Russian letters, familiar from the works of such writers as Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Gogol, and Bely.Customer Reviews:
Bravo Dr. Schenker, Boo to Yale University Press.......2005-03-21
Exceptional Scholarship Produces Masterful Study.......2004-11-10
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The Bronze Horseman
Paullina Simons Manufacturer: Flamingo ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 0006513220 |
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Russia under Western Eyes: From the Bronze Horseman to the Lenin Mausoleum
Martin Malia Manufacturer: Belknap Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover Similar Items:
ASIN: 0674781201 |
Amazon.com
Martin Malia, Professor Emeritus of Russian History at the University of California at Berkeley, hopes to rescue Russia from its status as menacing Other and restore it to its rightful place as a member of Europe. In Russia Under Western Eyes, Malia argues that there is no real polarity between Europe and Russia, but that "Russia has at different times been demonized or divinized by Western opinion less because of her real role in Europe than because of the fears and frustrations, or the hopes and aspirations, generated within European society by its own domestic problems." Following recent German historiography, Malia traces a continuum of development from West (most advanced) to East (somewhat laggard) and points out that there is as much difference between, say, Germany and France as between Russia and Europe. In the end, however, Russia remains a poor, weak sister--her growth stunted by bad choices, notably Communism.Malia chronicles the West's varying assessments: Russia celebrated for its enlightened despotism; Russia despised for its Oriental despotism; Russia welcomed back as simply one distinct culture within Europe; and, after the 1917 Revolution, Russia (to quote Churchill) as a "riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." Nearly half the book focuses in on Soviet Russia, as both an "experiment" (1917 to 1945) and as an "empire" (1945 to 1991). Not one to sit on the fence, Malia is clear about his position: Soviet Communism is an experiment that failed because Communism itself is doomed to fail. Though many scholars agree, Malia's anti-Soviet ferocity (he has often been described as "an old-fashioned cold warrior") somewhat diminishes the scholarly value of this work. General readers, however, will appreciate the sweeping scope of this remarkable book.
Book Description
As the dust clears from the fall of Communism, will Western eyes see Russia, the unclaimed orphan of Western history or Russia as she truly is, a perplexing but undeniable member of the European family? A dazzling work of intellectual history by a world-renowned scholar, spanning the years from Peter the Great to the fall of the Soviet Union, this book gives us a clear and sweeping view of Russia not as an eternal barbarian menace but as an outermost, if laggard, member in the continuum of European nations.
The Russian troika hurtles through these pages. The Spectre, modernity's belief in salvation by revolutionary ideology, haunts them. Alice's looking glass greets us at this turn and that. Throughout, Martin Malia's inspired use of these devices aptly conveys the surreality of the whole Soviet Russian phenomenon and the West's unbalanced perception of it. He shows us the usually distorted images and stereotypes that have dominated Western ideas about Russia since the eighteenth century. And once these emerge as projections of the West's own internal anxieties, he shifts his focus to the institutional structures and cultural forms Russia shares with her neighbors.
Here modern Europe is depicted as an East-West cultural gradient in which the central and eastern portions respond to the Atlantic West's challenge in delayed and generally skewed fashion. Thus Russia, after two centuries of building then painfully liberalizing its Old Regime, in 1917 tried to leap to a socialism that would be more advanced and democratic than European capitalism. The result was a cruel caricature of European civilization, which mesmerized and polarized the West for most of this century. As the old East-West gradient reappears in genuinely modern guise, this brilliantly imaginative work shows us the reality that has for so long tantalized--and eluded--Western eyes.
Customer Reviews:
More Interesting than Most Intellectual Histories.......2002-03-12
I was reading The Bathhouse at Midnight, which is about magic in Russia. Malia's book was cited lots. I didn't have it, and was starting to feel that "I'm missing something" sensation. So I went on a bookstore crawl and found Russia Under Western Eyes.
This is a good book.
I enter this rather tentatively. I don't usually comment on what I call "real books" even though I read them, feeling that I don't have the qualifications. Ye Olde BA doesn't seem to mean much, anymore.
On the other hand, if you are an educated person who generally flees at high speed from "intellectual history", read this.
Malia is not a socialist. He may or may not deconstruct in other books, for all I know he is a firm believer in what Kelly Neff refers to as literary donatism (which is all I believe deconstruction is in the end). In this book he writes as if you were meant to read it, which makes a nice change.
He chooses to bounce Western intellectual history off dreams of Russia. Is there anything new in it? No. His point is simple and (if you bothered to pay any attention to pre-Revolutionary Russia) glaringly obvious. On the other hand, we are so enamoured of the disaffected intelligent from the 1860's on that we ignore what they were painfully aware of - their ideas were adapted from the West. It irritated them, but there it was. The West has consistently shown a tendency to bounce its ideals and its nightmares off Russia; as a point for guidance in a sea of material, it's not a bad one.
Malia doesn't like what communism did to Russia. Neither do I. Anyone who stands up and says communism was a bad thing tends to get a "good boy!" from me. Good little socialists, beware: he handles hard and soft versions of the ideal briskly. The reviewer who wants to make him an embittered right-winger needs to do a re-think, and maybe a re-read without the blinkers; Malia mentions that Europe asked if Russia was part of it, he never questions it. Malia points up a pattern - Russia tends to hit similar points of politics and economics about 50 years after the West. OK, but this doesn't mean Russia is out of the modern world, and Malia says so. That, in fact, was part of the problem.
Ask the average Russian if he'd like to live like an American without having to be one. He'd probably say "Bring it on!" We're still letting the disaffected intelligentsia form our opinions - oh, suburbia, too boring, such ennui, oh, the deadening of our souls by wealth! Our souls are our personal responsibility, and poverty in my view is miserable, not enlightening. Sharing the wealth is a fine thing, provided that we remember that the point is to have no more poor, not reduce everyone to an identical level of penury.
Malia gets it right, the book is interesting if not new, and it remembers that the question the socialists never ask is, in your new society of fulfillment, who handles the garbage?
Monumental.......2001-03-31
In this reader's analysis, a central theme in Russia Under Western Eyes is how efforts to rationalize human society culminated in the dark experiment launched in the Red October of 1917. Malia demonstrates how Lenin perverted Marx by making the proletariat subservient to the Party, and how sheer folly was maintained through a jettisoning of principles and reliance on `the Method' through the successive stewardship of Stalin, Khruschev, Breshnev, and ending with Gorbachev.
My only complaint: while Malia is right in asserting that the planned economy of the USSR was decaying on its own from the end of World War II, Ronald Reagan's appearance on the world stage, and the effect his policy of confrontation had on bringing the Cold War to its omega point, deserves a more considered treatment. This is mitigated, however, by Malia's excellent treatment of the dissidents and their contribution to exposing the Soviet lie.
This is a tome of erudition, written by a scholar who has an amazing grasp of the `big picture.' One will draw from it a good understanding of the philosophical development of Europe, the ideas that changed the face of the Continent, and their effect on Russia through the centuries.
Like the Marquis de Custine, Malia has peeked through the sometimes brocaded, sometimes iron curtains of Russia and recorded poignant observations for posterity. Unlike Custine, however, Malia has produced a balanced work that will be ranked as indispensable to an understanding of Russia and Europe.
Right-Wing Intellectual History.......2000-06-09
Malia sees himself as a great healer, preparing Russia, like the dishonored daughter of a respectable family, for eventual readmission to Europe. Malia's hope for Russia is that, after fifty years of penance, Russia may at long last be allowed to "converge" with Central Europe, and after another 50 years, be fit to walk beside that most glorious corner of the globe, Western Europe. Russians themselves don't seem to have been consulted on the matter; in proper Victorian manner, Malia diagrams Russia's salvation without asking the mere natives for their opinion.
Most of us have had arguments like the one that occupies Malia: "Is Russia actually part of Europe?" But we've had them in the traditional context: in the dorms, after taking a first-year survey course titled something like "Modern Europe: Robespierre to Raskolnikov," or "Moliere to Madonna" or "...Nationalism, Rationalism and that Other One"--a course invariably taught by one embittered rightwing professor and twelve sullen underpaid TA's.
When you try to take this kind of argument seriously under any other circumstances (outside the dorms, past the age of 18), the question of Russia's inclusion in Europe tends to devolve into pointless arguments about the definition of "Europe." Either the term refers simply to that part of Eurasia west of the Urals--in which case we can settle the whole question with a simple road map--or "Europe" is forced to carry an insupportable load of normative baggage about "the essence of the European character." And such questions are better left unasked, because they lead either to massive bloody world wars or, even worse, to Dutch hippies bragging about how bravely they resist Fascism by pinstriping German tourists' BMWs when nobody's looking.
On those rare occasions when Malia actually discusses in detail the history of shifts in the perception of Russia by Europe, he makes some very interesting points, notably that Russia has often been most feared when it was least aggressive and powerful (as in the latter half of the nineteenth century), and most trusted when it was at its most expansionist (especially under Peter I and Catherine the Great).
But there's far too little detail on the history of Western images of Russia, and far too much of the old Daniel Mornet, Lester Crocker potted, tendentious intellectual histories, all focusing on Europe, not Russia. When you reach the end of this odd book, you wonder: Honestly, Professor-Emeritus Malia, what does Russia have to do with this faculty-club spat ? Russia, in your book, has been dragged, as so many times before, into a European war she could well have been spared.
Subtext contra socialism.......2000-04-18
God Save Debasia!.......2000-03-18
I submitted the review once before, in February or late January. Today, I received an email from the Amazon.com orders department that said the review as not in your database under my email address. I have included this email, as well.
THE REVIEW
GOD SAVE DEBASIA! By John Dolan ...
A review of Russia Under Western Eyes: From the Bronze Horseman to the Lenin Mausoleum By Martin Malia Belknap-Harvard University Press 1999
Russia Under Western Eyes has been praised by the most high mandarins of the Beigeocracy. Only one anonymous reader pipes up on Amazon.com with a quibble about the Emperor's taste in clothes, stammering that the book is "not [actually] about Russia." But then, frightened at his own presumption, the reader quickly adds, "That is not a criticism of the book..." Ah, but it is! And it raises an interesting question: if Malia's book isn't about Russia, what is it about?
Most of the book is actually devoted to a standardized, if slightly right-wing, history of European thought. --"European thought"...that very phrase summons up, in its callow hubris, the syllabi of first-year History courses at any American university. Malia actually believes in "European thought"--not simply that such a thing exists and can be defined
unambiguously, but that it makes history. He is an Idealist--which is to say that, like many professors, he is convinced that the world turns on the opinions of professors. Specifically, he joins Peter Gay in what he calls "the party of humanity"--which actually means, "the party of grumpy old professors who are convinced the world started going to Hell in a handbasket when they stopped requiring ties in the Faculty Club."
Malia sees himself as a great healer, preparing Russia--like the deflowered daughter of a respectable family of burghers--for eventual readmission to that peaceful and dynamic family, Europe. As the fallen woman wrapped in the "lurid" red shroud of Lenin, Russia must trail behind the good daughters of Mother Europe: kind, benificent nations like England, which after all has only exterminated a few few tens of millions from Ireland to Shanghai. Malia's hope for Russia is that, after some years of penance (50 years or so by Malia's calculations), the Russian whore may at long last be allowed to "converge" with Central Europe; and after another 50 years-a full century of Purgatory--Russia might, by Malia's estimate, be fit to walk beside that most glorious corner of the globe, Western Europe. Just think: Moscow, hand in hand with Antwerp! (Or Glasgow, or Nancy...)
Neither Malia nor his reviewers seem worried about how Russians might view this grossly patronizing discussion of Russia's future. As Queen Victoria
would say, one doesn't ask the whore-in-question whether she wishes to be rescued; one simply does one's duty. It doesn't seem to've crossed Malia's mind that the average Russian, contemplating the prospect that Moscow might someday be just like suburban London, might prefer to tell Europe to stick its Protestant Soup up its skinny techno ass, clean off his AK, and walk westward firing from the hip.
The ethical wobbles of the thesis are exceeded only by its intellectual flaccidity. Most of us have had arguments like the one which occupies Malia: "Is Russia actually part of Europe?" But we've had them in the proper circumstances: at age eighteen. On speed. In the dorms. To the music of some roommate-rock college radio station, after taking a first-year survey course titled something like "Modern Europe: Robespierre to Raskolnikov," or "Moliere to Madonna" or "...Nationalism, Rationalism and that Other One"--the sort of huge survey course inevitably taught by one embittered rightwing professor (a role Malia himself played at UC Berkeley) and twelve sullen underpaid TA's.
When you try to take this kind of argument seriously under any other circumstances (outside the dorms, before 3 am, w/o drugs, past the age of 18), the question of Russia's inclusion in Europe tends to devolve into pointless arguments about the definition of "Europe." Either the term refers simply to that part of Eurasia west of the Urals--in which case we
can settle the whole question with a simple road map--or "Europe" is forced to carry an insupportable load of normative baggage: tedious crap about "the essence of the European character." And such questions are better left unasked, because they lead either to massive bloody world wars or, even worse, to Dutch hippies bragging about how bravely they resist Fascism by pinstriping German tourists' BMWs when nobody's looking.
On those rare occasions when Malia actually discusses in detail the history of shifts in the perception of Russia by Europe, he makes some very interesting points, notably that Russia has often been most feared when it was least aggressive and powerful (as in the latter half of the nineteenth century), and most trusted when it was at its most expansionist (especially under Peter I and Catherine the Great).
But there's far too little detail on the history of Western images of Russia, and far too much of the old Daniel Mornet, Lester Crocker potted, tendentious intellectual histories, all focusing on Europe, not Russia. When you reach the end of this odd book, you wonder: Honestly, Professor-Emeritus Malia, what the Hell does Russia have to do with your faculty-club spat ? Russia, in your book, has been dragged, as so many times before, into a Eurpoean war she could well have been spared.
THE PERMISSION Subj:: : (John Dolan)
Please do.
-----Original Message...; To: ; Date: Sunday, January 30, 2000 6:38 PM Subject: A review of Russia Under Western Eyes: From the Bronze Horseman t
> >I check out Amazon.com and your excellent review is not provided under >"editorial reviews." > >If you say OK, I will submit the exile review, with the appropriate >attribution, as a reader review... >
----------------------- Headers -------------------------------- Mar 2000 19:25:21 -0800 (PST) Received: (fr
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The Bronze Horseman: Selected Poems of Alexander Pushkin
Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin Manufacturer: Viking Adult ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover ASIN: 0670192414 |
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Pushkin's Bronze Horseman (Critical Studies in Russian Literature) (Critical Studies in Russian Literature)
A. Khan Manufacturer: Duckworth Publishing ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback ASIN: 1853994448 |
Book Description
From its posthumous publication in 1837, Pushkin's narrative poem, "The Bronze Horseman" has been regarded as a central text in Russian literature. This work considers the history of its composition, providing an excursus on the formal properties of the poem, extensive commentary, and an assessment of key thematic questions, with western and Russian responses and interpretations old and new.
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Pushkin: The Bronze Horseman (BCP Russian Texts) (BCP Russian Texts)
Manufacturer: Duckworth Publishers ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 1853995754 |
Book Description
This last and most brilliant narrative poem by Russia's greatest poet, Alexander Pushkin, should form an essential part of all courses in Russian literature. It combines praise of Peter the Great and his city of St Petersburg with a dramatic account of the devastating flood of 1824 and a lowly individual's resultant insanity. The political, historical, religious, ecological, and metaphysical-existential questions which Pushkin formulates with dazzling power and concision have been the subject of endless critical debate. This new student edition includes an interpretative introduction which seeks to accommodate conflicting critical readings, copious linguistic and literary commentary, and a separate short essay on the poem's St Petersburg background.
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Pushkin: The Bronze Horseman (Russian Texts)
T Little Manufacturer: Duckworth Publishing ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback ASIN: 1853992453 |
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Bronze Horseman and Other Poems
Alexander Pushkin Manufacturer: London: Penguin ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback ASIN: B000TYKD6I |
Product Description
Translated with an Introduction by D.M. Thomas. Middlesex, England: Penguin. Copyright 1982. 12mo., 261 pages plus advertising. Soft cover: wraps illustrated after photograph.
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The Bronze Horseman Prepack
Paullina Simons Manufacturer: HarperTorch ProductGroup: Book Binding: Mass Market Paperback ASIN: 0060512520 |
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