A bear self-begets in an ordinary Russian family’s bathroom, Pushkin accidentally survives his duel with d’Anthès, and the ill-fated family of a small boy born in prerevolutionary Russia stumbles through the 20th century all the way into the 21st, where the not-so-distant past is faded in the minds of the newest generations. But does that make the past irrelevant? Three plays accurately portray a Russia that is constant—constantly in flux, with both its present and its past changing from day to day. With time flowing forward, backward, and even sideways, the three plays in this book serve up an unflinching reflection of Russia’s tumultuous timeline.

Charles Halperin’s classic work of medieval Russian history, The Tatar Yoke, presented for the first time a comprehensive analysis of all major texts of Old Russian literature pertaining to Russo-Tatar relations. Halperin integrated the findings both of textologists and literary specialists about the history and evolution of the monuments and of orientalists about the Golden Horde. From these varied disciplinary perspectives he created a new historical context for interpreting Russian perceptions of the Tatars, the ideology of silence. The present volume is a corrected reprint of the original 1986 edition, with a new index created to enhance the volume’s usability. After nearly two decades out of print, during which time readers have been driven to consulting rare book dealers, the work is once again conveniently available to a new generation of Russian historians.

Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, Recensio.net, vol. 4, 2011

Of all of the books by American witnesses of the Russian Revolution, John Reed's Ten Days That Shook the World was and still is the best known. Even though Reed arrived in Russia in September 1917 and left in the spring of 1918, his enthusiastic account focuses on the ten key days of the revolution itself, bringing to life the sights, sounds, and key people who were so instrumental in this critical event. Reed, officially a journalist, shed his objectivity and supported the Bolshevik cause, and this book was the key forum in which he made his case. In the end, the book has survived, and even thrived, as a primary source on the revolution, even though Reed died in 1920.

The Third Supplement to a Comprehensive Bibliography of Former Yugoslav Literature in English extends the project begun in 1976 with a preliminary volume-reprinted totally in 1984-and followed with the First Supplement in 1988 and the Second Supplement in 1992. The Third Supplement has added the word "Former" to Yugoslav Literature because of the political changes in the 1990s. This volume lists translations and criticism published anywhere in 1991-1998, as well as addenda. It follows closely the format of the previous volumes. It is all-inclusive (except for newspaper notices). Part 1 is preceded by a list of abbreviations, followed by the alphabetical listing of translations of folk literature in section 1. Section 2 of part 1 lists translations of poetry, fiction, drama, and literary essays by individual authors alphabetically (the definite and indefinite articles are ignored in alphabetization). Repeated translations of the same work are listed chronologically in the same entry; when the translations and the translator are the same, the translator's name is omitted in the subsequent source(s). In anthologies and sources with more than one work by the same author, the works are listed subsequently as they appear in the source, alphabetically by the first title only. Reviews of translated works follow the translation entry immediately. Part 2 lists all forms of criticism-reference works, books, articles, reviews, and dissertations. In obscure titles, the subject reference is provided in brackets. Authors of critical works are listed chronologically; anonymous works are listed under "Anonymous." Part 3 consists of indices. Index 1 lists the English titles or the first lines of works without a title. Index 2 provides titles of periodicals and newspapers, while Index 3 is the subject and name index (references to translated authors can be found also in part 1 and references to critics in part 2).

Contents Preface Abbreviations

Part One: Translations Folk Literature Individual Writers

Part Two: Criticism Entries in Reference Works Books and Articles Reviews Dissertations

Part Three: Indices English Titles or First Line of Translation Periodicals and Newspapers Subject and Name

This volume is a tribute to Theofanis G. Stavrou, Professor of Russian and Near Eastern History and Director of Modern Greek Studies at the University of Minnesota. A generous and penetrating scholar, as well as an award-winning teacher and mentor, Professor Stavrou is well known for his infectious enthusiasm for collaborative scholarship and wide-ranging expertise in Russian history and culture, Eastern Orthodox Church history, Modern Greek literature, and other fields. The forty-four contributors to this collection are a diverse group of mainly senior American scholars who have published erudite monographs related to the fields of Slavic, European, Mediterranean, and Eastern Orthodox studies.

Professor Stavrou has been a veritable institution in the United States for more than forty years. His works are cited broadly and his research has more often been confirmed than challenged over his career—something others could only wish for themselves. Professor Stavrou has also been the academic advisor of several generations of scholars in North America and Europe, and his ideas have influenced even young scholars who were not ever formally his students. His generosity and breadth of knowledge has been and continues to be tapped by scholars around the world, yet he remains modest about his own accomplishments and place in the field(s) he has pursued. Despite that modesty, this volume convincingly demonstrates that no one has earned the honor of a Festschrift more than he has.

Russell E. Martin
Professor of History
Westminster College

The Russian Poet and Philosopher Josephine Pasternak (1900–93) published two collections of verse during her lifetime, and her philosophical treatise Indefinability was brought out posthumously in 1998. Josephine belonged to a famous Moscow Family: her older brother was the poet and novelist Boris Pasternak and her father Leonid was a well-known early 20th-century painter. She left Russia in 1921 to study in Germany, married there, and subsequently emigrated to England. After the publication of Doctor Zhivago in 1957, Josephine was asked to write a history of the Pasternak family, which eventually led her to begin her own autobiography.

The memoir spans the years 1913–26 and records Josephine's transition from adolescence to young adulthood, first in pre-revolutionary Russia; then during the period of World War I and the Revolution; and finally in Germany during the early twenties. It provides a riveting picture of Russian life and personalities in the first quarter of the 20th century: Josephine describes middle-class life before the Revolution with wit and gusto, witnesses the events of 1917 in Moscow, writes humorously and irreverently about her working life in a government office, and ends with an account of her turbulent life in Berlin and Munich during the twenties.

Josephine constructs her life history as a frank exploration of her perceived failure to achieve her full potential in life, gradually uncovering the sexual and pathological origins of her later episodes of neurosis. Writing mostly during the mid-1960s, she would ever have called herself liberated, yet the autobiography emerges as a feminist text in spite of itself, centered in the tension between her genuine love for her family ad her repudiation of its control through a series of escapes: into neurosis and secret religious observances, fascinated both by the neatness and clarity of physics and mathematics, as well as under the spell of powerful superstitions and compulsions. The stress of reconciling these conflicting forces was to plague and exhaust her throughout her life. "Tightrope walking," she called it.

This memoir is a significant contribution to the study of Russian women's autobiography and, above all, a fascinating account of a remarkable young woman's life.

Among the many paradoxes in Tolstoy's thought and action there is the dichotomy between his tremendous authority as an artist and his supposedly inconsequential, wrong-headed views on aesthetics, expressed in the treatise What is Art? The conventional view is that for many complex and obscure reasons Tolstoy in his old age abandoned all his artistic accomplishments and all his understanding of art, replacing them both with a morality that had the sour, peevish smell of a hidden hostility to life. Proceeding from the premise that Tolstoy's aesthetic theories must always be seen in context of, and not separately from his art, the present book takes a radically different position. Tolstoy's views on art have been thoroughly consistent from the very beginning, and his own great works embody exactly the same aesthetic values as were later formulated in What is Art? The illusion of discrepancy arises from failure to perceive that one and the same idea will look very different when it is presented as an argument in a treatise, and when it is conveyed as complex human experience in a novel. Thus, the aim here is to reveal the profound integrity and wholeness of Tolstoy's art and thought.

"Scholars interested in Tolstoyan aesthetics will find much relevant information expertly presented in this book." (Choice)

"Silbajoris's reading of Tolstoi is thus successfully corrective, astutely synthetic and a welcome new appreciation of the power of Tolstoi's aesthetics and his art." (SR) "...he leads us to an even deeper and fuller appreciation of Tolstoy's genius." (RR)

Most students who take Russian wonder about various aspects of its phonology and grammatical system, especially the idiosyncrasies and intricacies that differ markedly from English. Many sense that a more orderly system must underlie the complex and often confusing system presented in beginning textbooks. Hart's book introduces students to Russian linguistics through a study of various topics in phonetics, phonology, and grammar. It assumes no previous knowledge of linguistics. The first three chapters deal with phonetics, phonology, and review several fundamental alternations. Questions about exceptional forms lead to the book's fourth chapter, a survey of topics from the history of Russian. The second part of the book returns to the modern language and concentrates on inflectional and derivational morphology and introduces fundamental concepts of morphophonemics. The final chapter, which draws on much of what was presented in earlier chapters, provides a description of Russian stress according to the latest theory and presents a methodology for predicting stress, given certain information. Major dialectal deviations from standard usage are discussed in most chapters. Appendices include a key to the exercises, stress valencies of high-frequency roots, definitions of key terms and principles used throughout the text, and a bibliography and index. The book is aimed primarily at advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students of Russian, but parts of it will be useful for advanced graduate students.

Yale Russian and East European Publications

How national rivalry led to dictatorship and the division of Europe.

Contents:

Introduction: From the Habsburgs to the Soviet Russians

Part One: The Tragedy of Nationalism:

1. The Lost Peace

2. Federalist Failures

3. The Nazi Challenge

4. Czechs and Hungarians

5. Appeasement of Hitler

6. Munich: Hopes and Lessons

7. From Munich to Moscow

Part Two: The Triumph of Tyranny:

8. German Hegemony

9. Federalist Interlude

10. Partition of Europe

11. Churchill's Bargain

12. Yalta: Hopes and Lessons

13. Stalin's Triumph

14. From Potsdam to Prague

15. Benesh and the Russians

Part Three: The Aftermath -- Eastern Europe since 1948

Epilogue One: The Unfinished Struggle for Independence

Epilogue Two: Cold War Becomes Dïtente

Notes

Index

"Never has the reviewer read a more objective account of events that have occurred in Central Europe over the past sixty years..." (Polish Review)

Since July 2004 Robert Rothstein has been writing about Polish language, literature and folklore for the Boston-based biweekly Biały Orzeł/White Eagle. Inspired by the calender, by items in the Polish press, by his experience learning and teaching the Polish language, by new acquisitions for his home library, by questions from readers and by serendipity, he has explored, among other things, the origins of words and expressions, the grammatical peculiarities of the language and the reflections of everyday (and not so everyday) life in Polish proverbs and folksongs and in the works of great Polish writers. The present edited collection of seventy of his columns deals with topics ranging from why there is no country called Italia on Polish maps to why the word to the wise is not always sufficient; from names for the devil to what Polish turkeys have to do with India; from the language of flowers to the signs of the zodiac; from urban folksongs to why Polish is so difficult. You don't have to be Polish-or even know Polish- to enjoy the essays collected here.

Robert A. Rothstein is professor of Slavic and Judaic Studies and of Comparative Literature, and adjunct professor of Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he also holds the Amesbury Professorship in Polish Language, Literature, and Culture and regularly teaches the Polish language. After studying mathematics and linguistics at MIT, he earned the Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard. He has published widely in the areas of Slavic linguistics, folklore, cultural history, and music. His contributions to Polish studies include the chapter on the Polish language for the Routledge handbook The Slavonic Languages and articles on the publicistic works of the great Polish linguist Jan Baudouin de Courtenay, on aspects of Polish syntax, on issues of sex and gender in the Polish language, as well as studies of mutual cultural and linguistic influences between Polish and Yiddish, and articles making use of Polish folkloric material. In 2013 he was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Polish Republic by President Bronisław Komorowski in recognition of his work of more than four decades in supporting and promoting Polish culture.