Description
About the Author
Polly Jones is Associate Professor of Russian and Schrecker-Barbour Fellow at University College, University of Oxford. She has published widely on Soviet cultural history, including Myth, Memory, Trauma: Rethinking the Stalinist Past in the Soviet Union, 1953-70 (2013) and edited volumes including Writing Russian Lives: The Poetics and Politics of Russian Biography (2018) and The Dilemmas of De-Stalinization: Negotiating Cultural and Social Change in the Khrushchev Era (2006).
Reviews
this is an extremely valuable work which should be read by everyone interested in the USSR and in what has occurred there since its collapse. * Martin Dewhurst, Slavonic & East European Review *
This authoritative book compels attention for three substantial achievements. It is a case study of an important phenomenon in the Soviet publishing industry (the 'Fiery Revolutionaries' series of biographies introduced in 1968 to 'rekindle' post-Thaw readers' socialist enthusiasm); a study of late Soviet reading habits; and an analysis of how Soviet publishing actually functioned. The tightly organized chapters are informed by numerous interviews with former industry insiders as well as impressively thorough archival research, making extensive use of committee minutes and other official documents to illuminate late-Soviet decision-making mechanisms. Polly Jones' book upsets various ideological assumptions and reveals unexpected paradoxes: for example, the fact that this relatively experimental, at times daringly liberal book series was one of the first publishing initiatives to founder during the market transformation of the 1990s. * BASEES Women's Forum Book Prize *
Revolution Rekindled will complicate the picture of post-Stalinist publishing and intellectual life even for those who have studied the period closely. Jones's nuanced discussions of editorial and writerly motivations, and of responses to the series by critics and readers, present a fascinating portrait of the era. * Boris Dralyuk, Los Angeles Review of Books, TLS *
Awards
Winner of Honorable Mention for the Women's Forum Prize from the British Association of Slavonic and East European Studies Shortlisted for the 2020 AATSEEL Best Book in Literary/Cultural Studies.
Book Information
ISBN 9780198804345
Author Polly Jones
Format Hardback
Page Count 320
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 600g
Dimensions(mm) 242mm * 162mm * 23mm