Synopses & Reviews
Crossing Borders deconstructs contemporary theories of Soviet history from the revolution through the Stalin period, and offers new interpretations based on a transnational perspective. To Michael David-Fox, Soviet history was shaped by interactions across its borders. By reexamining conceptions of modernity, ideology, and cultural transformation, he challenges the polarizing camps of Soviet exceptionalism and shared modernity and instead strives for a theoretical and empirical middle ground as the basis for a creative and richly textured analysis.
Discussions of Soviet modernity have tended to see the Soviet state either as an archaic holdover from the Russian past, or as merely another form of conventional modernity. David-Fox instead considers the Soviet Union in its own lightandmdash;as a seismic shift from tsarist society that attracted influential visitors from the pacifist Left to the fascist Right. By reassembling Russian legacies, as he shows, the Soviet system evolved into a complex andldquo;intelligentsia-statistandrdquo; form that introduced an array of novel agendas and practices, many embodied in the unique structures of the party-state. Crossing Borders demonstrates and#160;the need for a new interpretation of the Russian-Soviet historical trajectoryandmdash;one that strikes a balance between the particular and the universal.
Review
andldquo;Crossing Borders provides an indispensable foundation for new studies that engage issues of state-socialist (Soviet) modernity, its particular and universal traits, the roles of ideology in a Soviet-type social order, and Communist-era cultural history in general. David-Fox proves himself a mature scholar of Russian/Soviet history, impressively knowledgeable, ambitious, and empirically meticulous. Heandrsquo;s also a conceptually daring and innovative thinker.andrdquo;
andmdash;Gyandouml;rgy Pandeacute;teri, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Review
andldquo;Crossing Borders offers new perspectives on the nature of Soviet society (through the Stalin period) and its relationship to the world.and#160;This highly original and richly researched collection of essays challenges so many of the clichandeacute;s of the historiography with great grace.andrdquo;
andmdash;Katerina Clark, Yale University
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About the Author
Michael David-Fox is professor at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and the Department of History, Georgetown University. He is the author of Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921andndash;1941 and Revolution of the Mind: Higher Learning among the Bolsheviks, 1918andndash;1929. He coedited Fascination and Enmity: Russia and Germany as Entangled Histories, 1914andndash;1945 and The Holocaust in the East:Local Perpetrators and Soviet Responses.