The Russian Century:: A Photographic History of Russia's 100 Years

by Brian Moynahan

Book Overview

An international publishing event: over 300 remarkable, never before published photographs of a Russia that until now has remained hidden from Western eyes. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679420754
• ISBN13: 9780679420750
• Release Date: September 1994
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 5.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 10.0" x 12.5"

Customer Reviews

Stunning Photography of Russia & the former Soviet Union

I was introduced to this book by my Russian language & literature professor at college. I quickly tracked down a copy for my personal library. This book has some AMAZING photographs!!! I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Russian or Soviet history or culture. A picture certainly is worth a thousand words!

Journalism at its best

Moynahan's journalistic instincts are to the fore in this fast moving account of one of history's great upheavals. The author has plenty of experience covering Russia as a journalist at The Times. The coverage doesn't just take in the politics or revolution. There's social history, art and lifestyle - as well as all the gruesome stuff involving purges, genocide and the death camps in eastern siberia. It also has some wonderful pictures - especially one showing an old woman experiencing voting for the first time. Something that is so familiar to most of us was so alien to her. She was ninety and old enough to remember Tsar Nicholas. The coverage is heavily bent towards the first half of the century since most of the action took place then. Moynahan's big picture style means that you really get a feel for how traumatic and vengeful these times were for ordinary people. The revolutions and the spread of communist power throughout the empire was quite simply government by a gang of murderous thugs. Fiends of the worst possible kind with a liking for violence. The end of the party and the Russian Empire is dealt with only lightly since the book was first written in the early 1990s. (I read the 1994 version and haven't got around to reading an updated version). That, I don't, think is a big issue since most readers will have been around long enough to have a pretty good handle on the Gorbachev and Yeltsin years anyway. All too often, these types of histories are academic (often mind numbing) and/or far too long. This one is short, sucinct and highly entertaining. In fact, anyone wishing to get into the excellent accounts of the revolution by Figes or Pipes should read this one first.

Profile in Brutality

Moynihan's book serves as a solid overview of what is painted as a fairly blighted century. From collectivization, to Stalin's brutal purges, to invasion by Nazis, to the dark restless sleep of the soul inspired by Brezhnev, the Communist years were not kind to the Russians. From the tsar to Yeltsin, Moynihan offers a clear mix of history and analysis that makes this a quick read. Still, the chapter on Russia's war with Germany unfolds like the blitzkrieg, and if you're looking for details, this is not your book. Moynihan paints with very broad strokes and does not attempt to get into the minds of the Russian people. Given that they were treated as nothing more than neccessary cogs in Stalin's megalomaniacal drive to modernize a peasant state, it would be nice to know more about their perspective. Nonetheless, this is a lucid narrative of a century's worth of troubles.

Excellent on So Many Levels

I echo the views of the other reviewers ... that this book is an outstanding introduction to / overview of 20th century Russian history. It's worth the price for Brian Moynahan's sweeping, lucid narrative alone, but when I first borrowed this book from a friend it was the photographs that kept me rivited for hours at at time over several days. I'm convinced that this will come to be regarded as of the great collections of historic photography ever. Very highly recommended!

My Russian wife was stunned by the photographs.

I literally read this book twice. And as I turned the pages and saw breathtaking after breathtaking photograph and read the journalist's history of Russia, I kept reminding myself that this is not fiction. This books makes one pause and ponder ... a very long time.