From the country that has added to our vocabulary such colorful terms as "purges," "pogroms," and "gulag," this collection investigates the conspicuous marks of violence in Russian history and culture. Russians and non-Russians alike have long debated the reasons for this endemic violence. Some have cited Russia's huge size, unforgiving climate, and exposed geographical position as formative in its national character, making invasion easy and order difficult. Others have fixed the blame on cultural and religious traditions that spurred internecine violence or on despotic rulers or...
From the country that has added to our vocabulary such colorful terms as "purges," "pogroms," and "gulag," this collection investigates the conspic...
The Enlightenment privileged vision as the principle means of understandingthe world, but the eighteenth-century Russian preoccupationwith sight was not merely a Western import. In his masterful study, Levitt shows the visual to have had deep indigenous roots in RussianOrthodox culture and theology, arguing that the visual played a crucialrole in the formation of early modern Russian culture and identity.Levitt traces the early modern Russian quest for visibility from jubilantself-discovery, to serious reflexivity, to anxiety and crisis. The bookexamines verbal constructs of sight--in poetry,...
The Enlightenment privileged vision as the principle means of understandingthe world, but the eighteenth-century Russian preoccupationwith sight was n...
