Steeltown, USSR

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Author :
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520911008
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (29 download)

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Book Synopsis Steeltown, USSR by : Stephen Kotkin

Download or read book Steeltown, USSR written by Stephen Kotkin and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1991-03-11 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No one, not even Mikhail Gorbachev, anticipated what was in store when the Soviet Union embarked in the 1980s on a radical course of long-overdue structural reform. The consequences of that momentous decision, which set in motion a transformation eventually affecting the entire postwar world order, are here chronicled from inside a previously forbidden Soviet city, Magnitogorsk. Built under Stalin and championed by him as a showcase of socialism, the city remained closed to Western scrutiny until four years ago, when Stephen Kotkin became the first American to live there in nearly half a century. An uncommonly perceptive observer, a gifted writer, and a first-rate social scientist, Kotkin offers the reader an unsurpassed portrait of daily life in the Gorbachev era. From the formation of "informal" political groups to the start-up of fledgling businesses in the new cooperative sector, from the no-holds-barred investigative reporting of a former Communist party mouthpiece to a freewheeling multicandidate election campaign, the author conveys the texture of contemporary Soviet society in the throes of an upheaval not seen since the 1930s. Magnitogorsk, a planned "garden city" in the Ural Mountains, serves as Kotkin's laboratory for observing the revolutionary changes occurring in the Soviet Union today. Dominated by a self-perpetuating Communist party machine, choked by industrial pollution, and haunted by a suppressed past, this once-proud city now faces an uncertain future, as do the more than one thousand other industrial cities throughout the Soviet Union. Kotkin made his remarkable first visit in 1987 and returned in 1989. On both occasions, steelworkers and schoolteachers, bus drivers and housewives, intellectuals and former victims of oppression—all willingly stepped forward to voice long-suppressed grievances and aspirations. Their words animate this moving narrative, the first to examine the impact and contradictions of perestroika in a single community. Like no other Soviet city, Magnitogorsk provides a window onto the desperate struggle to overcome the heavy burden of Stalin's legacy.

Steeltown, USSR

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Author :
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520073531
Total Pages : 346 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (735 download)

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Book Synopsis Steeltown, USSR by : Stephen Kotkin

Download or read book Steeltown, USSR written by Stephen Kotkin and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kotkin offers the reader an unsurpassed portrait of daily life in the Gorbachev era. From the formation of "informal" political groups to the start-up of fledgling businesses in the new cooperative sector, from the no-holds-barred investigative reporting of a former Communist party mouthpiece to a freewheeling multicandidate election campaign, the author conveys the texture of contemporary Soviet society in the throes of an upheaval not seen since the 1930s.

Steeltown, U. S. S. R.

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780520735330
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (353 download)

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Book Synopsis Steeltown, U. S. S. R. by : Stephen Kotkin

Download or read book Steeltown, U. S. S. R. written by Stephen Kotkin and published by . This book was released on 1991-04 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Steeltown, USSR

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780962262906
Total Pages : 63 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (629 download)

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Book Synopsis Steeltown, USSR by : Stephen Kotkin

Download or read book Steeltown, USSR written by Stephen Kotkin and published by . This book was released on 1989-04 with total page 63 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Magnetic Mountain

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Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520918851
Total Pages : 726 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (29 download)

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Book Synopsis Magnetic Mountain by : Stephen Kotkin

Download or read book Magnetic Mountain written by Stephen Kotkin and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1997-02-27 with total page 726 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study is the first of its kind: a street-level inside account of what Stalinism meant to the masses of ordinary people who lived it. Stephen Kotkin was the first American in 45 years to be allowed into Magnitogorsk, a city built in response to Stalin's decision to transform the predominantly agricultural nation into a "country of metal." With unique access to previously untapped archives and interviews, Kotkin forges a vivid and compelling account of the impact of industrialization on a single urban community. Kotkin argues that Stalinism offered itself as an opportunity for enlightenment. The utopia it proffered, socialism, would be a new civilization based on the repudiation of capitalism. The extent to which the citizenry participated in this scheme and the relationship of the state's ambitions to the dreams of ordinary people form the substance of this fascinating story. Kotkin tells it deftly, with a remarkable understanding of the social and political system, as well as a keen instinct for the details of everyday life. Kotkin depicts a whole range of life: from the blast furnace workers who labored in the enormous iron and steel plant, to the families who struggled with the shortage of housing and services. Thematically organized and closely focused, Magnetic Mountain signals the beginning of a new stage in the writing of Soviet social history.

Armageddon Averted

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199743843
Total Pages : 330 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (997 download)

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Book Synopsis Armageddon Averted by : Stephen Kotkin

Download or read book Armageddon Averted written by Stephen Kotkin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-12-23 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring extensive revisions to the text as well as a new introduction and epilogue--bringing the book completely up to date on the tumultuous politics of the previous decade and the long-term implications of the Soviet collapse--this compact, original, and engaging book offers the definitive account of one of the great historical events of the last fifty years. Combining historical and geopolitical analysis with an absorbing narrative, Kotkin draws upon extensive research, including memoirs by dozens of insiders and senior figures, to illuminate the factors that led to the demise of Communism and the USSR. The new edition puts the collapse in the context of the global economic and political changes from the 1970s to the present day. Kotkin creates a compelling profile of post Soviet Russia and he reminds us, with chilling immediacy, of what could not have been predicted--that the world's largest police state, with several million troops, a doomsday arsenal, and an appalling record of violence, would liquidate itself with barely a whimper. Throughout the book, Kotkin also paints vivid portraits of key personalities. Using recently released archive materials, for example, he offers a fascinating picture of Gorbachev, describing this virtuoso tactician and resolutely committed reformer as "flabbergasted by the fact that his socialist renewal was leading to the system's liquidation"--and more or less going along with it. At once authoritative and provocative, Armageddon Averted illuminates the collapse of the Soviet Union, revealing how "principled restraint and scheming self-interest brought a deadly system to meek dissolution." Acclaim for the First Edition: "The clearest picture we have to date of the post-Soviet landscape." --The New Yorker "A triumph of the art of contemporary history. In fewer than 200 pagesKotkin elucidates the implosion of the Soviet empire--the most important and startling series of international events of the past fifty years--and clearly spells out why, thanks almost entirely to the 'principal restraint' of the Soviet leadership, that collapse didn't result in a cataclysmic war, as all experts had long forecasted." -The Atlantic Monthly "Concise and persuasive The mystery, for Kotkin, is not so much why the Soviet Union collapsed as why it did so with so little collateral damage." --The New York Review of Books

The Soviet Century

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Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691237298
Total Pages : 928 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Book Synopsis The Soviet Century by : Karl Schlögel

Download or read book The Soviet Century written by Karl Schlögel and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-09-24 with total page 928 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An encyclopedic and richly detailed history of everyday life in the Soviet Union The Soviet Union is gone, but its ghostly traces remain, not least in the material vestiges left behind in its turbulent wake. What was it really like to live in the USSR? What did it look, feel, smell, and sound like? In The Soviet Century, Karl Schlögel, one of the world’s leading historians of the Soviet Union, presents a spellbinding epic that brings to life the everyday world of a unique lost civilization. A museum of—and travel guide to—the Soviet past, The Soviet Century explores in evocative detail both the largest and smallest aspects of life in the USSR, from the Gulag, the planned economy, the railway system, and the steel city of Magnitogorsk to cookbooks, military medals, prison camp tattoos, and the ubiquitous perfume Red Moscow. The book examines iconic aspects of Soviet life, including long queues outside shops, cramped communal apartments, parades, and the Lenin mausoleum, as well as less famous but important parts of the USSR, including the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, the voice of Radio Moscow, graffiti, and even the typical toilet, which became a pervasive social and cultural topic. Throughout, the book shows how Soviet life simultaneously combined utopian fantasies, humdrum routine, and a pervasive terror symbolized by the Lubyanka, then as now the headquarters of the secret police. Drawing on Schlögel’s decades of travel in the Soviet and post-Soviet world, and featuring more than eighty illustrations, The Soviet Century is vivid, immediate, and grounded in firsthand encounters with the places and objects it describes. The result is an unforgettable account of the Soviet Century.

North Korea

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Author :
Publisher : Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN 13 : 1783606835
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (836 download)

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Book Synopsis North Korea by : Paul French

Download or read book North Korea written by Paul French and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2015-08-15 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: North Korea continues to make headlines, arousing curiosity and fear in equal measure. The world’s most secretive nuclear power, it still has Gulag-style prison camps, allows no access to the Internet and bans its people from talking to foreigners without official approval. In this remarkable and eye-opening book, internationally best-selling author Paul French examines in forensic detail the history and politics of North Korea, Pyongyang’s complex relations with South Korea, Japan, China and America, and the implications of Kim Jong-un’s increasingly belligerent leadership following the death of his father, Kim Jong-il. As an already unstable North Korea grows ever more unpredictable, antagonizing enemies and allies alike, North Korea: State of Paranoia delivers a provocative and frightening account of a potentially explosive nuclear tripwire.

Soviet Constitutional Crisis

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1315486474
Total Pages : 205 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (154 download)

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Book Synopsis Soviet Constitutional Crisis by : Robert Sharlet

Download or read book Soviet Constitutional Crisis written by Robert Sharlet and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-06-16 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moving from the adoption of the "post-Stalin" Constitution of 1977 through its subsequent implementation under Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko to the radical legal "restructuring" of the Gorbachev years, Robert Sharlet traces the gradual evolution of a nascent constitutionalism in the erstwhile USSR. Sharlet, a noted authority on Soviet law and constitutional development, demonstrates the gradual transformation of law from an instrument of Communist Party rule into the new "rules of the game" for nonauthoritarian political development. In effect, he argues, one of Gorbachev's most durable achievements may be his redefinition of Soviet politics into a legal idiom along with his relocation of policymaking from behind the closed doors of Party conclaves into the more open, emergent arena of constitutional government. In analyzing the politics of law from the Brezhnev era to the rise of Yeltsin, the author takes account of the "war of laws", the symbolic uses of the Soviet constitution, and even the fact that the leaders of the failed coup attempted to justify their seizure of power on constitutional grounds. Constitutionalism has sufficiently suffused Soviet public life, the book concludes, that most of the sovereign republics as successors to the former USSR, have begun designing their futures - to varying degrees - in constitutional forms.

Industrial Power and the Soviet State

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780198278818
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (788 download)

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Book Synopsis Industrial Power and the Soviet State by : Stephen Whitefield

Download or read book Industrial Power and the Soviet State written by Stephen Whitefield and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses the relationship between economic power and political authority in the Soviet system. In it, Stephen Whitefield takes issue with those who think that communist politicians successfully dominated the economy and society. He argues, on the contrary, that politicians' effortsto build authority in the industrial sector were a key source of political instability, and that perestroika was the last in a series of failed attempts by Soviet leaders to gain control of the behaviour of the institutions they themselves had created. In an administered economy, industrial organization is vitally important in structuring the interests and behaviour of social groups. The dilemma for Soviet politicians was that their attempts to build authority over industrial actors destabilized society and ultimately resulted in the collapse ofthe Soviet state itself. But industrial power has outlived the Soviet Union, and this book concludes by showing how industry continues to exert a crucial influence on Russian government and society.

The Mythologies of Capitalism and the End of the Soviet Project

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Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 0739188038
Total Pages : 185 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis The Mythologies of Capitalism and the End of the Soviet Project by : Olga Baysha

Download or read book The Mythologies of Capitalism and the End of the Soviet Project written by Olga Baysha and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-08-14 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of The Mythologies of Capitalism and the End of the Soviet Project is to show that in order to understand popular disillusionment with democratization, liberalization, and other transformations associated with the attempts of non-Western societies to appropriate the ideas of Western modernity, one must consider how these ideas are mythologized in the course of such appropriations. Olga Baysha argues that the seeds of popular post-revolutionary frustration should be sought in pre-revolutionary discourses on democracy, liberalism, and other concepts of Western modernity that are produced outside local contexts and introduced through the channels of global communication and the interpretations of politicians, activists, and experts. Analyzing the opinions of working people and intellectuals published in two Ukrainian newspapers of perestroika times, the author shows how the concepts of democracy, the market, and the West acquired schizophrenic mythical significations. The study is situated within the context of Ulrich Beck’s theory of world risk society and Gregory Bateson’s theory of schizophrenia as communicative disorder. The author argues that schizophrenic mythologies constructed through globalized networks can lead to disorientation, frustration, and the sense of uncertainty and insecurity on the part of mass publics.

Post-Soviet Social

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400840422
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis Post-Soviet Social by : Stephen J. Collier

Download or read book Post-Soviet Social written by Stephen J. Collier and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-08 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Soviet Union created a unique form of urban modernity, developing institutions of social provisioning for hundreds of millions of people in small and medium-sized industrial cities spread across a vast territory. After the collapse of socialism these institutions were profoundly shaken--casualties, in the eyes of many observers, of market-oriented reforms associated with neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus. In Post-Soviet Social, Stephen Collier examines reform in Russia beyond the Washington Consensus. He turns attention from the noisy battles over stabilization and privatization during the 1990s to subsequent reforms that grapple with the mundane details of pipes, wires, bureaucratic routines, and budgetary formulas that made up the Soviet social state. Drawing on Michel Foucault's lectures from the late 1970s, Post-Soviet Social uses the Russian case to examine neoliberalism as a central form of political rationality in contemporary societies. The book's basic finding--that neoliberal reforms provide a justification for redistribution and social welfare, and may work to preserve the norms and forms of social modernity--lays the groundwork for a critical revision of conventional understandings of these topics.

Russia and Eurasia 2016-2017

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Author :
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1475828993
Total Pages : 339 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (758 download)

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Book Synopsis Russia and Eurasia 2016-2017 by : Brent Hierman

Download or read book Russia and Eurasia 2016-2017 written by Brent Hierman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published and updated annually, Russia and Eurasia deals with the twelve independent republics that became members of the Commonwealth of Independent States following the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1992. The text focuses strongly on recent economic and political developments with shorter sections dealing with foreign policy, the military, religion, education, and specific cultural elements that help to define each republic and differentiate one from the other. Approximately one-third of the book is devoted to Russia, but also includes sections on Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. How the Commonwealth of Independent States came into being and how it has evolved since 1992 is also discussed. The combination of factual accuracy and up-to-date detail along with its informed projections make this an outstanding resource for researchers, practitioners in international development, media professionals, government officials, potential investors and students.

The American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1315480832
Total Pages : 1645 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (154 download)

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Book Synopsis The American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies by : Patt Leonard

Download or read book The American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies written by Patt Leonard and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-02-27 with total page 1645 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This bibliography, first published in 1957, provides citations to North American academic literature on Europe, Central Europe, the Balkans, the Baltic States and the former Soviet Union. Organised by discipline, it covers the arts, humanities, social sciences, life sciences and technology.

The Last Man in Russia

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0141967625
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (419 download)

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Book Synopsis The Last Man in Russia by : Oliver Bullough

Download or read book The Last Man in Russia written by Oliver Bullough and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2013-04-04 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Oliver Bullough, the acclaimed author of the Orwell Prize-shortlisted, Let Our Fame Be Great, a study - part travelogue, part political analysis - of a nation in crisis The Last Man in Russia is a portrait of the country like no other; a quest to understand the soul of Russia. Award-winning writer Oliver Bullough travels the country from crowded Moscow train to empty windswept village, following in the footsteps of one extraordinary man, the dissident Orthodox priest Father Dmitry. His moving, terrifying story is the story of a nation: famine, war, the frozen wastes of the Gulag, the collapse of communism and now, a people seeking oblivion. Bullough shows that in a country so willing to crush its citizens, there is also courage, resilience and flickering glimmers of hope. 'Brisk, lucid style ... skilful interweaving of historical context with his own rich experience of Russia. [Bullough] has a talent for sketching the people he meets, often administering a welcome dose of humour ... and he appreciates the absurd, in the best Russian tradition ... an ambitious and wide-ranging journey' Arthur House, Sunday Telegraph 'An extraordinary portrait of a nation struggling to shed its past and find peace with itself' Anthony Sattin, Sunday Times Oliver Bullough studied modern history at Oxford University and moved to Russia after graduating in 1999. He lived in St Petersburg, Bishkek and Moscow over the next seven years, travelling widely as a reporter for Reuters news agency. He is now the Caucasus Editor for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting. His first book, Let Our Fame Be Great: Journeys Among the Defiant People of the Caucasus, received the Cornelius Ryan award in the United States and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in Britain. Oliver Bullough received the Oxfam Emerging Writer award in 2011.

Comparative Politics

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Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521633567
Total Pages : 452 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (335 download)

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Book Synopsis Comparative Politics by : Jeffrey Kopstein

Download or read book Comparative Politics written by Jeffrey Kopstein and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-08-15 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This textbook provides students with the historical background needed to understand politics of today.

Russian Talk

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Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780801433856
Total Pages : 246 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (338 download)

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Book Synopsis Russian Talk by : Nancy Ries

Download or read book Russian Talk written by Nancy Ries and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As one of the first Western ethnographers working in Moscow, Nancy Ries became convinced that talk is one crucial way in which Russian identity is constructed and reproduced. Listening to the grim stories people used to characterize their lives during perestroika, and encountering the florid pessimism with which Muscovites described the unraveling of Soviet governance, Ries realized that these dire tales played a crucial role in fabricating a sense of shared experience and destiny. While many of the narratives aptly depicted the chaotic social and political events, they also promoted key images of "Russianness" and presented Russian society as an inescapable realm of injustice, absurdity, and suffering. At the height of perestroika in the early 1990s, Moscow residents commonly used the phrase "complete ruin" to refer to the disintegration of Russian society, encompassing in that phrase the escalation of crime, the disappearance of goods from stores, the fall of production, ecological catastrophes, ethnic violence in the Caucasus, the degradation of the arts, and the flood of pornography. Ries argues that such stories became a genre of folklore consistent in their lamenting, portentous tone and their dramatic, culturally poignant details.