On the Periphery of Europe, 1762–1825

Download On the Periphery of Europe, 1762–1825 PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Northern Illinois University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501757369
Total Pages : 259 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis On the Periphery of Europe, 1762–1825 by : Andreas Schönle

Download or read book On the Periphery of Europe, 1762–1825 written by Andreas Schönle and published by Northern Illinois University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-16 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Europeanized Elite in Russia, 1762–1825

Download The Europeanized Elite in Russia, 1762–1825 PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501757725
Total Pages : 385 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Europeanized Elite in Russia, 1762–1825 by : Andreas Schönle

Download or read book The Europeanized Elite in Russia, 1762–1825 written by Andreas Schönle and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-04 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This illuminating volume provides a new understanding of the subjective identity and public roles of Russia's Europeanized elite between the years of 1762 and 1825. Through a series of rich case studies, the editors reconstruct the social group's worldview, complex identities, conflicting loyalties, and evolving habits. The studies explore the institutions that shaped these nobles, their attitude to state service, the changing patterns of their family life, their emotional world, religious beliefs, and sense of time. The creation of a Europeanized elite in Russia was a state-initiated project that aimed to overcome the presumed "backwardness" of the country. The evolution of this social group in its relations to political authority provides insight into the fraught identity of a country developing on the geopolitical periphery of Europe. In contrast to postcolonial studies that explore the imposition of political, social, and cultural structures on colonized societies, this multidisciplinary volume explores the patterns of behavior and emotion that emerge from the processes of self-Europeanization. The Europeanized Elite in Russia, 1762–1825, will appeal to scholars and general readers interested in Russian history and culture, particularly in light of current political debates about globalization and widening social inequality in Europe.

Leo Tolstoy

Download Leo Tolstoy PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Reaktion Books
ISBN 13 : 1789142563
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (891 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Leo Tolstoy by : Andrei Zorin

Download or read book Leo Tolstoy written by Andrei Zorin and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2020-03-16 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When he arrived in Moscow in 1851, a young Leo Tolstoy set himself three immediate aims: to gamble, to marry, and to obtain a post. At that time he managed only the first. The writer’s momentous life would be full of forced breaks and abrupt departures, from the death of his beloved parents and tortuous courtship to a deep spiritual crisis and an abandonment of the social class into which he had been born. He also made several attempts to break up with literature, but each time he returned to writing. In this original and comprehensive biography, Andrei Zorin skillfully pieces together the life of one of the greatest novelists of all time. He offers both an innovative account of Tolstoy’s deepest feelings, emotions, and motives, as reflected in his personal diaries and letters, and a brilliant interpretation of his major works, including his celebrated novels on contemporary Russian society, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and his significant philosophical writings.

The Return of Eurasia

Download The Return of Eurasia PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 9811621799
Total Pages : 325 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (116 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Return of Eurasia by : Glenn Diesen

Download or read book The Return of Eurasia written by Glenn Diesen and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-07-23 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book defines Eurasianism, a political idea with a long tradition, for a new century. Historically, Eurasia was depicted as a “third continent” with a geographical and historical space distinctively different from both Europe and Asia. Today, the concept is mobilized by the Russian foreign policy elite to imagine a close relationship with China and indirectly inspires the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. A Russian-Chinese partnership forms the core of a new Eurasian region, yet Turkey, India, Hungary, Central Asia and the other parts of the supercontinent are also embracing Eurasian concepts. This book is of interest to scholars of Russian and Chinese foreign policy, to economists, and to scholars of political thought.

Pushkin, the Decembrists, and Civic Sentimentalism

Download Pushkin, the Decembrists, and Civic Sentimentalism PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN 13 : 0299345807
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (993 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Pushkin, the Decembrists, and Civic Sentimentalism by : Emily Wang

Download or read book Pushkin, the Decembrists, and Civic Sentimentalism written by Emily Wang and published by University of Wisconsin Pres. This book was released on 2023 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In December 1825, a group of liberal aristocrats, officers, and intelligentsia mounted a coup against the tsarist government of Russia. Inspired partially by the democratic revolutions in the United States and France, the Decembrist movement was unsuccessful; however, it led Russia's civil society to new avenues of aspiration and had a lasting impact on Russian culture and politics. Many writers and thinkers belonged to the conspiracy while others, including the poet Alexander Pushkin, were loosely or ambiguously affiliated. While the Decembrist movement and Pushkin's involvement has been well covered by historians, Emily Wang takes a novel approach, examining the emotional and literary motivations behind the movement and the dramatic, failed coup. Through careful readings of the literature of Pushkin and others active in the northern branch of the Decembrist movement, such as Kondraty Ryleev, Wilhelm Küchelbecker, and Fyodor Glinka, Wang traces the development of "emotional communities" among the members and adjacent writers. This book illuminates what Wang terms "civic sentimentalism": the belief that cultivating noble sentiments on an individual level was the key to liberal progress for Russian society, a core part of Decembrist ideology that constituted a key difference from their thought and Pushkin's. The emotional program for Decembrist community members was, in other ways, a civic program for Russia as a whole, one that they strove to enact by any means necessary.

The Companion to Juri Lotman

Download The Companion to Juri Lotman PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350181633
Total Pages : 553 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (51 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Companion to Juri Lotman by : Marek Tamm

Download or read book The Companion to Juri Lotman written by Marek Tamm and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-12-30 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Juri Lotman (1922–1993), the Jewish-Russian-Estonian historian, literary scholar and semiotician, was one of the most original and important cultural theorists of the 20th century, as well as a co-founder of the well-known Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics. This is the first authoritative volume in any language to explore the main facets of Lotman's work and discuss his main ideas in the context of contemporary scholarship. Boasting an interdisciplinary cast of contributing academics from across mainland Europe, as well as the USA, the UK, Australia, Argentina and Brazil, The Companion to Juri Lotman is the definitive text about Lotman's intellectual legacy. The book is structured into three main sections – Context, Concepts and Dialogue – which simultaneously provide ease of navigation and intriguing prisms through which to view his various scholarly contributions. Saussure, Bakhtin, Language, Memory, Space, Cultural History, New Historicism, Literary Studies and Political Theory are just some of the thinkers, themes and approaches examined in relation to Lotman, while the introduction and thematic Lotman bibliography that frame the main essays provide valuable background knowledge and useful information for further research. The book foregrounds how Lotman's insights have been especially influential in conceptualizing meaning making practices in culture and society, and how they, in turn, have inspired the work of a diverse group of scholars. The Companion to Juri Lotman shines a light on a hugely significant and all-too often neglected figure in 20th-century intellectual history.

Redefining Russian Literary Diaspora, 1920-2020

Download Redefining Russian Literary Diaspora, 1920-2020 PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : UCL Press
ISBN 13 : 1787359417
Total Pages : 278 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (873 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Redefining Russian Literary Diaspora, 1920-2020 by : Maria Rubins

Download or read book Redefining Russian Literary Diaspora, 1920-2020 written by Maria Rubins and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2021-03-11 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the century that has passed since the start of the massive post-revolutionary exodus, Russian literature has thrived in multiple locations around the globe. What happens to cultural vocabularies, politics of identity, literary canon and language when writers transcend the metropolitan and national boundaries and begin to negotiate new experience gained in the process of migration? Redefining Russian Literary Diaspora, 1920-2020 sets a new agenda for the study of Russian diaspora writing, countering its conventional reception as a subsidiary branch of national literature and reorienting the field from an excessive emphasis on the homeland and origins to an analysis of transnational circulations that shape extraterritorial cultural practices. Integrating a variety of conceptual perspectives, ranging from diaspora and postcolonial studies to the theories of translation and self-translation, World Literature and evolutionary literary criticism, the contributors argue for a distinct nature of diasporic literary expression predicated on hybridity, ambivalence and a sense of multiple belonging. As the complementary case studies demonstrate, diaspora narratives consistently recode historical memory, contest the mainstream discourses of Russianness, rewrite received cultural tropes and explore topics that have remained marginal or taboo in the homeland. These diverse discussions are framed by a focused examination of diaspora as a methodological perspective and its relevance for the modern human condition.

From the Holy Roman Empire to the Land of the Tsars

Download From the Holy Roman Empire to the Land of the Tsars PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192658379
Total Pages : 414 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (926 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis From the Holy Roman Empire to the Land of the Tsars by : Alexander M. Martin

Download or read book From the Holy Roman Empire to the Land of the Tsars written by Alexander M. Martin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-03 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a manuscript in a Russian archive, an anonymous German eyewitness describes what he saw in Moscow during Napoleon's Russian campaign. Who was this nameless memoirist, and what brought him to Moscow in 1812? The search for answers to those questions uncovers a remarkable story of German and Russian life at the dawn of the modern age. Johannes Ambrosius Rosenstrauch (1768-1835), the manuscript's author, was a man always on the move and reinventing himself. He spent half his life in the Holy Roman Empire, and the other half in Russia. He was a barber-surgeon, an actor, and a merchant, as well as a Catholic, a Freemason, and a Lutheran pastor. He saw the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, founded a business that flourished for sixty years, and took part in the Enlightenment, the consumer revolution, the Pietist Awakening, and Russia's colonization of the Black Sea steppe. A restless wanderer and seeker, but also the progenitor of an influential merchant family, he was a characteristic figure both of the Age of Revolution and of the bourgeois era that followed. Presenting a broad panorama of life in the German lands and Russia from the Old Regime to modernity, this microhistory explores how individual people shape, and are shaped by, the historical forces of their time.

Johann Cornies, the Mennonites, and Russian Colonialism in Southern Ukraine

Download Johann Cornies, the Mennonites, and Russian Colonialism in Southern Ukraine PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
ISBN 13 : 1487549172
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (875 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Johann Cornies, the Mennonites, and Russian Colonialism in Southern Ukraine by : John R. Staples

Download or read book Johann Cornies, the Mennonites, and Russian Colonialism in Southern Ukraine written by John R. Staples and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2023-11-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late eighteenth century, the Russian Empire opened the grasslands of southern Ukraine to agricultural settlement by new colonists, among them Prussian Mennonites. Mennonite colonization was one aspect of the empire’s consolidation and modernization of its multi-ethnic territory. In the colony of Molochnaia, the dominant personality of the early nineteenth century was Johann Cornies (1789–1848), a hard-driving modernizer and intimate of senior Russian officials whose papers provide unique access into events in Ukraine in this era. Johann Cornies, the Mennonites, and Russian Colonialism in Southern Ukraine uses the life story of Johann Cornies to explore how colonial subjects interacted with Russian imperial policy. The book reveals how tsarist imperial policy shifted toward Russification in the 1830s and 1840s and became increasingly intolerant of ethnocultural and ethnoreligious minorities. It shows that Russia employed the Mennonite settlement as a colonial laboratory of modernity, and that the Mennonites were among Russia’s most economically productive subjects. This microhistory illuminates the role of Johann Cornies as a mediator between the empire and the Mennonite colonists, and it ultimately aims to bring light to the history of nineteenth-century Russia and Ukraine.

Culture and Communication

Download Culture and Communication PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Academic Studies PRess
ISBN 13 : 1644693895
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (446 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Culture and Communication by : Yuri Lotman

Download or read book Culture and Communication written by Yuri Lotman and published by Academic Studies PRess. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yuri Lotman (1922-1993) was one of the most prominent and influential scholars of the twentieth century working in the Soviet Union. A co-founder of the Tartu-Moscow school of semiotics, he applied his mind to a wide array of disciplines, from aesthetics to literary and cultural history, narrative theory to intellectual history, cinema to mythology. This collection provides a stand-alone primer to his intellectual legacy in both semiotics and cultural history. It includes new translations of some of his major pieces as well as works that have never been published in English. The collection brings Lotman into the orbit of contemporary concerns such as gender, memory, performance, world literature, and urban life. It is aimed at students from various disciplines and is augmented by an introduction and notes that elucidate the relevant contexts.

Tolstoy in Context

Download Tolstoy in Context PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108786383
Total Pages : 622 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (87 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Tolstoy in Context by : Anna A. Berman

Download or read book Tolstoy in Context written by Anna A. Berman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-31 with total page 622 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Likened to a second Tsar in Russia and attaining prophet-like status around the globe, Tolstoy made an impact on literature and the arts, religion, philosophy, and politics. His novels and stories both responded to and helped to reshape the European and Russian literary traditions. His non-fiction incensed readers and drew a massive following, making Tolstoy an important religious force as well as a stubborn polemicist in many fields. Through his involvement with Gandhi and the Indian independence movement, his aid in relocating the Doukhobors to Canada, his correspondence with American abolitionists and his polemics with scientists in the periodical press, Tolstoy engaged a vast array of national and international contexts of his time in his life and thought. This volume introduces those contexts and situates Tolstoy—the man and the writer—in the rich and tumultuous period in which his intellectual and creative output came to fruition.

The Boundaries of Europe

Download The Boundaries of Europe PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110420724
Total Pages : 266 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (14 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Boundaries of Europe by : Pietro Rossi

Download or read book The Boundaries of Europe written by Pietro Rossi and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-04-24 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Europe’s boundaries have mainly been shaped by cultural, religious, and political conceptions rather than by geography. This volume of bilingual essays from renowned European scholars outlines the transformation of Europe’s boundaries from the fall of the ancient world to the age of decolonization, or the end of the explicit endeavor to “Europeanize” the world.From the decline of the Roman Empire to the polycentrism of today’s world, the essays span such aspects as the confrontation of Christian Europe with Islam and the changing role of the Mediterranean from “mare nostrum” to a frontier between nations. Scandinavia, eastern Europe and the Atlantic are also analyzed as boundaries in the context of exploration, migratory movements, cultural exchanges, and war. The Boundaries of Europe, edited by Pietro Rossi, is the first installment in the ALLEA book series Discourses on Intellectual Europe, which seeks to explore the question of an intrinsic or quintessential European identity in light of the rising skepticism towards Europe as an integrated cultural and intellectual region.

The Cambridge History of America and the World: Volume 1, 1500–1820

Download The Cambridge History of America and the World: Volume 1, 1500–1820 PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108317812
Total Pages : 1073 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (83 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Cambridge History of America and the World: Volume 1, 1500–1820 by : Eliga Gould

Download or read book The Cambridge History of America and the World: Volume 1, 1500–1820 written by Eliga Gould and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-03 with total page 1073 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first volume of The Cambridge History of America and the World examines how the United States emerged out of a series of colonial interactions, some involving indigenous empires and communities that were already present when the first Europeans reached the Americas, others the adventurers and settlers dispatched by Europe's imperial powers to secure their American claims, and still others men and women brought as slaves or indentured servants to the colonies that European settlers founded. Collecting the thoughts of dynamic scholars working in the fields of early American, Atlantic, and global history, the volume presents an unrivalled portrait of the human richness and global connectedness of early modern America. Essay topics include exploration and environment, conquest and commerce, enslavement and emigration, dispossession and endurance, empire and independence, new forms of law and new forms of worship, and the creation and destruction when the peoples of four continents met in the Americas.

St Petersburg and the Russian Court, 1703-1761

Download St Petersburg and the Russian Court, 1703-1761 PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1137311606
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (373 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis St Petersburg and the Russian Court, 1703-1761 by : P. Keenan

Download or read book St Petersburg and the Russian Court, 1703-1761 written by P. Keenan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-06-24 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on the city of St Petersburg, the capital of the Russian empire from the early eighteenth century until the fall of the Romanov dynasty in 1917. It uses the Russian court as a prism through which to view the various cultural changes that were introduced in the city during the eighteenth century.

Kazakhstan in World War II

Download Kazakhstan in World War II PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University Press of Kansas
ISBN 13 : 0700628258
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (6 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Kazakhstan in World War II by : Roberto J. Carmack

Download or read book Kazakhstan in World War II written by Roberto J. Carmack and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2019-09-12 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In July 1941, the Soviet Union was in mortal danger. Imperiled by the Nazi invasion and facing catastrophic losses, Stalin called on the Soviet people to “subordinate everything to the needs of the front.” Kazakhstan answered that call. Stalin had long sought to restructure Kazakh life to modernize the local population—but total mobilization during the war required new tactics and produced unique results. Kazakhstan in World War II analyzes these processes and their impact on the Kazakhs and the Soviet Union as a whole. The first English-language study of a non-Russian Soviet republic during World War II, the book explores how the war altered official policies toward the region’s ethnic groups—and accelerated Central Asia’s integration into Soviet institutions. World War II is widely recognized as a watershed for Russia and the Soviet Union—not only did the conflict legitimize prewar institutions and ideologies, it also provided a medium for integrating some groups and excluding others. Kazakhstan in World War II explains how these processes played out in the ethnically diverse and socially “backward” Kazakh republic. Roberto J. Carmack marshals a wealth of archival materials, official media sources, and personal memoirs to produce an in-depth examination of wartime ethnic policies in the Red Army, Soviet propaganda for non-Russian groups, economic strategies in the Central Asian periphery, and administrative practices toward deported groups. Bringing Kazakhstan’s previously neglected role in World War II to the fore, Carmack’s work fills an important gap in the region’s history and sheds new light on our understanding of Soviet identities.

Russian-Soviet Unconventional Wars in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan [Illustrated Edition]

Download Russian-Soviet Unconventional Wars in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan [Illustrated Edition] PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1782899650
Total Pages : 215 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (828 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Russian-Soviet Unconventional Wars in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan [Illustrated Edition] by : Dr. Robert F. Baumann

Download or read book Russian-Soviet Unconventional Wars in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan [Illustrated Edition] written by Dr. Robert F. Baumann and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: [Includes 12 maps and 4 tables] In recent years, the U.S. Army has paid increasing attention to the conduct of unconventional warfare. However, the base of historical experience available for study has been largely American and overwhelmingly Western. In Russian-Soviet Unconventional Wars in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, Dr. Robert F. Baumann makes a significant contribution to the expansion of that base with a well-researched analysis of four important episodes from the Russian-Soviet experience with unconventional wars. Primarily employing Russian sources, including important archival documents only recently declassified and made available to Western scholars, Dr. Baumann provides an insightful look at the Russian conquest of the Caucasian mountaineers (1801-59), the subjugation of Central Asia (1839-81), the reconquest of Central Asia by the Red Army (1918-33), and the Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979-89). The history of these wars—especially as it relates to the battle tactics, force structure, and strategy employed in them—offers important new perspectives on elements of continuity and change in combat over two centuries. This is the first study to provide an in-depth examination of the evolution of the Russian and Soviet unconventional experience on the predominantly Muslim southern periphery of the former empire. There, the Russians encountered fierce resistance by peoples whose cultures and views of war differed sharply from their own. Consequently, this Leavenworth Paper addresses not only issues germane to combat but to a wide spectrum of civic and propaganda operations as well.

Russia Engages the World, 1453-1825

Download Russia Engages the World, 1453-1825 PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Belknap Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674011939
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (119 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Russia Engages the World, 1453-1825 by : Cynthia H. Whittaker

Download or read book Russia Engages the World, 1453-1825 written by Cynthia H. Whittaker and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russia Engages the World, 1453-1825, an elegant new book created by a team of leading historians in collaboration with The New York Public Library, traces Russia's development from an insular, medieval, liturgical realm centered on Old Muscovy, into a modern, secular, world power embodied in cosmopolitan St. Petersburg. Featuring eight essays and 120 images from the Library's distinguished collections, it is both an engagingly written work and a striking visual object. Anyone interested in the dramatic history of Russia and its extraordinary artifacts will be captivated by this book. Before the late fifteenth century, Europeans knew virtually nothing about Muscovy, the core of what would become the "Russian Empire." The rare visitor--merchant, adventurer, diplomat--described an exotic, alien place. Then, under the powerful tsar Peter the Great, St. Petersburg became the architectural embodiment and principal site of a cultural revolution, and the port of entry for the Europeanization of Russia. From the reign of Peter to that of Catherine the Great, Russia sought increasing involvement in the scientific advancements and cultural trends of Europe. Yet Russia harbored a certain dualism when engaging the world outside its borders, identifying at times with Europe and at other times with its Asian neighbors. The essays are enhanced by images of rare Russian books, illuminated manuscripts, maps, engravings, watercolors, and woodcuts from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, as well as the treasures of diverse minority cultures living in the territories of the Empire or acquired by Russian voyagers. These materials were also featured in an exhibition of the same name, mounted at The New York Public Library in the fall of 2003, to celebrate the tercentenary of St. Petersburg.