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In the book's rigorously argued chapters, Engelstein asks how Russia's identity as a cultural nation at the core of an imperial state came to be defined in terms of this antiliberal consensus. She examines debates on religion and secularism, on the role of culture and the law under a traditional regime presiding over a modernizing society, on the status of the empire's ethnic peripheries, and on the spirit needed to mobilize a multinational empire in times of war. These debates, she argues, did not predetermine the kind of system that emerged after 1917, but they foreshadowed elements of a political culture that are still in evidence today.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49579908071697,"sku":"GOR013610798","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50361040699665,"sku":"CIN0801475929G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50367864733969,"sku":"CIN0801475929VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0801475929.jpg?v=1758967091"},{"product_id":"castration-and-the-heavenly-kingdom-book-laura-engelstein-9780801436765","title":"Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom","description":"Of the many sects that broke from the official Russian Orthodox church in the eighteenth century, one was universally despised. Its members were peasants from the Russian heartland skilled in the arts of animal husbandry who turned their knives on themselves to become \"eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake.\" Convinced that salvation came only with the literal excision of the instruments of sin, they were known as Skoptsy (the self-castrated). Their community thrived well into the twentieth century, when it was destroyed in the Stalinist Terror.In a major feat of historical reconstruction, Laura Engelstein tells the sect's astonishing tale. She describes the horrified reactions to the sect by outsiders, including outraged bureaucrats, physicians, and theologians. More important, she allows the Skoptsy a say in defining the contours of their history and the meaning behind their sacrifice. Her deft handling of their letters and notebooks lends her book unusual depth and pathos, and she provides a heartbreaking account of willing exile and of religious belief so strong that its adherents accepted terrible pain and the denial of a basic human experience. Although the Skoptsy express joy at their salvation, the words of even the most fervent believers reveal the psychological suffering of life on society's margins.No foreign tribe or exotic import, the sect drew its members from the larger peasant society where marriage was expected and adulthood began with the wedding night. Set apart by the very act that guaranteed their redemption, these \"lambs of God\" became adept at concealing their sectarian identity as they interacted with their Orthodox neighbors. Interaction was necessary, Engelstein explains, since the survival of the Skoptsy depended upon recruitment of new members and on success in agriculture and trade.Realizing that some prejudices have changed little over the centuries, Engelstein cautions that \"we must not cast the shadow of our own distress on the story of the Skoptsy. Their physical suffering was something they willingly embraced.\" In Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom, she has produced a remarkable history that also illuminates the mysteries of the human heart.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49583978578193,"sku":"GOR013664918","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0801436761.jpg?v=1761387783"},{"product_id":"russia-in-flames-book-laura-engelstein-9780190931506","title":"Russia in Flames","description":"Laura Engelstein, one of the greatest scholars of Russian history, has written a searing and defining account of the Russian Revolution, the fall of the old order, and the creation of the Soviet state.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49593282789649,"sku":"GOR010322894","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49728871039249,"sku":"NGR9780190931506","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":49996848529681,"sku":"CIN0190931507A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50999676272913,"sku":"NIN9780190931506","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51579480473873,"sku":"CIN0190931507G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0190931507.jpg?v=1750779756"},{"product_id":"castration-and-the-heavenly-kingdom-book-laura-engelstein-9780801488795","title":"Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom","description":"Of the many sects that broke from the official Russian Orthodox church in the eighteenth century, one was universally despised. 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This was no narrative of ten earth-shaking days but one of months and years of compounding strife, a struggle for power by competing ideologies and regions and classes and political parties and ethnicities, all rushing to fill the vacuum left by the collapse of the tsarist regime, brought down by the First World War, that massive exercise in state-driven violence. At the center of it all is the unlikely triumph of Lenin's Bolsheviks, first in their ruthless seizure of power and then, by institutionalizing violence and terror, their eventual victory over equally brutal but less effective opponents. For seven years, through war, revolutionary upheaval, and civil strife, one Russia replaced another; old institutions and ways of life were wiped away or adapted to new purposes. Laura Engelstein's monumental new history of the Russian Revolution brings to life the events that sparked and then fueled the revolution as it spread out across the vestiges of an entire empire - from St. Petersburg and Moscow across the Steppes, the Caucuses, and Siberia, to the Pacific Rim. Russia in Flames is a vivid account of a state in crisis so profound and transformative that it not only shook the world but irrevocably altered it.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51166905958673,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51166906089745,"sku":"GOR009598131","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51514224115985,"sku":"GOR014311109","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":51848454406417,"sku":"CIN0199794219A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51862623879441,"sku":"CIN0199794219G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52629777187089,"sku":"NIN9780199794218","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0199794219.jpg?v=1776767112"},{"product_id":"keys-to-happiness-book-laura-engelstein-9780801426643","title":"The Keys to Happiness","description":"The revolution of 1905 challenged not only the social and political structures of imperial Russia but the sexual order as well. 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