Anthropologist Fran Markowitz interviewed more than one hundred Russian teenagers to discover how adolescents have been coping with their country's seismic transitions. Her findings present a substantive challenge to near-axiomatic theories of human development that regard cultural stability as indispensable to the successful navigation of adolescence.Markowitz's fieldwork leads to the surprising conclusion that the disruptions brought by glasnost, perestroika, and the fragmentation of the USSR exerted a greater impact on Western political hopes and on many of Russia's adults than on young people's perceptions of their lives. In their remarks on topics ranging from being Russian to religion, sex, music, and military service, the teenagers convey a flexible and optimistic approach to the future and a sense of security deriving from strong family, school, and neighborhood ties. Their perspectives suggest that culture change and social instability may be seen as positive forces, allowing for expressive opportunities, the establishment of individualized identities, and creative, pragmatic planning.

In 1992 Deborah Adelman returned to Moscow to meet once again with the young people who told their stories in The "Children of Perestroika". During the intervening three years, the teens had experienced not only major social and political upheavals, but also important changes in their personal lives: the death of a parent; love, marriage, and the prospect of children; for some, the beginning of a higher education; for others, military service and entry into a rapidly changing world of work. In this new book of interviews, the teens describe the trials and tribulations of their first years of adult life - the decisions they have made, and the hand that fate has dealt them and their families, in the chaotic and uncertain world of post-Soviet Russia.

The Thaw Generation offers an insider's look at the Soviet dissident movement--the intellectuals who, during the Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras, dared to challenge an oppressive system and demand the rights guaranteed by the Soviet constitution. Fired from their jobs, hunted by the KGB, “tried,” and imprisoned, Alexeyeva and other activists including Andrei Sakharov, Yuri Orlov, Yuli Daniel, and Andrei Sinyavsky, through their dedication and their personal and professional sacrifices, focused international attention on the issue of human rights in the USSR.

The wider cultural universe of contemporary Eveny is a specific and revealing subset of post-Soviet society. From an anthropological perspective, the author seeks to reveal not only the Eveny cultural universe but also the universe of the children and adolescents within this universe. The first full-length ethnographic study among the adolescence of Siberian indigenous peoples, it presents the young people's narratives about their own future and shows how they form constructs of time, space, agency and personhood through the process of growing up and experiencing their social world. The study brings a new perspective to the anthropology of childhood and uncovers a quite unexpected dynamic in narrating and foreshadowing the future while relating it to cultural patterns of prediction and fulfillment in nomadic cosmology. Olga Ulturgasheva is Research Fellow in Social Anthropology at the Scott Polar Research Institute and Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. She has carried out fieldwork for a decade in Siberia on childhood, youth, religion, reindeer herding and hunting and coedited Animism in Rainforest and Tundra: Personhood, Animals, Plants and Things in Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia (Berghahn Books 2012).

The last ten years were decisive for Russia, not only in the political sphere, but also culturally as this period saw the rise and crystallization of Russian postmodernism. The essays, manifestos, and articles gathered here investigate various manifestations of this crucial cultural trend. Exploring Russian fiction, poetry, art, and spirituality, they provide a point of departure and a valuable guide to an area of contemporary literary-cultural studies which is currently insufficiently represented in English-language scholarship. A brief but useful "Who's Who in Russian Postmodernism" as an appendix introduces many authors who have never before appeared in a reference work of this kind and renders this book essential reading for those interested in the latest trends in Russian intellectual life.

A gripping account of U.S.-Russian relations since the end of the Soviet Union The Limits of Partnership offers a riveting narrative on U.S.-Russian relations since the Soviet collapse and on the challenges ahead. It reflects the unique perspective of an insider who is also recognized as a leading expert on this troubled relationship. American presidents have repeatedly attempted to forge a strong and productive partnership only to be held hostage to the deep mistrust born of the Cold War. For the United States, Russia remains a priority because of its nuclear weapons arsenal, its strategic location bordering Europe and Asia, and its ability to support—or thwart—American interests. Why has it been so difficult to move the relationship forward? What are the prospects for doing so in the future? Is the effort doomed to fail again and again? Angela Stent served as an adviser on Russia under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and maintains close ties with key policymakers in both countries. Here, she argues that the same contentious issues—terrorism, missile defense, Iran, nuclear proliferation, Afghanistan, the former Soviet space, the greater Middle East—have been in every president's inbox, Democrat and Republican alike, since the collapse of the USSR. Stent vividly describes how Clinton and Bush sought inroads with Russia and staked much on their personal ties to Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin—only to leave office with relations at a low point—and how Barack Obama managed to restore ties only to see them undermined by a Putin regime resentful of American dominance and determined to restore Russia's great power status. The Limits of Partnership calls for a fundamental reassessment of the principles and practices that drive U.S.-Russian relations, and offers a path forward to meet the urgent challenges facing both countries.