Geoffrey Hosking

Geoffrey Hosking's study provides a prism through which to view Russian history by posing the apparently simple question: what is Russia's national identity? His thesis is that the needs of Russia's empire prevented the creation of a Russian nation. The Tsars, and before them the Grand Dukes of Moscow, were empire builders rather than nation builders and, as consequence, profoundly alienated ordinary Russians.

It is unlikely that a clearer, more stimulating account of the Russians extraordinary period of imperial history will be written. Philip Marsden, Spectator Geoffrey Hoskings landmark book provides us with a new prism through which to view Russian history by posing the apparently simple question: what is Russias national identity? Hosking answers this with brilliant originality: his thesis is that the needs of Russias empire prevented the creation of a Russian nation. The Tsars, and before them the Grand Dukes of Moscow, were empire builders rather than nation builders and, as consequence, profoundly alienated ordinary Russians.

Originally published in 1992 and now available as an ebook. This edition does not include any images. WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK AWARD FOR HISTORY Now that the great Soviet empire has finally unravelled, and with the future of the Commonwealth of Independent States looking precarious at best, and violent at worst, as long-subdued territorial conflicts flourish from Moldova to Siberia, never has it been so important to understand the vast continued bureaucracy that for seventy years held so many disparate peoples together. How it did so, and the tactics it employed, form the spine of this acclaimed study of the worlds last great land empire. Geoffrey Hosking traces the evolution of the Soviet political system from its revolutionary origins in 1917 to the collapse instigated by the reforms of Gorbachevs perestroika. He shows how power was rarely devolved outside a particularly tightly knit ruling elite, and focuses on the forms of contact that existed between rulers and ruled. He places special emphasis on the experience of the peasantry, urban workers and the professional class, drawing on a mass of monographs and memoirs to show how they generated their own informal practices to adjust to changing Soviet social structures, and how, more often than is commonly realized in the West, they resisted repression and deprivation. This Final Edition obliges us to reflect on the enormity of the changes witnessed in the lands of the Soviet Union in the past five years. By providing a vivid picture of what it has felt like to be a Soviet citizen during the prodigious upheavals of the twentieth century, it reminds us that we cannot afford to ignore the impact of this empire, globally and locally an impact whose legacy will be with us well into the twenty-first century.

Sólo un historiador profundamente conocedor de la materia e inserto en la gran tradición divulgativa británica como Geoffrey Hosking puede llevar adelante el alarde que supone encerrar en un breve volumen un relato sinoptico y riguroso de la historia de un pais tan vasto como heterogeneo y con tantos y variados incidentes a lo largo de los siglos como es Rusia. Desde la Rus de Kiev hasta la nacion surgida del desmantelamiento de la Union Sovietica, Hosking expone y analiza con clarividencia los elementos, problemas e hitos fundamentales que han ido conformando la historia de una nacion marcada por su enorme extension, su situacion estrategica, la multitud de etnias que lo habitan, sus escasos accesos al mar y la vulnerabilidad de sus fronteras.