Of the many sects that broke from the official Russian Orthodox church in the 18th century, one was universally despised. Its members were peasants from the Russian heartland skilled in the arts of animal husbandry who turned their knives on themselves to become eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. Convinced that salvation came only with the literal excision of the instruments of sin, they were known as Skoptsy (the self-castrated). Their community thrived well into the 20th century, when it was destroyed in the Stalinist Terror.
Of the many sects that broke from the official Russian Orthodox church in the 18th century, one was universally despised. Its members were peasants fr...
Russians have often been characterized as people with souls rather than selves. Self and Story in Russian History challenges the portrayal of the Russian character as selfless, self-effacing, or self-torturing by exploring the texts through which Russians have defined themselves as private persons and shaped their relation to the cultural community. The stories of self under consideration here reflect the perspectives of men and women from the last two hundred years, ranging from westernized nobles to simple peasants, from such famous people as Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Akhmatova, and Nicholas II...
Russians have often been characterized as people with souls rather than selves. Self and Story in Russian History challenges the portrayal of the Russ...
Of the many sects that broke from the official Russian Orthodox church in the eighteenth century, one was universally despised. Its members were peasants from the Russian heartland skilled in the arts of animal husbandry who turned their knives on themselves to become "eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake." Convinced that salvation came only with the literal excision of the instruments of sin, they were known as Skoptsy (the self-castrated). Their community thrived well into the twentieth century, when it was destroyed in the Stalinist Terror.In a major feat of historical reconstruction,...
Of the many sects that broke from the official Russian Orthodox church in the eighteenth century, one was universally despised. Its members were peasa...
"Engelstein's sensitivity to the interplay of conceptions of gender and class with politics and science makes the book valuable not only to Russianists, but to historians of culture and society in general. . . . Laura Engelstein has made a remarkable contribution to the scholarly literature." Journal of the History of Sexuality
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"Engelstein's sensitivity to the interplay of conceptions of gender and class with politics and science makes the book valuable not only to Russian...
Twentieth-century Russia, in all its political incarnations, lacked the basic features of the Western liberal model: the rule of law, civil society, and an uncensored public sphere. In Slavophile Empire, the leading historian Laura Engelstein pays particular attention to the Slavophiles and their heirs, whose aversion to the secular individualism of the West and embrace of an idealized version of the native past established a pattern of thinking that had an enduring impact on Russian political life.
Imperial Russia did not lack for partisans of Western-style liberalism, but...
Twentieth-century Russia, in all its political incarnations, lacked the basic features of the Western liberal model: the rule of law, civil society...
Twentieth-century Russia, in all its political incarnations, lacked the basic features of the Western liberal model: the rule of law, civil society, and an uncensored public sphere. In Slavophile Empire, the leading historian Laura Engelstein pays particular attention to the Slavophiles and their heirs, whose aversion to the secular individualism of the West and embrace of an idealized version of the native past established a pattern of thinking that had an enduring impact on Russian political life.
Imperial Russia did not lack for partisans of Western-style liberalism, but...
Twentieth-century Russia, in all its political incarnations, lacked the basic features of the Western liberal model: the rule of law, civil society...
October 1917, heralded as the culmination of the Russian Revolution, remains a defining moment in world history. Even a hundred years after the events that led to the emergence of the world's first self-proclaimed socialist state, debate continues over whether, as historian E. H. Carr put it decades ago, these earth-shaking days were a "landmark in the emancipation of mankind from past oppression" or "a crime and a disaster." Some things are clear. After the implosion of the three-hundred-year-old Romanov dynasty as a result of the First World War, Russia was in crisis-one interim government...
October 1917, heralded as the culmination of the Russian Revolution, remains a defining moment in world history. Even a hundred years after the events...
