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"... scholarship of the highest order.... Kendall Bailes's book is destined to become a most valuable contribution to our knowledge of Russian and Soviet culture. It is insightful and eloquent." -- Douglas R. Weiner

"... an insightful, richly researched portrait of Vernadsky's life and times... " -- American Scientist

"This biography... not only tells a story full of human drama but also one rich with insights into Russia's higher-education and scientific-research establishments." -- Washington Post Book World

"[This] concise book, with references that stop short of the Gorbachev era, will be the foundation for all future scholarship in English on Vernadsky." -- Nature

"In this insightful exploration of Vernadsky's legacy, Kendall Bailes unveils a creative scholar-activist whose life and work speak more clearly about his time than our own." -- Science

"The Bailes book... is fascinating... Read it!" -- World Affairs Report

"Kendall Bailes has left us with a vivid portrayal of the life and times of Vladimir Vernadsky." -- The Russian Review

"It offers a penetrating analysis of social realities in twentieth-century Russia, which helped create an intellectual culture dominated by ideological extremes." -- American Historical Review

This first full-length English-language biography of Vladimir Vernadsky (1863--1945), one of the leading Russian intellectual figures of the twentieth century, focuses on the interaction between science and politics during Russia's revolutionary age.

Customer Reviews (2)

mild mannered maven misses major material
Back in the bad old days of the Cold War, "China Watchers" were those unfortunate souls who parked themselves in Hong Kong and tried to figure out what was going on in China through analysis of all kinds of trivia, since real news did not reach them.They would glean bits of information from official radio and newspapers and try to build a picture of Chinese reality from it."Kremlinologists" did the same for the USSR.Bacon's book on Central Asia, first written in 1965, harks back to that dark era, when knowledge about that vast sweep of the continent could not be had for love or money and Google Earth did not exist.Even though the book was re-issued in 1980, with an introduction by a well-known scholar, the contents remained the same.Elizabeth Bacon visited Central Asia only once, in 1934, and met some Russian anthropologists in Kazakhstan during that summer, but never conducted any anthropological studies at all.She never returned.Thus, what we have here is a compendium or handbook containing all the information about the change wrought on the peoples of Central Asia (Kazakh, Kirghiz, Karakalpak, Uzbek, Tajik, and Turkoman) by Tsarist Russian and Soviet power.She collected it from articles, newspapers, books, and other sources over the years.In addition, she deduced some of the picture by looking at "similar" situations and cultures in Iran and Afghanistan, a dicey proposition to say the least.She herself admits (p.157) that "it is often difficult to determine from the Soviet literature the extent of culture change, since descriptions tend to emphasize the Soviet ideal rather than the reality."Now THAT is an understatement if anything !

Bacon's approach derives from the one found in HRAF compendia(Human Resources Area Files of the 50s and 60s).She divides Central Asia into nomadic and oasis (more urban) cultures, then writes of "traditional" culture in each, but these are basically early 19th century conditions, just before the Russians took control between 1865 and 1885.She repeats her analysis of change twice; once for what the Tsarists did and once for what the Communists did after 1917.She writes clearly and well but stresses material/technical culture more than the religious or symbolic side.She has one chapter on general linguistic changes caused by increasing Russian education.The material might be useful as background information for people heading to Central Asia, but her chosen topic--culture change--does not fare well.She had a list in front of her of areas to be discussed, but we never see it.How else could we explain an author who can move seamlessly from the Russification of educated leaders to embroidery and change in decorative arts ?

Three major criticisms might explain why I don't think this book is much more than a kind of semi-interesting "Whole Central Asia Handbook" of 1965.First, she often quotes Soviet statistics.These may lie, or at best, may be said to withhold or blur information on categories she wants.She admits this, but then guesses anyhow.Secondly and unbelievably, she ignores major sources of change that I think even a university undergraduate should have considered.A) She never mentions World War II and the impact this must have had on the Central Asian peoples.B) She never mentions subsequent military service---the compulsory service that all males had to perform.What impact did it have ?Not a word !C) Hardly a word about the effect of industrialization and one crop economy.What can I say ?I believe that these faults stem from her too close following of that dreaded list.And finally, though I would have liked some criticism of Soviet rule, of the oppression of peoples that it wrought, a personal opinion from the author, I understand that this was not in vogue in the 1960s, when researchers strove for some artificial "objectivity" and removed themselves from the picture.But, she never even mentions the word "colonialism".This proved a bit too much for me.If you need facts for a novel on the area, you might find some useful material here but I don't recommend this work.It is very illustrative of a certain kind of scholarship of yesteryear.

Buying it for my shelf after having borrowed it from another
Yah, I read this book.I live and work in Kyrgzystan and I am alwaystrying to find good books on this region.I really appreciated this bookbecause it was easy to read and facinating.The author first describeswhat the nomadic lifestyle as well as the sendentary lifestyle was of theKyrgyz, Kazahk, Turkomen, Tajik, and the Uzbek was like before Russiansentered the picture.Then she outlines the change under the RussianTsarist government and then under the Soviet influence.Written in 1966,it still is relevent especially for anyone living and working in CentralAsia. ... Read more

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In the tumultuous years after the revolution of 1917, the traditional cutlure of Imperial Russia was both destroyed and preserved, as a new Soviet culture began to take shape. This book focuses on the interaction between the emerging political and cultural policies of the Soviet regime and the deeply held traditional values of the worker and peasant masses.

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A lively analysis and social history of celebration, Life Has Become More Joyous Comrades focuses on the the social structures and practices of Stalin's Soviet Union. The work analyzes how Soviet and Party leaders of the 1930s used celebrations to promote legitimacy and authority and explores ways in which these celebrations allowed Soviet citizens to express alternative, even subversive, viewpoints. ... Read more

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Book review
A riddle; THE RUSSIAN MIND; By Ronald Hingley.The Economist May 27, 1978

Ronald Hingley is the author of some dozen books on Russia and both editor and translator of the excellent Oxford edition of Chekhov. But few experts can combine, as he does, insight and empathy with a witty and often abrasive style, and very few indeed are so refreshingly open-minded. This book is a model of its kind because Mr Hingley asks far more questions, and those the right ones, than he supplies answers.

Every cliche has its mirror image. Are the Russians open-handed, generous and expansive - or secretive, evasive, untruthful? Are they congenitally idle and irresponsible, the comsumption of vodka rating as the number one national sport, or given to the robot-like pursuit of norms and the dialectic? Vocabulary can help: the panache, the emotionalism on which Russian pride themselves, razmakh , is a semantically loaded term. But then so are the gradations of untruthfulness, to which Mr Hingley devotes a splendid section, running the gamut from vranyo , the national cult of the tall story personified by Krushchev, to lozh , the more sinister manipulation of untruth exemplified by Stalin.

History adds a second dimension. Is the Russian acceptance of authority, even of the horrifyingly arbitrary authority of an Ivan the Terrible or a Stalin, an historically conditioned reflex? In what way does Soviet man differ from his pre-revolutionary equivalent? There is the even more important problem of Russia's relation to the west, in particular the way which this problem has so obsessed the Russians themselves. Western observers of Russia, the author notes, wanted information about the country. The Russians, by contrast, wanted recognition.

Which leads Mr Hingley to what is perhaps the central insight of this admirable book, the histrionic aspect of the Russian character. A nation of role-players, one might think, and here again vocabulary is relevant, for Mr Hingley argues - as he has argues elsewhere - that the Russians possess two different languages to express two polarised forms of behaviour, depending on whether private or public affairs are concerned. No wonder Dostoevsky, one of the many literary sources Mr Hingley uses as elegantly as he does unobtrusively, was to preoccupied by the theme of the "double".Alongside every fat man . . .? ... Read more

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The lubok--a broadside or poster--played an important role in Russia's cultural history. Evolving as a medium for communication with a largely illiterate population, the popular prints were adapted to express political propaganda. Stephen Norris examines the use of such prints to stir patriotic fervor during times of war, from Napoleon's failed attempt at conquering Russia to Hitler's invasion.

Norris shows how visual images of patriotism and expressions of the Russian spirit changed over time, yet remained similar. The lubok produced during Russia's modern wars consistently featured the same key elements: the Russian peasant, the Cossack, and a representation of "the Russian spirit." When Russia was victorious, occasionally the tsar figured into the imagery; but by the beginning of the 20th century, ethnic identity had replaced dynastic representations of Russian nationhood. After the Revolutions of 1917, Bolshevik and Soviet leaders appropriated the traditional elements of the wartime lubok to promote their vision of the new socialist state.

The political power of lubok imagery did not end with the Bolsheviks' adaptations. During World War II, political posters similar to those of the tsarist era reemerged to express and to reinforce Russia's culture of patriotism and strength.

Amply illustrated, A War of Images is the first comprehensive study of how popular prints helped to construct national identity in Russia over a period of more than a century. Readers interested in Russian art, history, and culture will find its insights intriguing. ... Read more

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Valuable to academics as well as those with general interest in Russia
Having studied Russian History in college at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union and travelled to Moscow and St. Petersburg, Dr. Norris's book is revealing in the insight it provides into images a traveller invariably encounters travelling or studying Russia.To immerse yourself in the book and truly understand that sights and history making up the collective Russian experience is invaluable to even a casual observer.

The writing is accessible and not intimidating for non-academics and should accompany any traveller to Russia who wants a deeper understanding of the people, sights and history encountered during their visit.This should be carried in tandem with your Fodor's guide. ... Read more

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How could the West have better prepared for the fall of communism and gained a clearer picture of Russia's new political landscape? By cultivating an awareness, Nicolai Petro argues, of the deep democratic aspirations of the Russian people since Muscovite times. Petro traces the long history of those aspirations, recovering for us an understanding crucial to our formation of successful foreign policy toward Russia.

Expanding the traditional definition of political culture from single thread to continuous historical tapestry, Petro illuminates a reality previously lost to even the most rigorous Sovietology: the fragility of communism. He portrays an abiding "alternative political culture" that tells us Russia indeed possesses a democratic tradition on which its contemporary democracy rests.

Petro's analysis includes many surprising and incisive observations. In a look at the Russian Orthodox Church, he traces its long history of support for opposition sentiment during both tsarist and Soviet times and its support for democracy today. He also explores the character and power of contemporary Russian nationalism and traces its origins to the neo-Slavophile national identity that took its shape as a challenge to Bolshevik oppression. Delineating Russia's postcommunist political parties, the author reveals their roots in prerevolutionary times and explains how this continuity makes Russian political aspirations far more predictable than is commonly assumed.

Awakening us to Russia's historical involvement in the democratic quest that lies at the heart of Western values, Petro opens a path for a more meaningful, more productive understanding of modern Russia.

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This is an edited collection of writings that examines aspects of material life, society, and culture in the late imperial Russian countryside. The book presents a broad view of what life was like for the majority of the country's population before 1917, including treatments of the intricacies of the village community and peasant commune, social structure, everyday life, labour, education, art, religion, justice and politics. ... Read more

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post-soviet politics and history
it is refreshing to see a book that takes an untrodden path in discussing issues in russian and ukrainian transition after communism. first, the author believes it is important to look at these two countries together, rather than one by one. he thinks they are interconnected and dependent on one another for the success of their reform efforts. second, he says that history is important, since it influences current politics, and he combines historical analysis with the look at current events. finally, he looks at development of national identity in russia and ukraine on a broader plane than usual imperialism/nationalism discussions. not a bad reading for anyone interested in the area. ... Read more

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Peasant patriarchs, aristocratic dandies, anxious bureaucrats, workers seeking father-figures, and promiscuous bathhouse attendants populate this volume. Its essays examine how ideals of manliness intersected with historical developments, the formation of national identities, and changing definitions of intimacy. This book is essential reading for students and scholars of gender theory and Russian theory alike.
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This valuable study offers a rare perspective on the social and political crisis in late Imperial Russia. Mark D. Steinberg focuses on employers, supervisors, and workers in the printing industry as it evolved from a state-dependent handicraft to a capitalist industry. He explores class relations and the values, norms, and perceptions with which they were made meaningful. Using archival and printed sources, Steinberg examines economic changes, workplace relations, professional organizations, unions, strikes, and political activism, as well as shop customs, trade festivals, and everyday life. In rich detail he describes efforts to build a community of masters and men united by shared interests and moral norms. The collapse of this ideal in the face of growing class conflict is also explored, giving a full view of an important moment in Russian history. ... Read more

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Of all Soviet cultural myths, none was more resilient than the belief that the USSR had the world's greatest readers. This book explains how the Russian reading myth took hold in the 1920s and 1930s, how it was supported by a monopolistic and homogenizing system of book production and distribution, and how it was challenged in the postStalin era: first, by the latent expansion and differentiation of the reading public, and then, more dramatically, by the economic and cultural changes of the 1990s. ... Read more

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For several decades David Bethea has written authoritatively on the 'mythopoetic thinking' that lies at the heart of classical Russian literature, especially Russian poetry. His theoretically informed essays and books have made a point of turning back to issues of intentionality and biography at a time when authorial agency seems under threat of 'erasure' and the question of how writers, and poets in particular, live their lives through their art is increasingly moot. The lichnost (personhood, psychic totality) of the given writer is all-important, argues Bethea, as it is that which combines the specifically biographical and the capaciously mythical in verbal units that speak simultaneously to different planes of being. Pushkin's Evgeny can be one incarnation of the poet himself and an everyman rising up to challenge Peter's new world order; Brodsky can be, all at once, Dante and Mandelstam and himself, the exile paying an Orphic visit to Florence (and, by ghostly association, Leningrad). It is this sort of metempsychosis, where the stories that constitute the Ur-texts of Russian literature are constantly reworked in the biographical myths shaping individual writers' lives, that is Bethea's primary focus. This collection contains a liberal sampling of Bethea's most memorable previously published essays along with new studies prepared for this occasion. ... Read more

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Village Values is the first book to examine the trends in the development and practice of urban Russian life-cycle rituals from the 19th to the 21st centuries. Rituals were a source of contention for theorists from the earliest decades of the Soviet Union because of their connection to religion and to outmoded patriarchal views of the family. After they were embraced by official state policy in the 1930s, birth, marriage, and funerary rituals became the locus for negotiation of social and familial identity. Drawing upon extensive interviews with ritual participants and state celebrants, Rouhier-Willoughby examines developments in the Soviet ritual complex from the post-WWII years to the present day, with a particular emphasis on the heyday of ritual creation, the 1970s and 1980s.

The Soviet ritual complex featured a tripartite structure based on native folk material, Soviet ideology, and borrowings from the West. Ritual practice allowed citizens to apply these three disparate, and yet oddly coherent, symbolic systems to establish their identity as spouses, parents, and the bereaved. Rouhier-Willoughby shows how ritual participants perpetuated and undermined the social hierarchy in the face of state policy that viewed the family as the fundamental socialist cell and as the core of social stability.

The book examines how the shifts in post-Soviet society have realigned the three elements making up the Soviet ritual complex into an oppositional structure of ours versus theirs. Ritual actors continue to practice rites that restructure and accommodate to the consumerism many find disturbing and anti-family. This book will be of great interest to specialists on Russia and on ritual as well as to a general audience interested in Russian culture. ... Read more

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"The seven essays in Sex and Russian Society, by Russians and Western scholars, graphically describe the consequences of decades of sexual neglect, illiteracy and repression.... Sex and Russian Society... reveals that beneath the repressive model of official morality an evolution in sexual mores was taking place, particularly among the young.... The book's most alarming, though not unexpected, message is that homosexuals and women are bearing the brunt of a disintegrating health care system and repressive sexual attitudes and stereotypes." -- Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation

Here is the first serious study of the main aspects of sexuality in Russian society today, with contributors from both inside and outside the former Soviet Union. From the 1930s, sex was kept out of the public eye in the former USSR. Low contraceptive use, high abortion rates, intolerance toward homosexuals, and inadequate measures to combat AIDS are some of the consequences of the long neglect and repression of sexual culture.

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A stimulating and provocative collection, these essays challenge received notions about the culture and history of medieval Russia and offer fresh approaches to problems of textual interpretation, the theory of the medieval text, and the analysis of alternative, nonverbal texts. The contributors, international specialists from many disciplines, investigate issues ranging over history, cultural anthropology, art history, and ritual. They have produced a worthy companion to the first volume of Medieval Russian Culture, published in 1984. ... Read more

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Lindsey Hughes (1949-2007) made her reputation as one of the foremost historians of the age of Peter the Great by revealing the more freakish aspects of the tsar's complex mind and reconstructing the various physical environments in which he lived. Contributors to Personality and Place in Russian Culture were encouraged to develop any of the approaches featured in Hughes's work: pointillist and panoramic, playful and morbid, quotidian and bizarre. The result is a rich and original collection, ranging from the sixteenth century to the present day, in which a group of leading international scholars explore the role of the individual in Russian culture, the myriad variety of individual lives, and the changing meanings invested in particular places.The editor, Simon Dixon, is Sir Bernard Pares Professor of Russian History at UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. ... Read more

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Recent political changes in Central Asia, where the United States is replacing Russia as the dominant power, are having a profound effect on Russian speakers in the region. These people, formerly perceived as progressive and engaging with Europe, are now confronted by the erasure of their literary, musical, cinematic and journalistic culture, as local ethnic and American cultures become much stronger.