Böcker av Dmitry Shlapentokh

This book examines the interplay between key rulers and intellectuals in creating and sustaining popular discourses that often help keep rulers in power.

Vasily Yan (Vassily Grigoryevich Yanchevetsky, 1874¿1954) was a writer of historical novels whose popularity survives the test of time. He was widely read throughout the Soviet era and continues to be popular in the post-Soviet era. This book is not just a biographical sketch of an important Russian/Soviet writer basically unknown to the Western public. The focus on Yan and his work also impressively demonstrates the dominant role of ideology in a totalitarian society, which is not just a socio-economic and political system of the past, but could reemerge in the future as ISIS has demonstrated. Shlapentokh shows that ideology and the cultural and intellectual life in totalitarian regimes are more complex than is often assumed. Intellectuals often enough engaged in stressful, but¿in its literary outcome¿captivating ¿cat and mouse¿ games with censors, the powerful, and the government.

The political uncertainty following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rejection of the revolutionary model has brought Russian political thought full circle as democratic forces contend with authoritarian nationalism

Totalitarian rule is commonly thought to derive from specific ideologies that justify the complete control by the state of social, cultural, and political institutions. This volume seeks to show that totalitarian or semi-totalitarian regimes have their roots in a fear of disorder that may overtake both rulers and the society at large.

The interest of Russian intellectuals in the French Revolution demonstrates that some Russian thinkers of the 19th century had begun to question the concept of Russia's uniqueness. They saw, perhaps correctly, that the Western experience, with the French Revolution as its symbol, was foreign to Russian destiny.