GalinTihanov, Lancaster University:
This volume is a fine and timely intervention in the changing field of Russian cultural history. The editors join their expertise in history, literature, and gender studies to pose a question that recent research on Russian and Soviet social and intellectual history has rendered unavoidable: what was the status of the self in pre- and postrevolutionary Russia, and, equally important, how was the sense of individual identity constructed and produced?
Nicole L. Young, University of Toronto:
This collection is a valuable addition to the historiography of Imperial and Soviet Russian society. True to its title, Self and Story, the somewhat unorthodox theme allows the authors to explore familiar subjects in new and interesting ways.
The innovative thinking reflected in the essays owes debts to such sources as psychoanalysis, deconstructionist theory, and the ideas of Michel Foucault.... While some of the essays will appeal mainly to specialists, others... will probably be of broader interest.
Harriet Murav, University of California Davis:
The collection balances out the emphasis on the significance of literary narrative in the formation of the Russian self with its discussions of the opportunities provided by the new media of the early twentieth century, and its studies of testimony, memoir, and private diaries. The volume is important, not only for the breadth of issues it treats, but for its interdisciplinary approach.
Peter Pozefsky:
Self and Story is a thought-provoking and complex collection. The contributors... are of a uniformly high quality, generally lively and edifying and always painstakingly researched.... Self and Story offers many rewards. It provides rich empirical justification for the study of the evolution of notions of self, individuality, subjectivity and personality in Russian culture and opens up an exciting new terrain for future research.
Mark D. Steinberg, University of Illinois:
Self and Story in Russian History is the first sustained scholarly exploration of how selves—and the self as idea and ideal—were narrated in the Russian past. This is an important and necessary book.
Boris Gasparov, Columbia University:
In this fine book, historians, literary scholars, and art critics engage in an intense and thought-provoking dialogue that illuminates different facets of Russian private, social, and cultural life. The diverse topics and fields of study converge into an extremely rich and well-organized whole, exposing a new intellectual space—a fascinating mosaic of Russian society in the making.
William Wagner, Williams College:
Demonstrating the diverse ways in which individual Russians since the late 18th century have attempted to understand and define their personal identities, these pathbreaking essays effectively challenge collectivist representations of modern Russia's particularity. By also showing, however, how individual efforts at self-definition were shaped by historical and cultural contexts, the authors do much to illuminate the particular character of modernity and ways of understanding the self in Imperial and Soviet Russia. Self and Story in Russian History provides us with an important new perspective on modern Russia.
Lynne Atwood, University of Manchester:
An excellent and fascinating collection.
