Russia's Fate Through Russian Eyes: Voices Of The New Generation

by Heyward Isham

Overview

The young Russian men and women who record in these pages the hopes, fears, triumphs, and tragedies their country has undergone in recent years-altering their own lives profoundly in the process-all come from the first post-Soviet generation to achieve positions of leadership in Russia. They report on five challenges central to Russia's survival and stabilization: reshaping the state, coping with new economic rules, striving toward the rule of law, building a civil society, and preserving the national culture and educational capacity. They love their country, while understanding all too well the crippling psychological legacy of seventy years of a dictatorship that was both cunning and cruel in dispensing a plausible utopian myth and exacting extraordinary sacrifices in the name of that myth. They understand the acute sense of disorientation that overcame all generations when the USSR abruptly dissolved in 1991 and the Communist Party simultaneously lost much, if not all, of its power. As several of our authors recall, it was like waking up one morning and finding yourself a citizen of an entirely different country, meanwhile discovering that your parents were not your real parents and that you had acquired a brand new surname.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781000310610
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/21/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	448
File size:	963 KB

About the Author

Isham, Heyward

Table of Contents

Preface by Heyward Isham -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction by Jack R Matlock Jr. -- PART -1 RESHAPING THE RUSSIAN STATE -- PART -2 COPING WITH NEW ECONOMIC RULES -- PART -3 STRIVING TOWARD RULE OF LAW -- PART -4 CIVIL SOCIETY BUILDING BLOCKS -- PART -5 PRESERVING THE CULTURE, MODERNIZING EDUCATION -- Index.

Editorial Reviews

It is often said that the rich, the educated, and the successful write history, and so it is with this highly readable collection. Isham, a 35-year veteran of the U.S. Foreign Service and a former political and economics officer in Berlin, Moscow, and Hong Kong, has asked 28 articulate and entrepreneurial young Russian men and women to record their impressions of the past ten years. All but two or three of the essayists have doctorates from Russian universities. Nearly all of the writers recognize the yoke that 70 years of communism and the unique Russian spirit have put on the engine of new reforms in Russia. While recognizing the limitations of Russian culture, these writers are, to a person, positive about changing Russia from heavy industry to an information society. Recommended for academic and public libraries.--Harry Willems, Southeast Kansas Lib. Syst., Iola Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

This book blows the cobwebs off antiquated notions of Russia as a nation doomed to tragedy. Twenty-eight Russians who came of age during or after the fall of the Soviet Union share their hopes, fears and accomplishments of recent years. While many accounts tell of feelings of frustration, disorientation and yearning for leadership, their stories are overall of concrete action, as they try to form a new Russia, more responsible, civilized and vibrant than the old. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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