A history of Russian thought / edited by William Leatherbarrow and Derek Offord.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Leatherbarrow, William J.

Offord, Derek.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Russia--Intellectual life--1801-1917.

Russia.

Intellectual life.

Russia--Intellectual life.

Soviet Union--Intellectual life.

Soviet Union.

Physical Description:

xix, 444 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Summary:

"The history of ideas has played a central role in Russia's political and social history. Understanding its intellectual tradition and the way the intelligentsia have shaped the nation is crucial to understanding the Russia of today. This new history examines important intellectual and cultural currents (the Enlightenment, nationalism, nihilism, and religious revival) and key themes (conceptions of the West and East, the common people, and attitudes to capitalism and natural science) in Russian intellectual history. Concentrating on the golden age of Russian thought in the mid-nineteenth-century, the contributors also look back to its eighteenth-century origins in the flowering of culture following the reign of Peter the Great, and forward to the continuing vitality of Russia's classical intellectual tradition in the Soviet and post-Soviet eras. With brief biographical details of over fifty key thinkers and an extensive bibliography, this book provides a fresh, comprehensive overview of Russian intellectual history"--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

pt. 1. Context

Introduction / William Leatherbarrow and Derek Offord

The political and social order / David Saunders

Russian intelligentsias / Gary Hamburg

pt. 2. Intellectual currents

Russia's eighteenth-century Enlightenment / Gareth Jones

Conservatism in the age of Alexander I and Nicholas I / William Leatherbarrow

Nihilism / Richard Peace

Tradition and counter-tradition : the radical intelligentsia and classical Russian literature / Gary Saul Morson

Religious renaissance in the silver age / Ruth Coates

pt. 3. Themes and constructs

The West / Vera Tolz

The East / David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye

The people / Derek Offord

The intelligentsia and capitalism / Wayne Dowler

Natural science / Charles Ellis

pt. 4. The afterlife of classical thought

Continuities in the Soviet period / Galin Tihanov

Dialectical materialism and Soviet science in the 1920s and 1930s / Daniel Todes and Nikolai Krementsov

Afterword / James Scanlan

Biographical details of thinkers and writers.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780521875219

0521875218

OCLC:

482601957

Online:

Cover image