"Picturing Russian Empire brings a fresh approach to both Russian and Imperial Studies by centering the visual. In a series of short essays, focused on striking images, the authors reexamine historical encounters and exchanges within the shifting borders of the empire. The book not only offers interpretations of the images but also shows the kinds of work that images themselves can accomplish by changing or solidifying notions of how the world is or should be organized. The book advances the idea of a "pictosphere" in which images from the many visual cultures of the empire interacted. The essays are lively and accessible, crafted to engage the reader. Picturing Russian Empire also provides a historical and visual approach to understanding present-day conflicts in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia"--

What can Russian images and objects—a tsar’s crown, a provincial watercolor album, the Soviet Pioneer Palace—tell us about the Russian people and their culture? This wide-ranging book is the first to explore the visual culture of Russia over the entire span of Russian history, from ancient Kiev to contemporary, post-Soviet society. Illustrated with more than one hundred diverse and fascinating images, the book examines the ways that Russians have represented themselves visually, understood their visual environment, and used visual images in social and political contexts. Expert contributors discuss images and objects from all over the Russian/Soviet empire, including consumer goods, architectural monuments, religious icons, portraits, news and art photography, popular prints, films, folk art, and more. Each of the concise and accessible essays in the volume offers a fresh interpretation of Russian cultural history. Putting visuality itself in focus as never before, Picturing Russia adds an entirely new dimension to the study of Russian literature, history, art, and culture. The book enriches our understanding of visual documents and shows the variety of ways they serve as far more than mere illustration.

"Picturing Russian Empire brings a fresh approach to both Russian and Imperial Studies by centering the visual. In a series of short essays, focused on striking images, the authors reexamine historical encounters and exchanges within the shifting borders of the empire. The book not only offers interpretations of the images but also shows the kinds of work that images themselves can accomplish by changing or solidifying notions of how the world is or should be organized. The book advances the idea of a "pictosphere" in which images from the many visual cultures of the empire interacted. The essays are lively and accessible, crafted to engage the reader. Picturing Russian Empire also provides a historical and visual approach to understanding present-day conflicts in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia"--

A leading international authority discusses all aspects of Russian history, from the struggle by the state to control society to the transformation of the nation into a multi-ethnic empire, Russia's relations with the West and the post-Soviet era. Original.

"The National Bolshevik Party, founded in the mid-1990s by Eduard Limonov and Aleksandr Dugin, began as an attempt to combine radically different ideologies: bolshevism and nationalism. In the years that followed, Limonov, Dugin, and the movements they led underwent dramatic shifts that eventually led to the support of Putin's conservative, imperialist regime over social justice and fundamental civil liberties. To illuminate the role of these right-wing ideas in contemporary Russian society, Fabrizio Fenghi examines the public pronouncements and aesthetics of this influential movement. He analyzes a diverse range of media, including novels, art exhibitions, performances, seminars, punk rock concerts, and even protest actions. His interviews with key figures reveal an attempt to create an alternative intellectual class, or a "counter-intelligensia." This volume shows how certain forms of art can transform into political action through the creation of new languages, institutions, and modes of collective participation"--

Combining the talents and expert knowledge of an early modern historian of Russia and of a Soviet specialist, 'Russia's Empires' is a major study of the entire sweep of Russian history from its earliest formations to the rule of Vladimir Putin. Looking through the lens of empire, which the authors conceptualise as a state based on institutionalised differentiation, inequitable hierarchy, and bonds of reciprocity between ruler and ruled, Kivelson and Suny displace the centrality of nation and nationalism in the Russian and Soviet story.