Here are 100 books that Nikolai Gogol fans have personally recommended if you like
Nikolai Gogol.
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I have chosen the five books below as the most original and thought-provoking ones on Russian history and culture, books that I return to again and again when thinking about the questions they raise. They are not books that I always agree with, but to me that makes them all the more valuable!
This is, in my opinion, the best short history of Russia (only about 100 pages). It’s full of unexpected ideas, provocative and challenging.
It was published in 2003 and is written from the perspective of a Russia in decline (Russia of the 1990s, before Putin), but nevertheless offers a brilliant analysis of why the country has tended toward isolationism and xenophobia. It is thus almost predictive of Putin’s recent break with the West. I have assigned it to classes and recommend it to friends.
Is Russian history one big inevitable failure? The Soviet Union's demise and Russia's ensuing troubles have led many to wonder. But this is to look through a skewed prism indeed. In this provocative and elegantly written short history of Russia, Marshall Poe takes us well beyond the Soviet haze deep into the nation's fascinating--not at all inevitable, and in key respects remarkably successful--past. Tracing Russia's course from its beginnings to the present day, Poe shows that Russia was the only non-Western power to defend itself against Western imperialism for centuries. It did so by building a powerful state that molded…
I have chosen the five books below as the most original and thought-provoking ones on Russian history and culture, books that I return to again and again when thinking about the questions they raise. They are not books that I always agree with, but to me that makes them all the more valuable!
Hidden in Plain View makes us see Tolstoy in a completely new light. I find Morson one of the most engaging critics of the Russian classics, and this is perhaps his best and most curmudgeonly argumentative book.
It offers a brilliant reading of War and Peace as an “anti-novel”—as an attack on the form and philosophical suppositions of the “novel” (the word in Russian can also refer to a literary or real-life “romance”).
It follows in the footsteps of the Russian critic-philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, who viewed the novel as a dialogical, open-ended “anti-genre,” without a fixed form, that cannibalizes all other genres. In War and Peace, this also serves to explain Tolstoy’s attack on history-writing, which shares the false, “closed” narrative presumptions as novel romances.
For decades, the formal peculiarities of War and Peace disturbed Russian and Western critics, who attributed both the anomalous structure and the literary power of the book to Tolstoy's "primitive," unruly genius. Using that critical history as a starting point, this volume recaptures the overwhelming sense of strangeness felt by the work's first readers and thereby illuminates Tolstoy's theoretical and narratological concerns.
The author demonstrates that the formal peculiarities of War and Peace were deliberate, designed to elude what Tolstoy regarded as the falsifying constraints of all narratives, both novelistic and historical. Developing and challenging the ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin,…
I have chosen the five books below as the most original and thought-provoking ones on Russian history and culture, books that I return to again and again when thinking about the questions they raise. They are not books that I always agree with, but to me that makes them all the more valuable!
Of the very many books I have read about Dostoevsky, this is one of the best, and I return to the author’s ideas again and again. Holquist argues that “Dostoevsky is the inheritor of a particular historical tradition—a tradition of radical doubt about history itself.”
His readings of Dostoevsky’s individual works show how Dostoevsky responded to this challenge, and are brilliant, theoretically sophisticated yet clear and convincingly argued.
What place do Dostoevsky's works occupy in the history of the novel? To answer this question, Michael Holquist focuses on the formal aspects of Dostoevskian narrative.
The author argues that the novel is a genre that constantly seeks its own identity: we still do not know what it is, since the uniqueness of its members defines the class to which it belongs. This anomaly explains the central role of the novel for Russians, perplexed as they were in the nineteenth century by idiosyncrasies that hindered development of a coherent national identity.
Michael Holquist shows that the generic impulse of the…
I have chosen the five books below as the most original and thought-provoking ones on Russian history and culture, books that I return to again and again when thinking about the questions they raise. They are not books that I always agree with, but to me that makes them all the more valuable!
Red Square, Black Square is a unique, fragmented “postmodern” critique of Russian avant-garde and revolutionary ideas that bleeds into a deconstruction of Soviet ersatz culture that took its cue from them.
It combines horror and comedy, seriousness and self-satire, and itself partakes of the style and language (as well as the punning wit) of the avant-garde. I found it challenging and fun to read and full of surprises.
This book builds a new vision of the development of Russian revolutionary culture, bringing together fiction, criticism, utopian projects, manifestos, performance and film theory, religious philosophy, and the imaginary space of communism centered around the Mummy of Lenin.
Revolution and modernization are two main issues of the book. The author argues that in Modernism the work of art was conceived as a miniature of the world to come; thus, art was meant to make projects, not master-pieces. He analyzes the genre of the manifesto as a special rhetorical device of modernist discourse and shows how projects of biological and social…
It was through learning Russian in my Swiss high school that I first got interested in the history of Eastern Europe. When I became fascinated by the theory of nationalism during my university studies, my geographical focus shifted to Ukraine, a society whose aspiration to nationhood has been repeatedly been contested by the neighboring great powers. For my first book, I researched the history of a fascinating nationally bifurcated family whose members have left archival traces from Moscow to Liubljana and from Kyiv to Stanford. I hold a BA degree from the University of Geneva, an MPhil from the University of Oxford, and a PhD from the University of Basel.
This was one of the first books that got me interested in the history of nineteenth-century Kyiv. Freshly published when I began my graduate studies, Faith Hillis’s book is detailed micro-history of local politics in the Ukrainian capital from the early nineteenth century to the revolution of 1905.
In particular, Hillis recounts the rise of a local Russian nationalist movement and does a great job at explaining why the city – and all of Ukraine – came to occupy such a central place in the political imagination of Russian imperialists and nationalists. And several members of the Shul’gin family – the protagonists of my own book – also make an appearance!
In Children of Rus', Faith Hillis recovers an all but forgotten chapter in the history of the tsarist empire and its southwestern borderlands. The right bank, or west side, of the Dnieper River-which today is located at the heart of the independent state of Ukraine-was one of the Russian empire's last territorial acquisitions, annexed only in the late eighteenth century. Yet over the course of the long nineteenth century, this newly acquired region nearly a thousand miles from Moscow and St. Petersburg generated a powerful Russian nationalist movement. Claiming to restore the ancient customs of the East Slavs, the southwest's…
For three decades I have been the first violinist of the Takács Quartet, performing concerts worldwide and based at the University of Colorado in Boulder. I love the ways in which books, like music, offer new and surprising elements at different stages of life, providing companionship alongside joys and sorrows.
Suspicious of biography, Malcolm dissects various myths about Chekhov’s death in this engaging book that mixes travel writing with acute readings of Chekhov’s stories and plays. As Malcolm visits some of the places crucial to Chekhov’s life and work (the scenes in Ukraine are of course poignant), she moves seamlessly between her own everyday experiences and the predicaments of Chekhov’s characters. In amongst the despair, disappointment, and absurdity she discovers beauty, humor, and occasional visions of hope.
To illuminate the mysterious greatness of Anton Chekhov’s writings, Janet Malcolm takes on three roles: literary critic, biographer, and journalist. Her close readings of the stories and plays are interwoven with episodes from Chekhov’s life and framed by an account of Malcolm’s journey to St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Yalta. She writes of Chekhov’s childhood, his relationships, his travels, his early success, and his self-imposed “exile”—always with an eye to connecting them to themes and characters in his work. Lovers of Chekhov as well as those new to his work will be transfixed by Reading Chekhov.
I am an award-winning historian, biographer, and political commentator. As a specialist in Soviet history, my books have been translated into many languages, including Arabic, Chinese, French, Finnish, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish.
Political scientists Arel and Driscoll deal with the period between the Maidan revolt of 2014 and the 2022 invasion.
They point out that the Maidan events provoked a three-way split in Ukraine between pro-Western Ukrainians, pro-Russia Ukrainians, and those in the middle who wanted neither to join the Russian Federation nor to distance themselves from it. Most of these neutrals remained loyal to the Ukrainian nationalist government in Kyiv and continued to do so after the Russian invasion in February 2022.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has its roots in the events of 2013-2014. Russia cynically termed the seditionist conflict in Crimea and Eastern Donbas a 'civil war' in order to claim non-involvement. This flies in the face of evidence, but the authors argue that the social science literature on civil wars can be used help understand why no political solution was found between 2015 and 2022. The book explains how Russia, after seizing Crimea, was reacting to events it could not control and sent troops only to areas of Ukraine where it knew it would face little resistance…
It was through learning Russian in my Swiss high school that I first got interested in the history of Eastern Europe. When I became fascinated by the theory of nationalism during my university studies, my geographical focus shifted to Ukraine, a society whose aspiration to nationhood has been repeatedly been contested by the neighboring great powers. For my first book, I researched the history of a fascinating nationally bifurcated family whose members have left archival traces from Moscow to Liubljana and from Kyiv to Stanford. I hold a BA degree from the University of Geneva, an MPhil from the University of Oxford, and a PhD from the University of Basel.
Nikolai Gogol – or, in Ukrainian, Mykola Hohol – is considered a classic of Russian literature.
At the same time, he was born Ukrainian, wrote about Ukraine, and is considered their own by many Ukrainian literature lovers. Literary scholar Edyta Bojanowska has written a fascinating study about how Gogol knew to draw upon both Ukrainian and Russian cultural repertoires to appeal to readers and how he intentionally played with his intimate knowledge of both cultures.
This was one of the studies that inspired me as I tried to understand the complex cultural entanglements between nineteenth-century Russia and Ukraine, as I found them personified in my books’ protagonists.
No other writer captured the fraught relations between Ukrainian and Russian nationalisms with as much complexity and lasting relevance as Nikolai Gogol. This pathbreaking book illuminates the deep cultural stakes of today's geopolitical conflict.
The nineteenth-century author Nikolai Gogol occupies a key place in the Russian cultural pantheon as an ardent champion of Russian nationalism. Indeed, he created the nation's most famous literary icon: Russia as a rushing carriage, full of elemental energy and limitless potential.
In a pathbreaking book, Edyta M. Bojanowska topples the foundations of this russocentric myth of the Ukrainian-born writer, a myth that has also dominated…
My work since the 1970s has focused on the major political struggles of the day as they impact U.S. democracy and provide challenges for understanding and action. As a professional philosopher, I focused on ways that history, philosophy, and theory provide key tools for the interpretation and critique of salient issues. I've written books on U.S. politics and the media, the Gulf War and Iraq War, 9/11 and the War on Terror, and am particularly interested in the interaction between Russia, the U.S., and Europe; hence, the rise of Putin in Russia, the New Cold War, and the 2020s conflict in Ukraine and the response of Western democracies.
Plokhy’s engaging and well-documented study provides an excellent overview of the entire history of Ukraine and the repeated story of invasion, war, and occupation by its neighbors Poland and especially Russia. In particular, it provides sharp analyses of the complex relations between Ukraine and Russia from the time of its Czars through Stalin, the post-Stalinist Kremlin leadership, and Putin, providing contemporary readers penetrating insights into the current invasion of Ukraine by Russia. The book depicts in dramatic detail and narrative the century-long struggles of Ukraine for sovereignty, its century-long oppression by its neighbors, the terrible mass starvation and murder it suffered from both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in World War II, and its eventual independence—threatened by Russia in the 21st century through the present. In the contemporary context, Plotky’s text provides an illuminating understanding of Ukraine and its conflicted and often tragic history.
Ukraine is currently embroiled in a tense fight with Russia to preserve its territorial integrity and political independence. But today's conflict is only the latest in a long history of battles over Ukraine's territory and its existence as a sovereign nation. As the award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy argues in The Gates of Europe , we must examine Ukraine's past in order to understand its present and future.Situated between Central Europe, Russia, and the Middle East, Ukraine was shaped by the empires that used it as a strategic gateway between East and West,from the Roman and Ottoman empires to the Third…
I moved to Kyiv to report for The Independentin 1990 and fell in love with Ukraine. The beauty of Kyiv and its golden-domed cathedrals amazed me as did the vibrant culture of civic engagement that emerged. It’s not often that you witness a declaration of independence and see a new country appear on the world map. I admire the bravery of Ukrainians who have fought for both and value the warm friendships that I made. I was Ukraine’s first accredited foreign correspondent. Before that I reported for The Guardian (Budapest) and later, for the BBC (London and Kyiv). I live in Toronto and still closely follow developments in Ukraine.
What strikes me most about this book is how prescient it is. Published in 2000, this assessment of the first few years of Ukrainian independence accurately flags that Russia never fully accepted it and explains why an independent Ukraine threatens Russia. The introduction provides an excellent, brief history of Ukraine. Later chapters focus on politics, economics, social and cultural issues, and foreign policy up to 1998. Dyczok, an academic, was an eyewitness to key historical events, reporting from Ukraine during its 1991 declaration of independence and after. I particularly recommend the chapter on Ukrainian-Russian relations. Although written long before Russia’s annexation of Crimea and subsequent invasion of Ukraine, much in that chapter foreshadows these critical events and helps account for why what happened did.
Ukraine has surprised many international observers. Few anticipated its declaration of independence in 1991 or its determination to move out of Russia's shadow. Dyczok redresses the continuing dearth of information on the country. Aimed at nonspecialists and specialists alike, it presents an overview of the main government policies, and the social and cultural issues facing the new state. These are placed within their historical, regional and global framework. In contrast with the generally bleak picture that international media reports present, the book suggests that Ukraine has actually accomplished a great deal in a short time. In seven years, from 1991…
