Russia Reader

An account of the day-to-day scramble to make ends meet after the end of the Soviet Union, letters recording ordinary Russians' reactions to the Revolution as events unfolded in 1917, and excerpts from a sixteenth-century manual instructing elite Muscovites on proper household management - "The Russia Reader" brings these and many other selections together in this introduction to the history, culture, and politics of the world's largest country, from the earliest written accounts of the Russian people to today. Conveying the texture of everyday life alongside experiences of epic historical events, the reader is filled with the voices of men and women, rulers and revolutionaries, peasants, soldiers, literary figures, emigres, journalists, and scholars. Most of the selections are by Russians; thirty are translated into English for the first time. The collection is illustrated with maps, paintings, photographs, posters, and cartoons; fifteen images appear in colour. The volume's editors introduce each of the thematic sections and all of the written selections. "The Russia Reader" incorporates song lyrics, jokes, anecdotes, and folktales as well as poems, essays, and fiction by writers including Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoi, and Akhmatova. Transcripts from the show trials of major Party figures and an account of how staff at the Lenin Library in Moscow was instructed to interact with foreigners are among the many selections based on personal memoirs and archival materials only recently made available to the public. From a tenth-century emissary describing his encounters in Kyivan Rus', to a scientist recalling her life in a new research city built from scratch in Siberia during the 1950s, to a novelist depicting the decadence of the "New Russians" in the 2000s, "The Russia Reader" is an extraordinary introduction to a vast and varied land.