SUGGESTED READINGS TO PREPARE FOR RUSSIA

Prepared by Dr. John V. Richardson Jr., UCLA Professor of Information Studies

Last Updated: 12 November 2008

 

 

 

 

 

Background Items:

 

*Baedeker’s St. Petersburg.  New York: Prentice-Hall/Simon and Schuster, (latest).

            My favorite guidebook, which contains a good Russian-English map of city and metro.

 

James H. Billington. Russia In Search of Itself. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center, 2004.

The Librarian of Congress writes about the dashed liberal hope of democracy in modern-day Russia; will Atlanticism prevail or some Eurasianism, or perhaps a form of Nazism?

 

Archie Brown; Michael Kaser; and Gerald S. Smith.  The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the Former Soviet Union.  New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

            More than anyone would want to read at a single sitting, but comprehensive treatments of many topics nonetheless.

 

Orlando Figes.  Natasha's Dance : A Cultural History of Russia.  New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2002.

            “My aim is to explore Russian culture…as a series of encounters or creative social acts which were performed and understood in many different ways.  [T]here is a Russian temperament, a set of native customs and beliefs, something visceral, emotional, instinctive, passed on down the generations, which has helped to shape the personality and bind together the community.  [T]he extraordinary power these myths had in shaping the Russian national consciousness.  (p. xxviii-xxx)“

 

*Genevra Gerhart, The Russian's World: Life and Language, 2nd ed.  Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1995.

            The best source, if somewhat dated, for a detailed explanation of how Russians think about themselves; be warned, though, Cyrillic characters throughout the text.

           

Martin Gilbert, Atlas of Russian History.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

            A neat graphic way of understanding Russia’s past.

 

Stephen Lovell.  Summerfolk: A History of the Dacha, 1710-2000.  Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003.

            “The concept of a second home out of town is by no means unique to Russia, but nowhere else has it been so deeply embedded in cultural memory and social practice.  The dacha has been the Russian way of negotiating the stresses of urbanization and modernization, of creating a welcoming halfway house between metropolis and countryside (p. 5-6)…[A] study of the dacha can help us to reconstruct, in all their complexity and interactivity, some of the major social and cultural processes at work in modern urban Russia” (p. 7).

 

Peter Neville, A Traveller’s History of Russia.  4th ed.  Northampton, MA: Interlink Publishing, 2003.

            A shorter version of the next title.  This one has a convenient list of rulers and tsars as well as a chronology of major events.

 

Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, A History of Russia, 5th ed.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

                This title is the standard American university textbook on the subject.

 

Robert Service, A History of Twentieth-Century Russia.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.

            Using chemical metaphors such as compound, stabilizing ingredients, experiment, and solvents, the author tries “to explain the inner strengths and strains of the USSR” (p. xxxi) as well as “to give an analysis of the complex interreaction between rulers and ruled…” (p. xxxii).

 

Yale Richmond, From Nyet to Da: Understanding the Russians.  Yarmouth, Maine: Intercultural Press, 1992.

            Written by a former diplomatic service officer, this work is strong on culture and character, which will help you avoid the common faux pas.

 

Strobe Talbot, The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy.  New York: Random House, 2002.

                President Clinton’s former adviser has some powerful insights.

 

Finally, some good Russian films: Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears (1980), Russkaya Okhota (aka “Peculiarities of the National Hunt,” 1995), Brat (1997), Brat2 (2000), Russian Ark (2002), and Solaris (2002).

 

 

 LIS Background Material:

 

John Richardson, "Recent Developments in the Russian Far East: The State of Education for Librarianship," Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 44 (Summer 2003): 137-152. --Covers plans for a new school in Vladivostok and Russian academic ranks.

 

 

John Richardson, "The Origin of Soviet Education for Librarianship: The Role of Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya (1869-1939), Lyubov' Borisovna Khavkina-Hamburger (1871-1949) and Genrietta K. Abele-Derman (1882-1954)." Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 41 (Spring 2000): 106-128. --History of education for librarianship in Moscow and Leningrad.

 

John Richardson, "Education for Library and Information Science in Russia: A Case Study of the St. Petersburg State Academy of Culture," Journal of Education for Library and Information Science Education 39 (Winter 1998): 14-27. --An ALA-COA style evaluation of one of the two leading programs in Russia.

 

 

Try http://purl.org/net/RUSSIA for some background links to English-language newspapers in St. Petersburg as well as weather and library information. An in-progress English-Russian Dictionary of LIS Terminology is available at http://purl.org/net/LIS_Terms.

 

 

* My picks, if you just want two essential titles.

 

 

 

 

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