Russia's Sputnik Generation: Soviet Baby Boomers Talk about Their Lives (Indiana-Michigan Series in Russian and East European Studies) - Hardcover

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9780253347251: Russia's Sputnik Generation: Soviet Baby Boomers Talk about Their Lives (Indiana-Michigan Series in Russian and East European Studies)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0253347254 ISBN 13: 9780253347251

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 2006

Russia's Sputnik Generation presents the life stories of eight 1967 graduates of School No. 42 in the Russian city of Saratov. Born in 1949/50, these four men and four women belong to the first generation conceived during the Soviet Union's return to ""normality"" following World War II. Well educated, articulate, and loosely networked even today, they were first-graders the year the USSR launched Sputnik, and grew up in a country that increasingly distanced itself from the excesses of Stalinism. Reaching middle age during the Gorbachev Revolution, they negotiated the transition to a Russian-style market economy and remain active, productive members of society in Russia and the diaspora.

In candid interviews with Donald J. Raleigh, these Soviet ""baby boomers"" talk about the historical times in which they grew up, but also about their everyday experiences -- their family backgrounds; childhood pastimes; favorite books, movies, and music; and influential people in their lives. These personal testimonies shed valuable light on Soviet childhood and adolescence, on the reasons and course of perestroika, and on the wrenching transition that has taken place since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

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About the Author:

Donald J. Raleigh is Jay Richard Judson Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is author, editor, or translator of numerous books, most recently Experiencing Russia's Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917--1922.

Review:

"... this is an extremely informative book. It is also highly readable,partly because of its novelistic qualities: the characters of both Raleigh and hisinformants shine through the text. The introduction to each interview includesa lively account of the interviewee's behaviour during the event as well as anarrative of Raleigh's various adventures, such as getting lost on the way, inthe labyrinth of Moscow University, or being jumped on by an unannouncedpet rat. The book is beautifully illustrated with photographs of the informants,for example, at May Day parades, on the beach, or dressed for graduationball. At the very end, hiding beyond the Index, are photographs of Raleighhimself in 1967 and 2005. A valuable feature of the book is its sparing but deftdrawing of parallels between Russians and Americans of the same generation,leading the reader to reflect on how far the book tells a specifically Russianstory or, conversely, one more universal." -- Anne White, Department of European Studies and Modern Languages University of Bath, Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 86, number 4, October 2008

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