Refining Russia

Refining Russia is a pioneering study of the development of advice literature (how-to books such as etiquette manuals and brochures on hygiene) in Russia, and of its reception and wider cultural meaning. It shows how books of this kind reflected changing attitudes to national identity, to gender roles, and to daily life, and how they recorded shifting views of the masses and their place in Russian society. An absorbing and original exercise in 'history of the book', it is also a major contribution to the understanding of Russia's relationship with the West, and of the cultural world inhabited by the Russian intelligentsia.