Books in the NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies series

From 1505 to 1689, Russia's Tsars chose their wives through an elaborate ritual: the bride-show. Alongside accounts of sordid boyar plots against brides and the multiple marriages of Ivan the Terrible, this book offers an analysis of the show's role in the complex politics of royal marriage in early modern Russia.

A study of one of the major social reforms of 20th-century European history that presents an analysis built on hundreds of sources that include papers from state and municipal archives, material from the popular and professional press, legal tracts, films, novels, and personal accounts.

Examines the position of women in early Soviet society through the lens of deviance, exploring how Soviet criminologists understood female crime and how their attitudes helped shape the development of Soviet social and behavioral norms. This title looks at the emergence of criminology in early Soviet Russia.

Explores the attempts to define and control sexual behavior in the years following the Russian Revolution. This book examines Soviet "sexual enlightenment," a program of popular health and lifestyle advice intended to establish a model of sexual conduct for the men and women who would build socialism.

Based on statistical analyses and case studies, this book seeks to uncover how electoral rules are decided within the Russian Federation, and by whom. Aiming to enhance our understanding of electoral system choice, it investigates the origins of the legislative electoral systems in the different regions of the Russian Federation.

This work traces the construction of Russia's cultural landscape, showing how 19th-century representations of nature reflected and shaped Russians' ideas about themselves and their nation. It should appeal to those who are interested in landscape history and in Russian art and culture.

Violent movements opposing existing political orders erupted throughout nineteenth-century Europe, but nowhere was this revolutionary impulse made more dramatically visible than in Russia. This title presents English translations of the memoirs of five Russia's female revolutionaries.

Lovers, companions, and husband and wife, Catherine and Prince Grigory Potemkin were also close political partners. This work reveals the complexity of Catherine and Potemkin's personal relationship in light of changes in matters of state, foreign relations, and military engagements. It gives insights into Catherine's passions, and her world.

Why did the imperial Russian government fail to prevent revolution in 1917? Were its security policies flawed? This broadly researched study of Russia's security police investigates the government's efforts to maintain order against political opposition and threats of violence during the decade before the Revolution.

The transformation of the Russian nobility between 1861 and 1914 has often been attributed to the anachronistic attitudes of its members and their failure to adapt to social change. Becker challenges this idea of "the decline of the nobility." He argues that the privileged estate responded positively to change and greatly influenced their nation's political and economic destiny.

Who ruled the countryside in late Imperial Russia? On the rare occasions that tsarist administrators dared pose the question so boldly, their discouraged answer was that peasants ruled. This title challenges this dominant paradigm of the closed village by investigating the ways peasants engaged tsarist laws and the local institutions.

In Life Is Elsewhere, Anne Lounsbery shows how nineteenth-century Russian literature created an imaginary place called "the provinces"-a place at once homogeneous, static, anonymous, and symbolically opposed to Petersburg and Moscow. Lounsbery looks at a wide range of texts, both canonical and lesser-known, in order to explain why the trope has...

This interdisciplinary volume is a new introduction to area studies in the framework of whole-world thinking. Emerging in the United States after World War II, area studies have proven indispensable to American integration in the world. They serve two main purposes: to equip future experts with rich cultural-historical and political-economic...

A prince in one of Russia's most exalted noble families, Grigorii N. Trubetskoi was a unique and contradictory figure during World War I. A lifelong civil servant and publicist, he began his diplomatic career in Constantinople, where he served as first secretary of the embassy there for several years. He became one of the leaders of an...

From the time the word kul-tura entered the Russian language in the early nineteenth century, Russian arts and letters have thrived on controversy. This book examines the development of a public discourse on national self-representation in nineteenth-century Russia, as it was styled by the visual arts and in popular journalism.

Examines the forces that attracted many social and intellectual leaders of 18th-century Russia to Freemasonry as an instrument for change and progress. The author reveals how Freemasonry became a part of a larger social transformation that saw the development of literary circles and social clubs.

Examines attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs about the production and consumption of food in Russia from the late 18th century through the mid 19th century. This book looks at the way individuals sought to define their nationality not only against outside influences, but also by incorporating those outside influences into a national whole.

A courageous woman recounts her journey from aristocrat to revolutionary in nineteenth-century Russia.