Description
Book Synopsis 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.
Trade Review “Lively and provocative to the last, Confino offers in this posthumously published volume the mature reflections of a master historian.” • Slavonic & East European Review
Table of Contents Foreword
A Note on Transliteration and Dates
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Discipline and I
PART I: THE FATE OF IDEAS IN HISTORY
Chapter 1. Alexander Herzen and Isaiah Berlin on Russia’s Elusive Counter-Enlightenment
Chapter 2. Russian and Western European Roots of Soviet Totalitarianism
Chapter 3. Traditions, Old and New: Patterns of Protest and Dissent in Modern Russia
PART II: SOCIAL GROUPS IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
Chapter 4. On Intellectuals and Intellectual Traditions in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Russia
Chapter 5. The Nobility in Russia and Western Europe: Contrasts and Similarities
Chapter 6. Comparing Russian Serfdom and American Slavery
Chapter 7. Agrarian Crisis, Urbanization, and the Russian Peasants at the End of the Old Regime, 1880s-1920s
PART III: APPROACHES TO THE HISTORY OF RUSSIA
Chapter 8. Re-inventing the Enlightenment: Western Images and Eastern Realities in the Eighteenth Century
Chapter 9. Political Murder in Russian Culture: Comparisons and Counterfactuals
Chapter 10. Current Events and the Representation of the Past: Issues in Russian Historical Writing
Afterword
Bibliography
Index
