Russia Before The 'Radiant Future'

Michael Confino (1926-2010) was Professor Emeritus in History at Tel Aviv University and a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Jerusalem. He was the author of numerous books and articles on modern Russian and comparative history, and on social, intellectual, and agrarian developments under the Old Regime; he served as Visiting Professor at Harvard (1969, 1978), Stanford (1979, 1985), the University of Chicago (1966, 1968, 1970), Duke (1987), and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris (1974, 1976).

• Foreword  A Note on Transliteration and DatesAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Discipline and IPART I: THE FATE OF IDEAS IN HISTORYChapter 1. Alexander Herzen and Isaiah Berlin on Russia’s Elusive Counter-EnlightenmentChapter 2. Russian and Western European Roots of Soviet TotalitarianismChapter 3. Traditions, Old and New: Patterns of Protest and Dissent in Modern RussiaPART II: SOCIAL GROUPS IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVEChapter 4. On Intellectuals and Intellectual Traditions in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century RussiaChapter 5. The Nobility in Russia and Western Europe: Contrasts and SimilaritiesChapter 6. Comparing Russian Serfdom and American SlaveryChapter 7. Agrarian Crisis, Urbanization, and the Russian Peasants at the End of the Old Regime, 1880s-1920sPART III: APPROACHES TO THE HISTORY OF RUSSIAChapter 8. Re-inventing the Enlightenment: Western Images and Eastern Realities in the Eighteenth CenturyChapter 9. Political Murder in Russian Culture: Comparisons and CounterfactualsChapter 10. Current Events and the Representation of the Past: Issues in Russian Historical WritingAfterwordBibliographyIndex

“Lively and provocative to the last, Confino offers in this posthumously published volume the mature reflections of a master historian.” • Slavonic & East European Review