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Here, for the first time in English translation, are contemporary accounts of working-class life during the final decades of the Russian Empire. Written by workers and other close observers of their milieu, these five selections recreate the world of Russian labor during a period of rapid industrialization and social change, a world far more complex and varied than has often been assumed. The accounts in The Russian Worker explore the daily experiences, social relations, and aspirations of factory, artisanal, and sales-clerical workers, both in and outside the place of employment. Through the eyes of contemporaries we see the routine, the organization of work, and authority relations on the shop floor as well as conditions that workers encountered in providing for food and lodging and their experiences in the areas of religion, recreation, cultural activities, family ties, and links with the countryside. With its vivid and detailed descriptions of working-class life, The Russian Worker provides new material on such important topics as the formation of workers' social identities, the position of women, patterns of stratification, and workers' concepts of status differentiation. An introductory essay by Victoria Bonnell places the selections in a historical context and examines some of the central issues in the study of Russian labor. The collection will be of value not only to specialists in the Russian field, but also to historians, sociologists, economists, and others with an interest in the sociology of work, and the history of working women

The USSR today is in deep crisis, & the political contradictions are far more severe, acute, & intractable than Western press coverage indicates. Mikhail Gorbachev's revolution from above has been slow in gaining momentum in large measure because it has so far failed to bring about radical changes from below -- a revolution in the mentalites (mentalities) & public conduct of Soviet citizens. Gorbachev needs mass mobilization to carry out a vast restructuring of economic, political, social, & cultural institutions, which is stimulated by policies initiated from above, but sustained over the long term by institutional structures that permit autonomous political & social action & a broad sphere for political discourse. Gorbachev's conception of popular participation places a high premium on the very autonomy of word & deed that the whole weight of the Stalinist system managed to crush for nearly sixty years, which is precisely the area where Gorbachev's strategy for perestroika (restructuring) has run into the obstacles of bureaucratic intransigence, & a complex set of popular attitudes -- eg, civic cynicism, inertia, & outright resistance -- which are bred & reinforced by the experience of everyday life. In an effort to surmount these attitudes, Gorbachev has promoted various reforms designed to democratize party & state institutions &, concomitantly, to encourage the formation of voluntary associations. These unofficial groups provide an important indicator of fundamental changes at the grass-roots level, as the locus of new kinds of attitudes & practices in public life. It is argued that the state itself must create a new civil society by opening up a broad sphere for independent organizations & providing the legal & institutional support for these activities. Modified AA

The sociological study of history has only recently achieved recognition in American sociology. Although historical research occupied an important place in the nineteenth-century European sociological tradition, American scholars long accepted a disciplinary division relegating the study of the past to historians, while reserving contemporary subjects for sociological investigation. The field of historical sociology first witnessed a revival in the 1950s with the publication of Reinhard Bendix'sWork and Authority in Industry(1956) and Neil Smelser'sSocial Change in the Industrial Revolution(1959). During these years, a small chorus of voices called for a more historical approach to sociological problems and closer cooperation between the two disciplines.

Nothing has generated more controversy in the social sciences than the turn toward culture, variously known as the linguistic turn, culturalism, or postmodernism. This book examines the impact of the cultural turn on two prominent social science disciplines, history and sociology, and proposes new directions in the theory and practice of historical research. The editors provide an introduction analyzing the origins and implications of the cultural turn and its postmodernist critiques of knowledge. Essays by leading historians and historical sociologists reflect on the uses of cultural theories and show both their promise and their limitations. The afterword by Hayden White provides an assessment of the trend toward culturalism by one its most influential proponents. Beyond the Cultural Turn offers fresh theoretical readings of the most persistent issues created by the cultural turn and provocative empirical studies focusing on diverse social practices, the uses of narrative, and the body and self as critical junctures where culture and society intersect.

When the State Committee on the State of Emergency (henceforth the Emergency Committee) seized power in the early morning of 19 August 1991, it took steps immediately to assert control over Central Television, radio and the press. At one o'clock in the morning on 19 August, Gennadii Shishkin, first deputy director of TASS, was awakened by a phone call from Leonid Kravchenko, the conservative director of Gosteleradio (the State Committee on Television and Radio) and asked to come to Central Committee headquarters.2 By 2 a.m., the chief editor of the nightly news program "Vremia" had been awakened. Then, at dawn, military vehicles and paratroopers surrounded the Gosteleradio building at Ostankino.