Adventures in Russian Historical Research: Reminiscences of American Scholars from the Cold War to the Present / Edition 1

by Samuel H. Baron, Cathy Frierson

Overview

American historians of Russia have always been an intrepid lot. Their research trips were spent not in Cambridge or Paris, Rome or Berlin, but in Soviet dormitories with official monitors. They were seeking access to a historical record that was purposefully shrouded in secrecy, boxed up and locked away in closed archives. Their efforts, indeed their curiosity itself, sometimes raised suspicion at home as well as in a Soviet Union that did not want to be known even while it felt misunderstood. This lively volume brings together the reflections of twenty leading specialists on Russian history representing four generations. They relate their experiences as historians and researchers in Russia from the first academic exchanges in the 1950s through the Cold War years, detente, glasnost, and the first post-Soviet decade. Their often moving, acutely observed stories of Russian academic life record dramatic change both in the historical profession and in the society that they have devoted their careers to understanding.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780765611970
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/31/2003
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Samuel H. Baron, Cathy A. Frierson

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 My Historical Research in the Soviet Union, Nicholas V. Riasanovsky; Chapter 2 A Tale of Two Inquiries, Samuel H. Baron; Chapter 3 Discovering Rural Russia, Priscilla Roosevelt; Chapter 4 Catherine the Great and the Rats, John T. Alexander; Chapter 5 Exploration and Adventure in the Two Capitals, Richard Stites; Chapter 6 Leningrad, 1966–1967, S. Frederick Starr; Chapter 7 Adventures and Misadventures, Hugh Ragsdale; Chapter 8 Reclaiming Peter the Great, James Cracraft; Chapter 9 Prisoner of the Zeitgeist, Laura Engelstein; Chapter 10 Of Outcomes Happy and Unhappy, Bruce W. Menning; Chapter 11 A Journey from St. Petersburg to Saratov, Donald J. Raleigh; Chapter 12 Romancing the Sources, Nancy Shields Kollmann; Chapter 13 Russian History from Coast to Coast, Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter; Chapter 14 Friends and Colleagues, Eve Levin; Chapter 15 Within and Beyond the Pale, RobertWeinberg; Chapter 16 Mysteries in the Realms of History and Memory, Cathy A. Frierson; Chapter 17 A Historian of Science Works from the Bottom Up, Paul R. Josephson; Chapter 18 Orthodoxies and Revisions, Nadieszda Kizenko; Chapter 19 Post-Soviet Improvisations, Golfo Alexopoulos; Chapter 20 Hits and Misses in the Archives of Kazakhstan, Steven A. Barnes;