Terror and Greatness by Kevin M F Platt

Terror and Greatness by Kevin M F Platt

Exploring historical and cultural representations of the two Russian rulers as they shaped and reflected political shifts.

Terror and Greatness integrates Kevin MF. Platt's interest in memory and trauma with sharp, detailed analysis of classical images and texts in all their fragile materiality, which does not always survive the daggers of theory. This is a rare combination, but it should be definitive for the newest wave of cultural history.

* Times Literary Supplement *

"All countries spin their national myths around heroes. Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, however, echo in Russian society less as heroes than as avatars, reflecting the outer limits of Russia's traumas. Platt treats the way Russian historians, writers, and artists since the early nineteenth century have tried to come to terms with the legacy of these overpowering figures—sometimes merging Peter's 'greatness' and Ivan’s 'terror' into a single, reinforcing unity and sometimes treating those qualities as polar opposites. Their struggle, as Platt traces it—from Nikolai Karamzin’s seminal early-nineteenth-century history of Russia, through Ilya Repin’s portrait of a horror-stricken Ivan holding the son he just murdered, to Stalin’s remaking of the two tsars into founders of Russian great power, to the use of Peter’s image to sell chocolates, cigarettes, and vodka in the 1990s—reflects the ambivalent, at times tortured, standing Ivan and Peter have in the country’s collective identity.

-- Robert Legvold * Foreign Affairs *

Platt examines how the evolving historical myths of Ivan and Peter illustrate and illuminate the unresolved and unresolvable tension in Russian culture created by the use of terror to achieve greatness. Platt shows that neither ruler had a monopoly on the quality usually attributed to him: Ivan the Terrible was also seen as great, Peter the Great was also seen as employing terror. Studying Ivan and Peter in tandem sheds unexpected light on the perception of Ivan and Peter in modern Russia. This superbly written book is ambitious, challenging, imaginative, original, erudite, and multidisciplinary.... It is an outstanding contribution to the study of Russian culture with implications for all disciplines of Russian studies.

-- Charles J. Halperin * H-Russia, H-Net Reviews *

This book is much more than a historiographical study of Ivan IV and Peter I as related Russian myths, although it succeeds on that level. Terror and Greatness raises the stakes to consider the larger parameters of their cultural images in a variety of media.... The book works extremely well on its own terms, and is very tightly written. The illustrative material is excellent.... Platt has given us much to consider in this ground-breaking analysis of modern Russian collective identity.

-- Marcus C. Levitt * Slavic and East European Journal *

This meticulously researched, highly original book... enhances our understanding of Ivan and Peter as Russian cultural myths and instruments of state control.... This is an outstanding work of scholarship that will benefit all specialists of modern Russia and, more broadly, readers with previous knowledge of the historiography and cultural artifacts covered in this book. They will better appreciate why Russia's leaders, in eschewing more liberal democratic directions, will continue to emphasize the cultural myths of Peter and Ivan to validate Russia’ need for strong central rule.

-- Thomas S. Pearson * The Historian *

Kevin M. F. Platt is Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Chair of the Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of History in a Grotesque Key: Russian Literature and the Idea of Revolution and coeditor of Epic Revisionism: Russian History and Literature as Stalinist Propaganda.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780801448133
ISBN 10	0801448131
Title	Terror and Greatness
Author	Kevin M F Platt
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Cornell University Press
Year published	2011-04-28
Number of pages	308
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.