In a 1925 article on the post-Revolutionary production of the State Porcelain Factory in Leningrad, the ceramic artist Elena Danko described the factory's wares as "news from a radiant future." This volume is a catalogue of the Art Institute of Chicago's 1992 exhibit of Soviet porcelain from the collection of Craig and Kay Tuber. The essays included in News from a Radiant Future discuss the relationship between Bolshevik propaganda and the state porcelain factory, as well as the larger tradition of Russian imperial ceramics. They also consider porcelain's connection to the Russian folk heritage and specifically to the October Revolution.

One of the major historians of prerevolutionary Russia has collected in this volume some of his most important essays. Written over a number of years, these pioneering works have been revised and updated and are complemented by others being published for the first time. Thematically, they cover major subjects in Imperial Russian history and in historical writing, such as ideas and their role in historical change; the intelligentsia, the nobility, and peasant society; and historiography. The twelve essays raise cardinal questions about current scholarship on Russian history before the upheavals of 1917 and offer original interpretations that are of interest to the educated layman as well as the professional historian.

"Zinoviev's new book is less gargantuan (how could it not be?) than the enormous The Yawning Heights. And though it has a central metaphor--a crumbling, vandalized, massive sign placed in Moscow's Cosmonaut Square that reads "Long Live Communism--The Radiant Future of All Mankind"--realism and philosophy are more in evidence than comic allegory. The narrator is the Head of the Department of Theoretical Problems of the Methodology of Scientific Communism at The Human Sciences Institute of the Academy of Sciences. He has an estranged wife (with whom he lives, Moscow housing-arrangements being what they are), two teenaged children, a mother-in-law, and a burning itch to be elected an Academician. But, complicatingly, he also has friends, one who's trying to get an exit visa and another, Anton Zimin, who has written a book which postulates, for instance: "I believe that the brightest dreams and ideals of mankind, when they are realized in concrete form, produce the most disastrous consequences." Anton's totally subversive view of Soviet life is focused on the "horrifying normality" of it; he is totally non-ideological, hence clear-sighted enough to cause anything he looks at to shrivel up. And the narrator, egged on by his more or less dissident children, finds himself more and more in agreement with his dangerous friends: he never does make Academician, of course, as the complementary forces of his mediocrity and his self-disgust conspire to leave him stranded. The narrator's dilemma and his Russian schlemeil-dom, however, are the least distinctive aspects of this second, smaller, less exuberant Zinoviev book. What counts instead here is the pure play of ideas: weaving in great chunks of both official (canned) and truly biting social philosophy, Zinoviev has created a kind of divorced, muffler-ed intellectual comedy--which will be most clear and satisfying to veterans of The Yawning Heights."--Kirkus.

Communism, once heralded as the "radiant future" of all humanity, has now become part of Eastern Europe's past. What does the record say about the legacy of communism as an organizational system? Michael Burawoy and Janos Lukacs consider this question from the standpoint of the Hungarian working class. Between 1983 and 1990 the authors carried out intensive studies in two core Hungarian industries, machine building and steel production, to produce the first extended participant-observation study of work and politics in state socialism. "A fascinating and engagingly written eyewitness report on proletarian life in the waning years of goulash communism. . . . A richly rewarding book, one that should interest political scientists in a variety of subfields, from area specialists and comparativists to political economists, as well as those interested in Marxist and post-Marxist theory."—Elizabeth Kiss, American Political Science Review "A very rich book. . . . It does not merely offer another theory of transition, but also presents a clear interpretive scheme, combined with sociological theory and vivid ethnographic description."—Ireneusz Bialecki, Contemporary Sociology "Its informed skepticism of post-Communist liberal euphoria, its concern for workers, and its fine ethnographic details make this work valuable."—"àkos Róna-Tas, American Journal of Sociology

Communism, once heralded as the "radiant future" of all humanity, has now become part of Eastern Europe's past. What does the record say about the legacy of communism as an organizational system? Michael Burawoy and Janos Lukacs consider this question from the standpoint of the Hungarian working class. Between 1983 and 1990 the authors carried out intensive studies in two core Hungarian industries, machine building and steel production, to produce the first extended participant-observation study of work and politics in state socialism. "A fascinating and engagingly written eyewitness report on proletarian life in the waning years of goulash communism. . . . A richly rewarding book, one that should interest political scientists in a variety of subfields, from area specialists and comparativists to political economists, as well as those interested in Marxist and post-Marxist theory."—Elizabeth Kiss, American Political Science Review "A very rich book. . . . It does not merely offer another theory of transition, but also presents a clear interpretive scheme, combined with sociological theory and vivid ethnographic description."—Ireneusz Bialecki, Contemporary Sociology "Its informed skepticism of post-Communist liberal euphoria, its concern for workers, and its fine ethnographic details make this work valuable."—"àkos Róna-Tas, American Journal of Sociology

In an era where the church has lost much of its credibility, pastor Tara Beth Leach casts a vision for Christians to rediscover a robust, attractive witness and form the radiant communities God intends. Challenging idolatrous false images of God and calling out toxic patterns, she shows how we can recover a winsome picture of a kingdom of abundance and goodness.