Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #113891 in eBooks
• Published on: 2005-12-14
• Format: Kindle Book
• Number of items: 1

Review
"'A remarkable book... Stites has embarked on a very detailed and nuanced analysis, a la Habermas... This is a splendid book, very well and perceptively written, con brio. It makes the whole movement of Russian culture come alive, while maintaining a strict scholarly and informative underpinning, in a way which catches the reader up in the infectious enthusiasm and humane judgements of the author.' Isabel de Madariaga, Times Literary Supplement 'This work can be used for undergraduate and graduate courses in cultural history and Russian history and enjoyed by the general public. It provides material and inspiration for further studies in many directions.' Lina Bernstein, Slavic and East European Journal 'In Serfdom, Society, and the Arts, Stites makes another significant contribution to cultural and social history... His narrative is masterful and moving. In addition to being a rich repository of empirical information, Serfdom, Society, and the Arts teaches historians how to bring imagination and empathy to cherished subjects.' Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter, The Russian Review"

Review
"This is a great (genuinely great) book. It is an intellectual event of primary importance, whose significance is by no means confined to Russian studies. I am confident that the book will find a broad and diverse readership, it is enormously important as a historical study; it is truly innovative in its methodology; it offers an incredible wealth of exciting material; and, last but not least, it is written in a vivid language, with remarkable insight, level-headedness, and compassion."-Boris Gasparov, Columbia University, author of Five Operas and a Symphony: Words of Music in Russian Culture (Boris Gasparov )

"In Serfdom, Society, and the Arts in Imperial Russia, Richard Stites explores the vast panorama of Russian cultural life before the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. The artistic worlds of metropolitan and provincial Russia are vividly portrayed, and the manifold dimensions of cultural production and consumption are placed within their social and political contexts with consummate skill. Immensely readable and based on complete command of the published and unpublished sources, this book is quite simply a work of breathtaking scholarship which sparkles on every page with insight and erudition. Readers will stand in awe at its formidable scope and compelling narrative, and it will quickly establish itself as the definitive study of pre-emancipation Russian culture. It is yet another monumental achievement from a master historian of Russia."-Murray Frame, University of Dundee (Murray Frame )

"This book is the latest of Stites''s panoramic yet densely detailed studies of Russian culture, and it will undoubtedly prove as invaluable to scholars, students, and general-interest readers as his previous books have done. Russian Studies is blessed to have in Stites an energetic and rigorous cultural historian of both the imperial and Soviet periods. Stites possesses an extraordinary capacity to decipher complex social and institutional formations and thereby to underscore key issues in cultural politics by creating a picture of satisfying specificity. Nobody does it better."-Julie Buckler, Harvard University (Julie Buckler )

About the Author

Customer Reviews

impressive flowering of talent and enterprise
In Russia, the Middle Ages of Europe persisted well into the 19th century, with the blight of serfdom. Yet, there were some occasional bright sparks of Enlightenment. Stites reveals some of these to us, by documenting hitherto underappreciated, if not outrightly unknown, cultural events after 1860.

Key events include the freeing of some serfs, that led a few to contribute to the arts in Moscow and other major cities. But there also appears to have been an easing up of Imperial strictures. For example, until 1865, plays to be performed in provincial cities had to be approved by Imperial censors. And that any such approved play would have to be first performed on an Imperial stage. While this may not have been enforced on every occasion, it certainly was in many or most instances. To an American, British or French visitor of that time, such restrictions would have been greeted with incredulity, and cited by them as examples of Russian autocracy.

But free speech was scarcely a consideration to the Romanovs. From this context, the limited liberalisations allowed after 1860 were indeed generous to Russians who had chafed under the earlier edicts. And it is precisely in this context that the book makes its point. There was indeed an impressive flowering of talent and enterprise, because in no small part, it had been put down for so long.