Russian identity

[Alexandra Smith]

Deat Yuri,

First of all, you may wish to consider Derek Offord's excellent  
collection of articles written by Russian thinkers -- edited and  
translated by Derek Offord and W.J. Leatherbarrow:
A Documentary History of Russian Thought: From the Enlightenment to  
Marxism by W.J. Leatherbarrow and Derek Offord (Paperback - 31 Dec  
1987).
It contains a few articles that explicitly deal with the notion of  
Russian identity (Chaadaev, Russian Decembrist's writings on the  
Russian state, etc.).
I find Vera Tolz's book very helpful, too: Tolz, Vera. Russia:  
Inventing the Nation, 2001. (London: Arnold, and New York: Oxford  
University Press).
She has an article on post-Soviet search for identity: "The Search for  
National Identity in Yeltsin's and Putin's Russia," in Jonathan  
Frankel and Stefani Hoffman (eds.), The Fall of Communism in Europe,  
2004. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 160-178.
Robin-Milner-Gulland's book The Russians (Wiley-Blackwell, 2000) deals  
more with   Russian cultural history, rather than with historical  
issues, but it does talk about various manifestations of Russian  
identity in visual arts and literature.
Nicholas Riazanovsky's book The Image of Peter the Great in Russian  
History and Thought (Oxford University Press, 1992) deals with the  
notion of identity in relation to the assessment of Peter the Great's  
reforms by various historians and thinkers. It's an excellent source  
of information that covers 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
Caryl Emerson's latest book The Cambridge Introduction to Russian  
Literature (Cambridge University Press 2008) provides a wonderful  
overview of Russian culture as well as literature. It contains various  
references to important Russian beliefs, traditional narratives,  
attitudes to the West, the role of Petersburg and Moscow in Russian  
artistic imagination, etc.

All best,
Alexandra







--------------
Alexandra Smith (PhD, University of London)
Reader in Russian Studies
Department of European Languages and Cultures
School of  Languages, Literatures and Cultures
The University of Edinburgh
David Hume Tower
George Square
Edinburgh EH8 9JX
UK

tel. +44-(0)131-6511381
fax: +44- (0)131- 650-3604
e-mail: Alexandra.Smith at ed.ac.uk




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