History

Alexander Rabinowitch is a towering figure among historians of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. Distinguished by an unrivaled mastery of published and archival materials, a compelling narrative style and demythologizing interpretations, his books are the essential account of events that truly changed the world. During his remarkable career, Rabinowitch has also trained and mentored many graduate students who themselves became important scholars. A select group of them has produced Russia’s Century of Revolutions in his honor. The title reflects the range of Rabinowitch’s influence, and the contents, pathbreaking essays in their own right, are written in his independent spirit. The result is a volume for everyone seriously interested in modern Russian history and thus for every library.” Stephen F. Cohen Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies at Princeton University and New York University and author, most recently, of Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives. “Alexander Rabinowitch made his reputation as a scholar from his meticulous empirical research into the actions of the Bolsheviks in Petrograd in 1917, producing carefully nuanced studies that rewrote the historiography of their coming to power. This volume secures his reputation as a mentor, an inspiration behind generations of budding historians who learned from his methodology and profited from his generosity, as he directed Russian and Soviet history in innovative directions. A fitting tribute to a remarkable career.” Louise McReynolds University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (Class of Rabinowitch, 1977)

This collection of essays is offered with sincere gratitude and admiration to Donald Ostrowski, Instructor in Extension Studies at Harvard University and one of the most important scholars of Ukraine, Russia, and Eurasia in the last half century. This volume takes its name from the famous Latin phrase from Peter Abelard's Sic et Non: Dubitando enim ad inquisitionem venimus; inquirendo veritatem percipimus-"By doubting, we come to question; by questioning, we perceive truth." It is a fitting and succinct description of Ostrowski's long and significant career because it captures what he has always done best: questioning our understanding of the essential primary source materials of Ukrainian, Russian, and Eurasian history; doubting received and traditional historical interpretations; and writing works that have drawn us much closer to the truth about East Slavic history and culture. The essays in the volume have been contributed by Ostrowski's many colleagues and students, and reflect his wide-ranging interests across a vast territorial and chronological space. Essays in this collection represent a variety of disciplinary approaches (history, language and literature, law, diplomacy, philology, and art history) and treat a range of issues as vast as Don's own interests. It is a collection that builds upon and sometimes challenges the works of previous historians (including earlier works of Ostrowski himself) by raising doubts and questionssomething Ostrowski has done in his own career and welcomes when he sees it in others.

There are many fine works that offer harrowing accounts of the fate of Stalin's innocent victims. This book is different. Agnessa was the beautiful, strong-willed, frivolous, and loving wife of a regional boss of Stalin's secret police who shut her eyes to the murderous activities of her husband. She offers a unique account of what it was like to be the wife of a high-ranking member of the Soviet elite, enjoying fine food, high fashion, "ladies-in-waiting," and lavish holidays at a time when millions were starving or being worked to death. Her gripping story provides insight into the thuggish world of cronyism, backstabbing, and intrigue that typified the Stalinist elite, a world in which the guilty feared they would meet the same sticky end as that to which they had condemned millions of innocent people. Agnessa's life would be marked by tragedy, and she would rise to its challenges. But it is her partial complicity in the world of which she is a part, the fact that she is a very flawed heroine, that makes her account so compelling.

-S. A. Smith, All Souls College, Oxford

This book is Volume 5 of the  Allan K. Wildman Group Historical Series

Book Reviews

In Women's Review of Books, vol. 31, no. 3, April/June 2014

With a foreword by Academician Dmitrii Sergeevich Likhachev. The cycle of apocryphal correspondence between various rulers and the Ottoman sultan, which was popular in seventeenth-century Muscovy and subsequently in the Russian Empire, provides valuable data concerning Muscovite contacts with the rest of Europe and the interaction between translated and original Muscovite literature. This book establishes for the first time the European context in which these letters should be studied and provides a fresh and comprehensive treatment of their literary and manuscript history. The close textual analysis presented in the book is based upon extensive work in Soviet manuscript repositories and collections of European pamphlet turcica. "Daniel Clarke Waugh has given us a fine piece of scholarship: The Great Turkes Defiance is exemplary in its mastery of textual detail, original in its conclusions, and even rather exciting in the breadth of its cultural-historical scope." (RR) "Technically and methodologically this monograph is simply a tour de force... The impartial reader will find it difficult not to be overwhelmed by Waugh's evidence and thoroughly convinced by his arguments. This is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of seventeenth-century Muscovite culture." (The American Historical Review)

Contributions by eminent American and European scholars for the sixtieth birthday of a noted Soviet medievalist; the studies are primarily in the field of history. Also contains a study of Zimin's work and a complete bibliography of his publications. Contents: Daniel Clarke Waugh: A. A. Zimin's Study of the Sources for Medieval and Early Modern Russian History; Bibliography of the Works of A. A. Zimin; Gustave Alef: Was Grand Prince Dmitrii Ivanovich Ivan III's `King of the Romans'?; Samuel H. Baron: Shipbuilding and Seafaring in Sixteenth-Century Russia; Robert O. Crummey: Court Spectacles in Seventeenth-Century Russia: Illusion and Reality; John Fennell: The Last Years of Riurik Rostislavich; Carsten Goehrke: Entwicklungslinien und Schwerpunkte der westlichen Russlandmediaevistik;Frank Kampfer: Die `parsuna' Ivans IV. in Kopenhagen - Originalportrat oder historisches Bild?; Edward L. Keenan: The Karp/Polikarp Conundrum: Some Light on the History of `Ivan IV's First Letter'; A. M. Kleimola: Patterns of Duma Recruitment, 1505-1550; Ludolf Mueller: Zum dogmatischen Gehalt der Dreifaltigkeitsikone von Andrei Rublev; Andzhej Poppe: K nachal'noj istorii kul'ta sv. Nikoly Zarazskogo; Rex Rexheuser: Ballotage: Zur Gechichte des Wahlens in Russland; Hartmut Ruess: Adel und Nachfolgefrage im Jahre 1553: Betrachtungen zur Glaubwuerdigkeit einer umstrittenen Quelle; Wladimir Vodoff: Le Slovo pokhval'noe o velikom kniaze Borise Aleksandroviche: est-il une source historique?; Index of personal names. "Alles im allem ein ueberaus gehaltvoller Band, der in eindrucksvoller Vielfalt von Quellen und Methoden dem wissenschaftlichen Verstaendnis des alten Russland dient." (Jahrbuecher fuer Geschichte Osteuropas) "This is an extraordinary book..." (CSP)