The Russian Century: A History of the Last Hundred Years: Amazon.de: Brian Moynahan: Englische Bücher

From Kirkus Reviews

A spectacular, startling, and sometimes downright grisly chronicle, in words and pictures, of a bloody and tumultuous period. Alongside a stunning battery of photographs scoured from archives and collections throughout the former Soviet empire, the vast majority of them unfamiliar, Moynahan (Comrades, 1992) unfolds a history short on depth but told in crisp, imagistic (not to say strongly opinionated) prose. To his great credit, he persistently strives to include not only the obvious historical milestones-- wars, revolutions, terror, famine, and the like (every horseman of the apocalypse gallops across the tortured steppes)--but also some sense of the evolving everyday sensory and emotional realities of Russian life under czar, dictator, and infant democracy. In this, he's not only immeasurably aided but inevitably outshone by the pageant of superbly reproduced photographs to which every reader will be immediately drawn and which, highlighting the human figure at the expense of landscape, run the gamut from imperial family portraits and staged Party propaganda scenes to snatched samizdat documents of ghetto and gulag, to the innovative high art of Rodchenko. Behind the familiar official faces of the masters- -Rasputin's manic stare, Trotsky's compelling gaze, Stalin's sly squint, Yeltsin's pugnacious querulousness--and the distortions of official history, both amply evidenced here, the photos unearth a vast parade of their nameless subjects (and, more often then not, victims)--``ordinary'' workers, peasants, soldiers, priests, shopkeepers. Too often it's a gallery of the unquiet dead: These pages are as corpse-strewn as the history they record--slain in purges, pogroms, insurrections, invasions, by starvation or single bullet, piled high by roadsides, dumped into mass graves, even, most shockingly and indelibly, filleted on the dining table of famine-stricken peasants driven to cannibalism. No mere coffee-table ornament, but a historical document of great drama and unusual intensity. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

From Library Journal

From the image of a nun drawing water near the Pontetayevsky Convent in 1904 to a shot of Russians joyfully swilling vodka in the post-Communist era, this photohistory offers an excellent overview of Russia's tragic history in the 20th century. The photographs were culled from numerous Russian archives, most previously sealed, and the result is a fresh and startling view of an embattled nation. The image of women harnessed to a barge in Tsarist Russia contrasts painfully with the group portrait of elegant young ladies at the Smolny Institute in St. Petersburg; other images move from the Communist takeover through the horrors of collectivization, World War II, and the Gulag to the achievements of the postwar years and the collapse of communism. The text is as good as the photos, which isn't often true in photo spreads like this; British journalist Moynahan neatly condenses Russia's history while retaining a flair for the telling anecdote. An excellent addition to history, photography, and subject collections.?Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

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Profile in Brutality 1. Dezember 1999

Von Chris Kincade

Format:Taschenbuch

Moynihan's book serves as a solid overview of what is painted as a fairly blighted century. From collectivization, to Stalin's brutal purges, to invasion by Nazis, to the dark restless sleep of the soul inspired by Brezhnev, the Communist years were not kind to the Russians. From the tsar to Yeltsin, Moynihan offers a clear mix of history and analysis that makes this a quick read. Still, the chapter on Russia's war with Germany unfolds like the blitzkrieg, and if you're looking for details, this is not your book. Moynihan paints with very broad strokes and does not attempt to get into the minds of the Russian people. Given that they were treated as nothing more than neccessary cogs in Stalin's megalomaniacal drive to modernize a peasant state, it would be nice to know more about their perspective. Nonetheless, this is a lucid narrative of a century's worth of troubles.

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Excellent on So Many Levels 5. November 1999

Von Ein Kunde

I echo the views of the other reviewers ... that this book is an outstanding introduction to / overview of 20th century Russian history. It's worth the price for Brian Moynahan's sweeping, lucid narrative alone, but when I first borrowed this book from a friend it was the photographs that kept me rivited for hours at at time over several days. I'm convinced that this will come to be regarded as of the great collections of historic photography ever. Very highly recommended!

Russian history is tragedy of Homerian proportions 30. Juli 1999

It is such a pleasure to read a historical book written in a seamlessly free flowing language. It happens so seldom. Most historians are bogged down in dusty acadmic phrase jargon. Moynahan is mainly a journalist with a keen eye for wondrous detail and bizarr events. Those absurd details makes this book since on the whole it is written with brave, broad brush strokes. It is a perfect first book for people wishing to know more about Russia, wanting to taste its flavour. But because of its magnificent summing up of apocalyptic decade after apocalyptic decade in that country's recent past it is also an intriguing read for slavophiles. It is literary rather than academic and that is the magnificence of it all, Moynahan has turned Russian modern history into poetry and tragedy of Homerian proportions.