The Russian Revolution of 1917 transformed the face of the Russian empire, politically, economically, socially, and culturally, and also profoundly affected the course of world history for the rest of the twentieth century. Historian S. A. Smith presents a panoramic account of the history of the Russian empire, from the last years of the nineteenth century, through the First World War and the revolutions of 1917 and the establishment of the Bolshevik regime, to the end of the 1920s, when S...

Drawing together decades of research, Steve Smith explores the survival and adaptation of folk beliefs in Mao's China in the face of seismic social change and growing political repression. Bringing an oftenneglected aspect of modern Chinese history to the fore, he shows how folk religion maintained a vital presence in everyday life. In myriad ways, through Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism, spirit mediums and spirit healing, divination, geomancy, and the reform of traditional marriage and...

In this landmark contribution to the study of modern China, Steve Smith examines the paradox of 'supernatural politics'. He shows that we cannot understand the meaning of the Communist revolution to the Han Chinese without exploring their belief in gods, ghosts and ancestors. China was a religious society when the Communist Party took power in 1949, and it sought to erode the influence of the minority religions of Buddhism, Daoism, Catholicism and Protestantism. However, it was the folk re...

The Maoist state’s dominance over Chinese society, achieved through such watersheds as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, is well known. Maoism at the Grassroots reexamines this period of transformation and upheaval from a new perspective, one that challenges the standard state-centered view. Bringing together scholars from China, Europe, North America, and Taiwan, this volume marshals new research to reveal a stunning diversity of individual viewpoints and local ...

The Maoist state’s dominance over Chinese society, achieved through such watersheds as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, is well known. Maoism at the Grassroots reexamines this period of transformation and upheaval from a new perspective, one that challenges the standard state-centered view. Bringing together scholars from China, Europe, North America, and Taiwan, this volume marshals new research to reveal a stunning diversity of individual viewpoints and local ...

The impact of Communism on the twentieth century was massive, equal to that of the two world wars. Until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, historians knew relatively little about the secretive world of communist states and parties. Since then, the opening of state, party, and diplomatic archives of the former Eastern Bloc has released a flood of new documentation. The thirty-five essays in this Handbook, written by an international team of scholars, draw on this new material t...

A unique comparative account of the roots of Communist revolution in Russia and China. Steve Smith examines the changing social identities of peasants who settled in St Petersburg from the 1880s to 1917 and in Shanghai from the 1900s to the 1940s. Russia and China, though very different societies, were both dynastic empires with backward agrarian economies that suddenly experienced the impact of capitalist modernity. This book argues that far more happened to these migrants than simply bei...

In Like Cattle and Horses Steve Smith connects the rise of Chinese nationalism to the growth of a Chinese working class. Moving from the late nineteenth century, when foreign companies first set up factories on Chinese soil, to 1927, when the labor movement created by the Chinese Communist Party was crushed by Chiang Kai-shek, Smith uses a host of documents—journalistic accounts of strikes, memoirs by former activists, police records—to argue that a nationalist movement fueled by ...

Amy, a lonely thirty-something year old, decides that enough is enough. Sick and tired of being on her own, with no money, no friends and more importantly no love life, she reflects back on her years spent at sea. Taking drastic action, she decides to return to the lifestyle that she had loved and missed so much. After two years away, going back to work on the cruise ships would be the answer to all of her problems, saving the money that she so desperately needed to buy her own home. Indep...

This Very Short Introduction provides an analytical narrative of the main events and developments in Soviet Russia between 1917 and 1936. It examines the impact of the revolution on society as a whole--on different classes, ethnic groups, the army, men and women, youth. Its central concern is to understand how one structure of domination was replaced by another. The book registers the primacy of politics, but situates political developments firmly in the context of massive economic, social...

Amid perpetual upheavals and accelerating world changes, we transition from the Experience Economy where buyers choose memorable outcomes to the Transformational Economy where buyers choose meaningful, authentic, and socially responsible outcomes.Because your customers want to become a better version of themselves, your company must become a better version of itself.This book’s premise: the future belongs to the nimble, those able to resiliently innovate to deliver meaningful goods and ser...

Amid perpetual upheavals and accelerating world changes, we transition from the Experience Economy where buyers chose memorable outcomes to the Transformational Economy where buyers choose meaningful, authentic, and socially responsible outcomes.Because your customers want to become a better version of themselves, your company must become a better version of itself.This book’s premise: the future belongs to the nimble; those able to resiliently innovate to deliver meaningful goods and serv...