Famine in European History

Famine in European History
Author: Guido Alfani
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2017-08-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107179939

The first systematic study of famine in all parts of Europe from the Middle Ages to present. It compares the characteristics, consequences and causes of famine in regional case studies by leading experts to form a comprehensive picture of when and why food security across the continent became a critical issue.

A People's Tragedy

A People's Tragedy
Author: Orlando Figes
Publisher: Bodley Head Childrens
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre: Russia
ISBN: 9781847922915

Vast in scope, based on exhaustive original research, and written with passion, narrative skill and human sympathy, this book offers an account of the Russian Revolution for a new generation.

Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991

Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991
Author: Orlando Figes
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2014-04-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0805095985

From the author of A People's Tragedy, an original reading of the Russian Revolution, examining it not as a single event but as a hundred-year cycle of violence in pursuit of utopian dreams In this elegant and incisive account, Orlando Figes offers an illuminating new perspective on the Russian Revolution. While other historians have focused their examinations on the cataclysmic years immediately before and after 1917, Figes shows how the revolution, while it changed in form and character, nevertheless retained the same idealistic goals throughout, from its origins in the famine crisis of 1891 until its end with the collapse of the communist Soviet regime in 1991. Figes traces three generational phases: Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who set the pattern of destruction and renewal until their demise in the terror of the 1930s; the Stalinist generation, promoted from the lower classes, who created the lasting structures of the Soviet regime and consolidated its legitimacy through victory in war; and the generation of 1956, shaped by the revelations of Stalin's crimes and committed to "making the Revolution work" to remedy economic decline and mass disaffection. Until the very end of the Soviet system, its leaders believed they were carrying out the revolution Lenin had begun. With the authority and distinctive style that have marked his magisterial histories, Figes delivers an accessible and paradigm-shifting reconsideration of one of the defining events of the twentieth century.

Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union

Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union
Author: Felix Wemheuer
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2014-06-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 030020678X

During the twentieth century, 80 percent of all famine victims worldwide died in China and the Soviet Union. In this rigorous and thoughtful study, Felix Wemheuer analyzes the historical and political roots of these socialist-era famines, in which overambitious industrial programs endorsed by Stalin and Mao Zedong created greater disasters than those suffered under prerevolutionary regimes. Focusing on famine as a political tool, Wemheuer systematically exposes how conflicts about food among peasants, urban populations, and the socialist state resulted in the starvation death of millions. A major contribution to Chinese and Soviet history, this provocative analysis examines the long-term effects of the great famines on the relationship between the state and its citizens and argues that the lessons governments learned from the catastrophes enabled them to overcome famine in their later decades of rule.

Overtaken by the Night

Overtaken by the Night
Author: Richard Robbins
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 537
Release: 2018-01-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822983222

Vladimir Fedorovich Dzhunkovsky was a witness to Russia's unfolding tragedy—from Tsar Alexander II's Great Reforms, through world war, revolution, the rise of a new regime, and finally, his country's descent into terror under Stalin. But Dzhunkovsky was not just a passive observer—he was an active participant in his troubled and turbulent times, often struggling against the tide. In the centennial of the Russian revolution, his story takes on special significance. Highly readable, Overtaken by the Night captivates on many levels. It is a gripping biography of a man of many faces, a behind-the-curtain look at the inner workings of Russian politics at its highest levels, and also an engrossing account of ordinary Russians engulfed by swiftly moving political and social currents. Dzhunkovsky served as a confidant in the tsar's imperial court,and as governor in Moscow province during and after the 1905 revolution. In 1913, he became the empire's security chief, determined to reform the practices of the dreaded tsarist political police, the Okhrana. Dismissed from office for daring to investigate and warn Tsar Nicholas about Rasputin, his path led him into combat on the battlefields of the First World War. A natural leader of men, he held his units together even as revolution spilled into the trenches. Arrested as a counterrevolutionary in 1918 and imprisoned until 1921, Dzhunkovsky avoided execution thanks to an outpouring of public support and his reputation for treating revolutionaries with fairness and dignity. Although later he consulted for the Stalinist secret police, he was tried and executed in 1938 as an enemy of the people. Based on Dzhunkovsky's detailed memoirs and extensive archival research, Overtaken by the Night paints a fascinating picture of an important figure. Dzhunkovsky's incredible life reveals much about a long and crucial period in Russian history. It is a story of Russia in revolution reminiscent of the fictional Doctor Zhivago, but perhaps even more extraordinary for being true.

Hammer, Sickle, and Soil

Hammer, Sickle, and Soil
Author: Jonathan Daly
Publisher: Hoover Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2017-10-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0817920668

In Hammer, Sickle, and Soil, Jonathan Daly tells the harrowing story of Stalin's transformation of millions of family farms throughout the USSR into 250,000 collective farms during the period from 1929 to 1933. History's biggest experiment in social engineering at the time and the first example of the complete conquest of the bulk of a population by its rulers, the policy was above all intended to bring to Russia Marx's promised bright future of socialism. In the process, however, it caused widespread peasant unrest, massive relocations, and ultimately led to millions dying in the famine of 1932–33. Drawing on scholarly studies and primary-source collections published since the opening of the Soviet archives three decades ago, now, for the first time, this volume offers an accessible and accurate narrative for the general reader. The book is illustrated with propaganda posters from the period that graphically portray the drama and trauma of the revolution in Soviet agriculture under Stalin. In chilling detail the author describes how the havoc and destruction wrought in the countryside sowed the seeds of destruction of the entire Soviet experiment.