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Topic: Orlando Figes

	The Observer \| Review \| Observer review: A people's tragedy by Orlando Figes
		Figes argues rationally that the Russian revolution was possible in Russia because of the country's position at the beginning of this century; and he explains also how the country came to be in that position, placing considerable emphasis on the Russian personality.
		Figes has adopted a Tolstoyan convention of telling the stories of a few individuals of middling importance as a means of describing what 'real people' did in the course of the revolution and demonstrating how the views and actions of such people determined the awful disaster.
		Orlando Figes clearly has a grand and lucid mind, and when he has learnt a certain deference to his olders and betters, and indeed to his readers, whoever they may be, he might contrive to write a book that is as good as it is impressive.
	observer.guardian.co.uk /review/story/0,,807045,00.html (1014 words)

	Review \| Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia by Orlando Figes
		As Orlando Figes' new cultural history of Russia shows, the true character of this vast country is almost impossible to grasp.
		Leo Tolstoy, who figures prominently in Figes' book, believed that the answer to Russia's identity could be found in the lives of the peasant class and in the subtle ways that they influenced the aristocrats who literally owned them until their emancipation by Tsar Alexander II in 1861.
		Figes allows his readers to decide for themselves whether Russia is a nation of the East or of the West.
	www.januarymagazine.com /nonfiction/natashasdance.html (1071 words)

	H-Net Review: Dave Pretty on A People's Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution
		Figes is adamant that by 1914 there was no hope that the tsarist system would ever reform itself and that the liberal solution was already largely discredited in the people's eyes, and he seems to side with those who see Russia already on the eve of revolution in the summer of 1914.
		Figes is superb in discussing the Whites, clearly, gracefully, and empathetically delineating their aims, motives, actions, strengths, weaknesses, and idiocies, persuasively locating the ultimate cause of their defeat in a political failure to address peasant concerns over land.
		Figes despises the leaders who he feels betrayed their people for the purposes of their own ideological or personal agendas; but he is also deeply disappointed by the people themselves, uninterested in fighting for the liberal values that were ultimately their only hope.
	www.h-net.msu.edu /reviews/showrev.cgi?path=28393904247225 (4825 words)

	Amazon.de: A People's Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution: English Books: Orlando Figes (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01)
		Written in a narrative style that captures both the scope and detail of the Russian revolution, Orlando Figes's history is certain to become one of the most important contemporary studies of Russia as it was at the beginning of the 20th century.
		Figes' book places a distinctly human face on all of the events of the revolution, and the faces and stories are ones that you will not soon forget.
		Figes does make a valuable contribution but you get the impression that it there are many stories hidden within the Kremlin's vaults which would shed light on the people lives he describes.
	www.amazon.de /Peoples-Tragedy-History-Russian-Revolution/dp/014024364X (1160 words)

	The Observer \| Review \| Observer review: Natasha's Dance by Orlando Figes
		As Orlando Figes explains in Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia, the resulting city was at once wonderfully artificial, a theatrical panorama of borrowed elements, and a symbol of the tsar's determination to preside over a newly Europeanised, sophisticated, cosmopolitan Russia: 'A city built on water with imported stone, Petersburg defied the natural order.
		Here, for Figes, is the heart of Russian culture's peculiar vitality and reach, a kind of quintessential Russianness, imbibed by a French-speaking and Europe-oriented elite with its Russian peasant wet-nurse's milk.
		The great Russian works of art, music and poetry are born, according to Figes, out of the unresolved struggle between strongly held beliefs derived from indigenous Russian culture, complete with superstition, violence and brutality, and the urbane contours of cosmopolitan European art.
	observer.guardian.co.uk /review/story/0,6903,810796,00.html (1069 words)

	A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes
		Figes makes the point that the Russian Revolution was a failure of the People, not the Marxist theorists or the revolutionaries or the capitalist system but the people of Russia themselves.
		He provides an incredible amount of information to back that up and yet, I somehow feel that to view it that way is blaming the victims and racially or culturally biased, in a sense.
		So yes, Figes does make his point very clear and I certainly learned a lot about Russian history regarding the revolution (especially the aftermath) but I'm sure that there are other interpretations.
	homepage.mac.com /bekker2/iblog/B590229731/C224998411/E1716297584 (225 words)

	Amazon.de: Natasha's Dance: English Books: Orlando Figes (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01)
		Figes also shows how the fine arts have been influenced by the Orthodox liturgy, peasant songs and crafts, and myriad social and economic factors from Russian noblemen's unusual attachments to their peasant nannies to the 19th-century growth of vodka production.
		The book's thematically organized chapters are devoted to subjects like the cultural influence of Moscow or the legacy of the Mongol invasion, and with each chapter Figes moves toward the 1917 revolution and the Soviet era, deftly integrating strands of political and social history into his narrative.
		The chapter on the Soviet period is elegiac (to put it mildly), and there's a wistfulness to the chapter on Russian emigre culture in Berlin and Paris.
	www.amazon.de /Natashas-Dance-Orlando-Figes/dp/0140297960 (551 words)

	Orlando Figes Books - Signed, used, new, out-of-print
		Renowned historian Figes summons the myriad elements that formed Russian culture and held it together.
		Here is an enthralling portrait of this poor but sizable population on the eve of the uprising, of the breakdown of state power in the countryside, and, most important, of the relationship between the serfs and the Bolsheviks during the civil war.
		Orlando Figes analiza con detenimiento el panorama cultural entre finales del siglo XIX y las vanguardias para centrarse especificamente en las relaciones entre la alta cultura, notablemente influenciada por las costumbres, el arte y la literatura franceses, y el folklore tradicional.
	www.alibris.com /search/books/author/Orlando_Figes (486 words)

	Commentary Magazine - A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01)
		...This, for Figes, was a decisive moment: an independent civil society had been born, increasingly aware of its own capacities and in quest of political representation...
		...As Figes tells it, the czarist approach to the peasant problem was to undertake a program of land reform...
		...FIGES TAKES up the story in the year 1891, when the czarist autocracy was grappling unsuccessfully with widespread famine in the Volga region and individual Russians began to organize a massive relief effort on their own...
	www.commentarymagazine.com /Summaries/V103I6P70-1.htm (1261 words)

	Book Talk - 7/12/2002: Natashas Dance...
		At the Cheltenham Festival of Literature, Orlando Figes) on the 'Russianness' of Russian culture.
		The starting point for his cultural history of Russia is that moment in War and Peace when, at her uncle's log cabin after a day's hunting in the woods with her brother Nikolai, the young countess Natasha dances a folk dance to the music of the balalaika - and proves her innate ‘Russianness'.
		Talking about his book at Cheltenham, Orlando Figes discussed the sources of what is regarded as characteristically 'Russian': showing, for instance, how much Russian culture owes to Asian cultures and to the Europeanised aristocracy's romantic discovery of folk culture.
	www.abc.net.au /rn/arts/booktalk/stories/s739528.htm (130 words)

	Amazon.com: A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924: Books: Orlando Figes (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01)
		Figes proves that the peasantry in Russia were sick to high heaven of a system that degraded them to a status of barely human.
		Figes spends a good portion of his book discussing the failures of the tsarist system and shows how that system could have averted problems and maintained the throne (although as a constitutional monarchy akin to England).
		Figes, instead, writes with a somewhat flippant attitude, and sometimes seems to be bored to death with the complexities posed by the Russian Revolution, and therefore has a tendence for developing - and indulging in -a taste for the anecdotal, the frivolous, even the downright irrelevant.
	www.amazon.com /exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/014024364X?v=glance (2560 words)

	Orlando Figes - Penguin UK Authors - Penguin UK
		Orlando Figes is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London.
		Orlando Figes, prize-winning author of A People's Tragedy, returns with Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia, an in-depth look into Russian culture and what it actually means to be Russian.
		Orlando Figes talks to penguin.co.uk about the inspiration behind Natasha's Dance and his experiences of Russia.
	www.penguin.co.uk /nf/Author/AuthorPage/0,,0_1000010920,00.html (1330 words)

	Commentary Magazine - Natasha's Dance by Orlando Figes; How Russia Shaped the Modern World by Steven G. Marks (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01)
		...The Decembrists were of the aristocratic elite, but, as Figes tells it, they had come to know the narod, the people, during the war with France, sharing the perils of the battlefield and the pleasures of its campfires with the conscripted peasants under their command...
		...Figes begins his excursion with Russia's triumph over Napoleon in 1812, which he regards as the key turning point in modern Russian cultural history...
		...Throughout, as Figes emphasizes, the intelligentsia tended to idealize the peasantry, seeing it as somehow in possession of an uncorrupted essence, unspoiled by European cosmopolitanism...
	www.commentarymagazine.com /Summaries/V115I3P88-1.htm (1595 words)

	Orlando Figes, Natasha's Dance
		Orlando Figes is indeed a storyteller and historian who knows how to spin a good yarn.
		Figes is an English academic who's refreshingly free of political bias in any form other than a genuine, and understandable, dislike of the Soviets.
		In Natasha's Dance, Figes shows that Russia's sense of identity is its culture: poetry, music, books and paintings may the material expression of what being Russian is; but its ideas, customs, and beliefs have kept this sprawling nation together in a way much different than countries like America and England.
	www.greenmanreview.com /book/book_figes_natashasdance.html (1209 words)

	Amazon.com: Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia: Books: Orlando Figes (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01)
		Figes writes, "(Prokofiev's) funeral (was) a sad affair that was scarcely noticed by the Soviet public...There were no flowers left to buy, so a single pine branch was placed on the composer's grave." I hope I have been able to convey some idea of the richness of this book.
		In fairness to Figes, this book has a lot of strengths, particularly his discussion of the relationship between nineteenth century Russian operas and the texts from which their libretti were drawn, his emphasis on the Old Believer schism, and his treatment of Vassily Grossman, still relatively unknown in the West.
		It begs the question to say, as Figes does, that Tolstoy's view is simply that Natasha is "estranged" from Western art, therefore it is bad, and that she responds "naturally" to Russian art, therefore it is good.
	www.amazon.com /exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0312421958?v=glance (3332 words)

	BBC - BBC Four Documentaries - Orlando Figes Interview
		Orlando Figes is a specialist in Russian history from the 18th century onwards, teaching at Birkbeck College in London.
		He writes extensively for the press and his books include A People's Tragedy: the Russian Revolution, 1891-1924 and Natasha's Dance, which was recently nominated for the Samuel Johnson Prize.
		Orlando Figes: I found the book Photographs for the Tsar shortly after it came out in 1980.
	www.bbc.co.uk /bbcfour/documentaries/features/figes-petersburg.shtml (832 words)

	Amazon.fr : Natasha's Dance: Livres en anglais: Orlando Figes (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01)
		Figes (history, Univ. of London; A People's Tragedy) describes the twists and turns of Russian history through cultural and artistic events from the founding of Rus in the 12th century through the Soviet era.
		The title of Figes's book comes from the scene in which Natasha Rostov and her brother Nikolai are invited by their "uncle" to a rustic cabin to listen to him play Russian folk music on his guitar.
		Natasha instinctively begins a folk dance that is prompted by "unknown feelings in her heart." Tolstoy would have us believe that "Russia may be held together by unseen threads of native sensibilities," writes Figes.
	www.amazon.fr /Natashas-Dance-Orlando-Figes/dp/0140297960 (720 words)

	Amazon.ca: Natasha's Dance : A Cultural History of Russia: Books: Orlando Figes (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01)
		Figes' style is highly readable, there is scarcely a dull page in the book, and he even manages to make the Soviet period seem interesting, something it never seemed to be from a cultural point of view.
		No doubt that Figes is very well informed and he describes everything so vivid that you think he was there right in the middle of everything!!
		Another quality of the book that leaves a queasy feeling is the author's quite lofty statements on one hand and his occasional lack of basic scholarship on the other.
	www.amazon.ca /Natashas-Dance-Cultural-History-Russia/dp/0312421958 (1402 words)

	Figes Books - Signed, used, new, out-of-print
		Mirroring the changes and expectations of women's lives everywhere and reflecting the diversity of their experience, these stories feature a wealth of subject matter and styles and are written by both well-established and undiscovered...
		Eva Figes writes about her own childhood, first in Germany, then (after 1939) in England, as well about her interactions with her granddaughter, with whom she has rediscovered the pleasures of children's books.
		A look at the physical, sensory, emotional, and psychological changes that many women go through after the birth of their first child.
	www.alibris.com /search/books/author/Figes (562 words)

	Natasha's Dance - Orlando Figes - Penguin UK (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01)
		Natasha's Dance - Orlando Figes - Penguin UK home
		Orlando Figes’s enthralling, richly evocative history has been heralded as a literary masterpiece on Russia, the lives of those who have shaped its culture, and the enduring spirit of a people.
		As Peter conceived it, to become a citizen of Petersburg was to leave behind the 'dark' and 'backward' customs of the Russian past in Moscow and to enter, as a European Russian, in the modern western world of progress and enlightenment.
	penguin.co.uk /nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,0_9780140297966,00.html?sym=EXC (3930 words)

	Natasha's Dance by Orlando Figes, New, Used Books, Cheap Prices, ISBN 0312421958
		Beginning in the eighteenth century with the building of St. Petersburg and culminating with the Soviet regime, Figes examines how writers, artists, and musicians grappled with the idea of Russia itself--its character, spiritual essence, and destiny.
		Skillfully interweaving the great works--by Dostoevsky, Stravinsky, and Chagall--with folk embroidery, peasant songs, religious icons, and all the customs of daily life, Figes reveals the spirit of "Russianness" as rich and uplifting, complex and contradictory--and more lasting than any Russian ruler or state.
		All such content is provided to you "as is." this content and your use of it are subject to change and/or removal at any time.
	www.bookfinder4u.com /detail/0312421958.html (357 words)

	Orlando Figes (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01)
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	imdb.com /name/nm0276540 (95 words)

	School of History, Classics and Archaeology - Birkbeck, University of London (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01)
		Book cover of Natasha's Dance, a Cultural History of Russia by Orlando Figes.
		'Introduction', in V.P. Danilov, Rural Russia Under the New Regime, translated by O. Figes, Hutchinson, 1988, pp.13-27.
		V.P. Danilov, Rural Russia Under the New Regime, translated with an Introduction by O. Figes, Hutchinson, 1988.
	www.bbk.ac.uk /hca/staff/figes.shtml (776 words)

	Listen to an interview with Orlando Figes on "Natasha's Dance" (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01)
		Listen to an interview with Orlando Figes on "Natasha's Dance"
		The sweep of two centuries of Russian culture is jammed tightly into this book by University of London history professor Orlando Figes.
		Click here to see all books by Orlando Figes on Amazon
	eyeonbooks.com /ibp.php?ISBN=0805057838 (134 words)

	[No title]
		Interpretar La Revolucion Rusa - 1917 Orlando Figes ISBN: 8470308548
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		To find more books by Orlando Figes Click Here
	www.bookhead.co.uk /8470308548.aspx (59 words)

	Scotland on Sunday - Review - Shelf Life - Orlando Figes (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01)
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		Born in London in 1959, Orlando Figes is Professor of History at the University of London’s Birkbeck College.
		He is author of Peasant Russia, Civil War and A People’s Tragedy, which in 1997 won a number of awards including the Wolfson history prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
	scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com /review.cfm?id=1105252002 (337 words)

	Natasha's Dance, A Cultural History of Russia - Orlando Figes
		Natasha's Dance, A Cultural History of Russia - Orlando Figes
		In this lively cultural history, Figes looks at both the great works by Russian masters and longstanding folk traditions.
		The title is drawn from a scene of Tolstoy's War and Peace in which a European-educated countess performs a peasant dance and the monumental work is dedicated to this tension between Asia and Europe, peasants and nobility.
	www.longitudebooks.com /find/p/51215/mcms.html (90 words)

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