The Great Challenge: Nationalities And The Bolshevik State 1917-1930
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Very good
Pages: Good
At the volatile intersection of empire and revolution, The Great Challenge: Nationalities and the Bolshevik State 1917–1930 chronicles one of the most turbulent and consequential chapters in modern European history — the struggle of the nascent Soviet state to manage, suppress, and ultimately reshape the dozens of distinct nationalities it inherited from the Tsarist empire. Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, one of France's foremost authorities on Soviet history, presents a rigorously researched account of how the Bolsheviks, under Lenin and then Stalin, confronted the explosive question of national identity, arguing that the regime's policies toward its minority peoples were not incidental but absolutely central to the construction of Soviet power itself. Translated by Nancy Festinger and with a foreword by the distinguished Harvard historian Richard Pipes, this work situates the nationality question within the broader ideological and political tensions of early Bolshevism, illustrating how promises of self-determination gave way to ruthless centralisation. Carrère d'Encausse writes with analytical precision and narrative authority, drawing on deep archival knowledge to uncover the contradictions at the heart of Soviet nationality policy. For anyone seeking to understand why the Soviet Union was always, in some fundamental sense, an empire waiting to fracture, this is an indispensable and revelatory read.
Author: Hélène Carrère D'Encausse
Format: Hardback
Published: 1992, Holmes & Meier
Genre: European history
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Very good
Pages: Good
At the volatile intersection of empire and revolution, The Great Challenge: Nationalities and the Bolshevik State 1917–1930 chronicles one of the most turbulent and consequential chapters in modern European history — the struggle of the nascent Soviet state to manage, suppress, and ultimately reshape the dozens of distinct nationalities it inherited from the Tsarist empire. Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, one of France's foremost authorities on Soviet history, presents a rigorously researched account of how the Bolsheviks, under Lenin and then Stalin, confronted the explosive question of national identity, arguing that the regime's policies toward its minority peoples were not incidental but absolutely central to the construction of Soviet power itself. Translated by Nancy Festinger and with a foreword by the distinguished Harvard historian Richard Pipes, this work situates the nationality question within the broader ideological and political tensions of early Bolshevism, illustrating how promises of self-determination gave way to ruthless centralisation. Carrère d'Encausse writes with analytical precision and narrative authority, drawing on deep archival knowledge to uncover the contradictions at the heart of Soviet nationality policy. For anyone seeking to understand why the Soviet Union was always, in some fundamental sense, an empire waiting to fracture, this is an indispensable and revelatory read.