Eve Of Revolution Research Articles

Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution: The Egyptian and Syrian Debates. By Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019. 240p. $90.00 cloth, $30.00 paper.

Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution: The Egyptian and Syrian Debates. By Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019. 240p. $90.00 cloth, $30.00 paper.

Brumfield , William Craft Journeys through the Russian Empire: The Photographic Legacy of Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky (review)

REVIEWS 183 Brumfield, William Craft. Journeys through the Russian Empire: The Photographic Legacy of Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky. Duke University Press, Durham, NC and London, 2020. xi + 518 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Index. $49.95: £43.00. The photographs taken by Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii in the decade before the 1917 Revolution, held since the 1940s in the Library of Congress, provide one of the richest sources of material evidence available to scholars of late imperial Russia. During the years after 1905, Prokudin-Gorskii undertook a series of expeditions across large swathes of the Russian Empire, typically with the active support of the tsarist authorities, photographing both the traditional architecture of provincial cities and the industrial paraphernalia of factories and railways that were rapidly transforming the country. The striking colour images, made possible by Prokudin-Gorskii’s long experiments with photography, were part of an ambitious project to create a visual portrait that would acknowledge the diversity of the Russian provinces while celebrating the way they formed part of a single empire. The semi-official character of his work, and its underlying commitment to using photography to create patterns of knowledge that fostered a sense of the unity of the empire, naturally lends itself to a set of discourses about such topics as ‘the imperial gaze’ and the ‘orientalist imagination’. And yet, while the interpretation of all historical photographs requires a lively sense of the context in which they were produced, the importance of Prokudin-Gorskii’s work extends far beyond its contribution to an imperial discourse that celebrated the unknown while subtly embedding it within a framework of the familiar. William Craft Brumfield has produced a work that combines text and illustrations in a way that illuminates the contemporary interest of Prokudin-Gorskii’s work both for scholars and a wider public. Brumfield, one of the foremost Western experts on the history of Russian architecture, has over the past fifty years himself photographed many of the sites visited by Prokudin-Gorskii, ranging from the ‘Ancient Heartland’ through to more far-flung areas such as the Urals and Central Asia. Much of Journeys through the Russian Empire is devoted to comparing Brumfield’s own photographs with those of his illustrious predecessor. This is a modus operandi that could easily become tiresome, but such a prospect is avoided in the book, both because Brumfield’s own photographs are of exceptional quality, and because there is something enthralling for the reader about comparing pictures of a building or set of buildings taken many years apart. Since Brumfield was not able, by definition, to photograph buildings destroyed in the Soviet period, a careless reading of the book might run the risk of giving the impression that the architectural fabric of Russia — and especially its churches and monasteries SEER, 99, 1, JANUARY 2021 184 — has changed surprisingly little despite decades of chaos and destruction. The author’s beautifully crafted text is, however, adept at informing the reader about what has been lost — through war, revolution and the depredations of time — as well as what has been preserved. Brumfield is well-aware that Prokudin-Gorskii’s vivid illustrations can easily fuel an ill-informed nostalgia for a lost Russia. His discussion of the history of the churches and cathedrals that form the subject of most photographs is erudite and informative without providing unnecessary detail. The same is true of the chapter dealing with the Islamic architecture of Central Asia (in particular Bukhara and Samarkand). Brumfield’s introductory and concluding essays provide a thoughtful insight into the history of the Prokudin-Gorskii collection, artfully showing how it can cast light both on the history of Russian architecture and the preoccupations of pre-revolutionary Russia, while representing something more than a simple representation of the appearance of the provinces on the eve of revolution. Any criticisms of this excellent book cannot begin to dent its achievements. The photographs focus on ecclesiastical architecture, as is to be expected given Brumfield’s own interests and personal photographic odyssey, with the result that the anthropological value of the Prokudin-Gorskii collection is only touched on quite briefly in the photographs and written text. And, while Brumfield talks a good deal in his...

Enlightenment on the eve of revolution: the Egyptian and Syrian debates

Enlightenment on the eve of revolution: the Egyptian and Syrian debates

The People's Bowling Palace: Building Underground in Late Communist Leipzig

In 1987 a recreational centre called the Bowlingtreff arose at the centre of East German Leipzig without knowledge from central authorities thanks to 40,050 hours of volunteer labour. What can this incident of apparent optimism tell us about state–citizen relations as they had evolved on the eve of revolution? Rather than ‘ostalgic’ evidence of socialist paradise lost, this article shows how, overcoming years of bureaucratic proscriptions, dedicated local authorities built ‘off the record’ to prove to the people that they could attain something; and residents disillusioned with communism were eager to build a piece of the ‘imaginary West’ in their dying city. Ultimately, however, the bowling palace demonstrated system dysfunction and whetted Leipzigers’ appetite for the ‘real’ West.

Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab, Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution. The Egyptian and Syrian Debates

Avec son dernier livre, Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution: The Egyptian and Syrian Debates (2019), Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab, professeure de philosophie au Doha Institute du Qatar, poursuit son entreprise de redaction d’une histoire intellectuelle du monde arabe contemporain. Elle avait inaugure ce travail en publiant en 2010 — a la veille des soulevements arabes — son premier livre, Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective, dans lequel elle analysait avec u...

Rural China on the Eve of Revolution: Sichuan Fieldnotes, 1949–1950, by G. William Skinner; edited by Stevan Harrell and William Lavely, with an afterword by Zhijia Shen. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017. vii+265 pp. US$90.00 (cloth), US$30.00 (paper).

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsRural China on the Eve of Revolution: Sichuan Fieldnotes, 1949–1950, by G. William Skinner; edited by Stevan Harrell and William Lavely, with an afterword by Zhijia Shen. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017. vii+265 pp. US$90.00 (cloth), US$30.00 (paper).Pauline KeatingPauline KeatingVictoria University of Wellington Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The China Journal Volume 82July 2019 Published on behalf of the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/703267 Views: 43Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Russia and Courtly Europe: Ritual and the Culture of Diplomacy, 1648–1725 by Jan Hennings (review)

SEER, 95, 4, OCTOBER 2017 766 Ufa, Andrei Ukhtomskii, sought to strengthen and police the boundaries of Orthodoxy by identifying it still more strongly with Russian nationality. On the eve of revolution, many of the threads that bound Bashkiria to the empire were unravelling, but they would be restored in somewhat different form in the early Soviet period, when, as Daniel Schafer has shown, Bashkiria became one of the crucibles of Soviet nationalities policy. Steinwedel is surely correct that Bashkiria is crucial to understanding wider patterns of Russian imperial governance, between the colonial separation visible in Central Asia and the attempt to create a more homogenous national core through assimilation in European Russia: ‘Bashkiria was located geographically just at the point where the two forms of governance met’ (p. 251). His book is thus both a skilful exercise in local and regional history, and an important contribution to the history of Imperial Russia as a whole. New College, University of Oxford Alexander Morrison Hennings, Jan. Russia and Courtly Europe: Ritual and the Culture of Diplomacy, 1648–1725. New Studies in European History. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2016. xii + 297pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £64.99. Russia’s integration into the European states-system, achieved by the establishment of permanent diplomatic representatives in Western capitals, is conventionally dated to the era of the Great Northern War (1700–21) and viewed as a dimension of the ‘westernizing’ policies pursued by Peter the Great (1694–1725). Jan Hennings’ fine new study overturns many of these established assumptions, and substitutes a much more sophisticated and convincing framework for what was a key political transformation, for the rest of Europe as well as for Russia. Pointing to the ambition of earlier Muscovite diplomacy, particularly from the reign of Peter’s father Alexis (1645–76) onwards, he argues that changes around 1700 built more on previous Russian developments than on imitation of the French diplomatic system perfected during the second half of Louis XIV’s long reign (1661–1715). Impressive research on widely scattered manuscript material, together with notably wide reading in printed sources and secondary literature alike, enables him to demonstrate the extent to which the Posol´skii prikaz (‘Ambassadorial’ or ‘Foreign Affairs Chancellery’), established as long ago as 1549, became increasingly important and also independent during the second half of the seventeenth century, as Russia sought to find allies against the Ottoman Empire. One established explanation for Muscovy/Russia’s slow diplomatic emergence has been an ignorance of Europe’s languages, but this cannot be REVIEWS 767 sustained in the light of Dr Hennings’s revelation that there were no fewer than 84 translators and 185 interpreters active between 1645 and 1682 (p. 76). While many of these men provided the linguistic skills needed to send periodic missions to Central Asia and to eastern and northern Europe, a significant proportion were able to handle central and western European languages. The linguistic barriers to expanded diplomatic contacts were thus far less serious than usually believed. A more serious obstacle to the development of Russian diplomacy was the relatively late establishment of a reliable postal system extending as far east as Moscow; this only really began to be created from the 1660s. Until that point Muscovite diplomats, in contrast to their European counterparts, were unable to maintain a regular correspondence with their superiors during their mission, instead presenting a consolidated report when they returned, a practice firmly established by 1600. Yet the Posol´skii prikaz was becoming a sizeable and important agency of government during the second half of the seventeenth century, with up to thirty ‘undersecretaries’ in post and perhaps as many as fifty during the 1670s (p. 75), together with increasing functional specialization. It was able to provide improved and more sophisticated control over policy than hitherto appreciated, and Dr Hennings’s account of its evolution will be of considerable value to anyone interested in Muscovite governance. The detailed account of the administrative framework (chapter 2), valuable though it is, is preparatory to the real heart of the book: an imaginative study of ceremony and protocol in Russian diplomacy. This incorporates the insights of what is known as the ‘Münster...

Opéra-comique on the Eve of Revolution: Dalayrac's Sargines and the Development of “Heroic” Comedy

This article draws upon archival evidence to trace the development of opéra-comique—and its broader political import—in the final years of the ancien régime. It focuses in particular on the opening of the Salle Favart, the first new and custom-built theater for the Comédie-Italienne, in 1783. This change in venue attracted elite crowds to France's second lyric stage, solidifying a prominent rift between the generic status of opéra-comique and the social status of its audiences. The patronage of wealthy Parisians, in turn, enabled the company to augment its staging resources and present works on an increasingly expansive scale. On the eve of the Revolution, the theater's programming committee supported the production of operas on heroic, historical subjects. Not only did such patriotic tales inspire fantastical scenery and effects, but they also enhanced the prestige of opéra-comique, which came to challenge its tragic counterpart as a legitimate, and legitimately national, lyric form. An examination of Sargines (1788), by Nicolas-Marie Dalayrac and Jacques-Marie Boutet (known as Monvel), demonstrates how such “heroic” works played into disputes over the traditional limitations of the genre. It also underscores how the aesthetic we now associate with the turbulent 1790s was, in many cases, created out of materials developed in the previous decade, shedding light on the complex relationship between ancien-régime culture and revolutionary art.

Russian Inequality on the Eve of Revolution

Careful handling of an eclectic data set reveals how unequal were the incomes of different classes of Russians on the eve of Revolution. We estimate incomes by economic and social class in each of the fifty provinces of European Russia. On the eve of military defeat and the 1905 Revolution, Russian income inequality was middling by the standards of that era, and less severe than is inequality today in China, the United States, and Russia itself. We note how the interplay of some distinctive fiscal and relative-price features of Imperial Russia might have shaped the now-revealed level of inequality.

Lu Xun's revolution: writing in a time of violence

Widely recognized as modern China's preeminent man of letters, Lu Xun (1881--1936) is revered as voice of a nation's conscience, a writer comparable to Shakespeare and Tolstoy in stature and influence. Gloria Davies's portrait now gives readers a better sense of this influential author by situating man Mao Zedong hailed as the sage of modern in his turbulent time and place. In Davies's vivid rendering, we encounter a writer passionately engaged with heady arguments and intrigues of a country on eve of revolution. She traces political tensions in Lu Xun's works which reflect larger conflict in modern Chinese thought between egalitarian and authoritarian impulses. During last phase of Lu Xun's career, so-called years on left, we see how fiercely he defended a literature in which people would speak for themselves, and we come to understand why Lu Xun continues to inspire debates shaping China today. Although Lu Xun was never a Communist, his legacy was fully enlisted to support Party in decades following his death. Far from apologist of political violence portrayed by Maoist interpreters, however, Lu Xun emerges here as an energetic opponent of despotism, a humanist for whom empathy, not ideological zeal, was key to achieving revolutionary ends. Limned with precision and insight, Lu Xun's Revolution is a major contribution to ongoing reappraisal of this foundational figure.

The Problem of Religious Freedom in Late Imperial Russia: The Case of Russian Baptists

The paper deals with the development of the Baptist movements (Stundism and Pashkovism) in late Imperial Russia, their perception by the ecclesiastical and secular authorities, the measures undertaken by the Church and government in order to combat the Protestant sectarianism. Different approaches of the contemporaries to the religious dissent are being investigated. While the members of educated society, liberals and moderate conservatives viewed evangelical movements as a reflection of social changes in postreform Russia and a reaction to the shortcomings of the official Church, the ecclesiastical authorities treated the rise of evangelicalism as a result of the sectarians' “ignorance” and as a threat to the political and social order of Russia. When conservative tsar Alexander III ascended in 1881 to the throne, his former tutor and the Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod Constantine Pobedonostsev launched an energetic campaign against the heterodoxy based on a combination of repressive and educational measures. This campaign turned out to be a failure mostly due to passiveness of the official Church which was paralyzed by the strict control of the state. The position of the secular administration which was not eager to be drawn into religious struggle also hampered the attempts to combat the heterodoxy. Finally, the effective repressions against the sectarianism were paralyzed by the protests of the Senate, supreme juridical body of the Empire which had to overview the compliance with the law. Though the repressions against the Baptists were stopped in 1905, they made a negative impact on the Russia's development contributing to the sharpening of the social and political contradictions on the eve of revolution.

Petersburg fin de siecle

The final decade of the old order in imperial Russia was a time of both crisis and possibility, an uncertain time that inspired an often desperate search for meaning. This book explores how journalists and other writers in St. Petersburg described and interpreted the troubled years between the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917. Mark Steinberg, distinguished historian of Russia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, examines the work of writers of all kinds, from anonymous journalists to well-known public intellectuals, from secular liberals to religious conservatives. Though diverse in their perspectives, these urban writers were remarkably consistent in the worries they expressed. They grappled with the impact of technological and material progress on the one hand, and with an ever-deepening anxiety and pessimism on the other. Steinberg reveals a new, darker perspective on the history of St. Petersburg on the eve of revolution and presents a fresh view of Russia's experience of modernity.

The King’s Best Highway: The Lost History of the Boston Post Road, the Route that Made America (review)

Reviewed by: The King’s Best Highway: The Lost History of the Boston Post Road, the Route that Made America Michael R. Fein (bio) The King’s Best Highway: The Lost History of the Boston Post Road, the Route that Made America. By Eric Jaffe. New York: Scribner, 2010. Pp. ix+322. $27.50. There is much to admire in The King’s Best Highway, Eric Jaffe’s “lost history” of the Boston Post Road (BPR). In brisk style, Jaffe whisks the reader in a tour of the signal events that have unfolded along this old route ever since the age of early British settlement. He has a strong feel for gripping anecdotes and the rich characters—ranging from John Winthrop Jr. to P. T. Barnum—whose lives intersect the road in intriguing ways. While the tales [End Page 484] are captivating, they never make clear precisely what about the road was “lost” to history, and what has now been found. Targeting “American history buffs,” Jaffe covers much familiar ground, although with concentrated attention to the peculiar twists and turns of the Boston-to-New York route. The notes section suggests a detailed examination of original correspondence and archival research, and the text provides a valuable account of historical actors, both well- and lesser-known. Benjamin Franklin and George Washington travel the road, as postmaster and Revolutionary War general, respectively. But we also meet John Oldham, one of the first Plymouth settlers to survey what became the “Ordinary Way” in the 1630s; William Goddard, a Providence printer who defied the Stamp Act in the 1770s; Albert Pope, who popularized bicycling in the 1880s; and Lester Barlow, who lobbied for federally funded expressways in the 1920s. The book is at its best when it explores the people who continually reinvented the road, or found in it a different meaning than their forebears. The route has changed little over the centuries: indeed, Jaffe notes that the Boston-to-Springfield route of the 1770s is only a scant four miles longer than today’s Interstate 90. But the stone and asphalt of the BPR turn out to be far more mercurial substances in Jaffe’s hands. To the Wickquasgecks, the path was a trade route, facilitating exchange with neighboring tribes and the Dutch inhabitants of Manhattan. To settlers in Oldham’s day, the “ordinary way” not only opened up inland colonial travel, it also conferred a sense of permanence to the towns that sprang up along its course. To Goddard and other publishers, the BPR was a “loop of information” that soon became a medium for revolution (p. 38). To Washington, the “King’s Best Highway” was a conduit for revolutionary arms and armies. After the war, the BPR became a sign of national betterment, first as an improved route, then as the site of parallel railroad and streetcar lines. To Pope, Bar-low, and other moderns, the road became synonymous with mobility, speed, and freedom. As the road moved on to “semiretirement” in the fast-paced interstate era, its stop-and-go traffic has left it in an “identity crisis”: torn between nostalgia for the route’s historic past and the bland repetition of endless Dunkin’ Donuts storefronts (pp. 239, 244). Given the shape-shifting nature of the road, it is no surprise that Jaffe leaves several avenues underexplored. In part this reflects his choice of an episodic approach over one that directly engages intersecting historiography. It also reflects the challenges of portraying the road itself as a driving force. For instance, Jaffe claims that the route had a critical impact on colonial cohesiveness. But on the eve of revolution, at a time when other elements of colonial culture were becoming more distinctly British, was the King’s Best Highway an agent of Anglicization or Americanization? Jaffe also assigns the colonial-era BPR a place of prime importance in the nascent [End Page 485] American postal system. But did its presence alone spark a communication revolution, or did it require the political and administrative system put in place by Franklin and others after the Revolution? And much later, when the BPR (relocated as part of U.S. Route 1) gained fame as...

Confessions of a Psikhopatka: Opera Fandom and the Melodramatic Sensibility in Fin‐de‐Siècle Russia

This article looks at satirical depictions of opera fans and devotees' letters to the Bolshoi Theater celebrity bass Fedor Shaliapin to gain a sense of the ways urbanites fantasized and moralized on the eve of revolution. It argues that the imperatives and narrative structure of melodrama–both as a genre and meaning‐making system–shaped fans' yearnings and self‐expression. The letters document the emergence of new sensibilities regarding self, desire, and feeling–sensibilities made possible and reinforced by Europe‐wide phenomena like modernism, mass media, celebrity culture, and consumerism, as well as a political culture and myths specific to Russia. Fans loved and confessed melodramatically, verbally paying tribute to the authenticity and extraordinariness of the star, the virtue of pathos, and the autonomy of the emoting individual. Devotees appropriated press‐generated negative images of fans (as transgressive psikhopatki) in the arrangement of their identity, inverting the valuation and meaning commonly ascribed to them. Through the practice of confessional letter writing, born of an unrequited desire for intractable personalities who constantly alternated between operatic roles and “real life,” fans imagined and fashioned themselves as highly expressive, exceptional, and therefore ethical beings. The article seeks ultimately to initiate a discussion about the relevance of the melodramatic sensibility beyond the fin de siècle: melodramatic understandings of self and sincerity were furthered by Bolshevik political culture, autobiographical practices, and performances. Melodrama also offered a potentially radical aesthetics and subversive approach to Soviet life.

The Tyranny of Opinion: Honor in the Construction of the Mexican Public Sphere

Pablo Piccato argues convincingly that masculine honor and violence helped create a public sphere in nineteenth-century Mexico. Violence and reputation may seem antithetical to a notion of a public sphere as theorized by Jürgen Habermas, Hannah Arendt, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and others, but Piccato asks his reader to consider a public sphere in Mexico as something uniquely Mexican. Violence, shame, and the not-always-so-free exchange of ideas and opinion characterized Mexico’s public sphere during the second half of the nineteenth century. A grammar of violence, in the duel, offered public men a legitimate method to defend honor, influence public opinion, and sometimes provide a bloody afterword to rational-critical debate. What the Mexican public sphere had in common with Europe was its steady exclusion of women and the poor, as liberalism and republicanism triumphed in the century of Juárez and Díaz.The era of the Restored Republic (1867 – 76) ushered in heady times as a new breed of men who lacked military experience but nurtured literary gravitas emerged as enlightened and progressive public intellectuals. Journalists sought honores as they participated in the rational-critical debate so instrumental to a Habermasian public sphere. Yet the political rhetoric was tempered with emotion and romanticism that tied the debater’s honor and reputation to his conscience and self-esteem. These hombres de palabra honed their expressions of emotion and passion, emboldened by their right to communicate public opinion. Honor was the glue that kept it all together and allowed journalists to write editorials with near impunity. They embraced a bohemian life, cavorting with lower-class men and women in working-class drinking establishments, and rejected materialism in all its forms. Indeed these men felt they had the honor and truthfulness to speak for the public. Their masculine honor as public men required constant vigilance to meet every attack with counterattack and when necessary a bullet or sword thrust on the field of honor. Press juries supported them, rarely punishing them for their journalistic sparring or slander against like public men. They rushed into political debates and in effect contributed to state building in republican Mexico. Piccato infuses the story of this emerging public with verve and animated language.Whereas honor may have protected journalists during the Restored Republic and Porfirio Díaz’s first term, Piccato shows beautifully how the very conception of honor transformed. The Mexican Penal Code of 1871 reoriented judges to rethink honor as a “juridical good” at the same time that Díaz strangled public debate. “Ultrajes a funcionarios públicos” became an effective criminal category that allowed judges to sanction journalists for impugning the reputations of public officials, especially after press juries were abolished in 1882. What constituted freedom of speech changed as the law code gave judges and courts wide latitude to censor and punish the press and offered a venue for the popular classes and women to defend their honor. At the same time that honor became a guaranteed right of every Mexican, it was used against journalists who criticized government policies. Although the popular classes and women had no political voice in the bourgeois public sphere, their presence defending their right to honor as Mexicans contributed to the ongoing conception of what citizenship would entail in future decades. To have one’s honor or reputation sullied could impact one’s ability to earn a livelihood. Hence a slur uttered in a stairwell or a marketplace not only harmed one’s sense of self but one’s public reputation, and Mexicans of all classes sought legal redress to restore their self-esteem and social capital.In sum, Piccato’s The Tyranny of Opinion is a scholarly masterpiece that chronicles the rise and transformation of the public sphere in nineteenth-century Mexico and the role of masculine honor in its creation. As any good study should, The Tyranny of Opinion also provokes new questions. Although combat journalists are Piccato’s focus, I wonder if analysis of some of the nineteenth century’s female journalists would add to the story. The female writers of Las Hijas de Anáhuac (1873) and Violetas de Anáhuac (1887 – 89) did not challenge the government or each other but certainly contributed to public opinion about women. Indeed, the editor of Violetas, Laureana Wright de Kleinhans, was admitted to several mostly male literary societies in the late nineteenth century and she would go on to write a history of notable Mexican women. Perhaps their example provided later female combat journalists like Juana Belén Gutiérrez de Mendoza and Dolores Jiménez y Muro an autonomous space to influence public opinion on the eve of Revolution.

Attila takes Rome: the reception of Verdi's opera on the eve of revolution

AbstractDrawing on a wealth of new historical and musical documentation as well as the patriotic hymns of 1848, this essay places the Roman premiere of Attila at the forefront of revolutionary unrest. It also responds seriously to the claim that Verdi's Risorgimento agenda in his operas was not recognised in its own time.

A Rich Man’s Revolution, A Poor Man’s Fight for Independence

Michael McDonnell's new history of American Revolution in Virginia is primarily a history of wartime mobilization, or more precisely, of often futile efforts of a political elite to motivate middling and lower classes to take up arms against Great Britain. In his Virginia, class, contrary to some earlier accounts, is as important as race. In a deeply hierarchal society, wealthy planters, hoping to maintain white solidarity in defense of slavery, tended to minimize dissent, but in reality, slavery, rather than unifying whites, worked to reinforce divisions. way patriot leaders organized for war and reacted to demands of those they expected to fight it, McDonnell writes, depicts a conservative, anxious, sometimes fearful group clinging to traditional notions of hierarchy, deference, and public virtue (p. 6). By eve of Revolution, self-serving polices of a planter elite had alienated colony's lower classes. During French and Indian War, for example, House of Burgesses had exempted voters from military conscription, effectively limiting draft to landless poor. Many gentlemen hoped imperial crisis of 1770s might galvanize popular support for embattled ruling class (p. 33). But, in McDonnell's words, the gamble went horribly awry (p. 43). The confrontation with Great Britain only intensified divisions.

Review: Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of Revolution

Review: Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of Revolution

Book Review: Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of Revolution

Book Review: Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of Revolution

Russian Orthodoxy on the eve of revolution

This book explores the religious lives of Orthodox Christians in Russia before the revolution. It examines how Orthodox communal identity was fostered and sustained through the spaces, places, times, and images around which believers ordered their religious lives. It looks at debates between ecclesiastical officials. It argues that the challenge to Orthodoxy not only came from outsiders such as Marxists revolutionaries, but also from the faith community itself.