20:I[5421,["https://dlhg59ksjeb0y.cloudfront.net/_next/static/chunks/32wlomrwrmrkt.js","https://dlhg59ksjeb0y.cloudfront.net/_next/static/chunks/3_m036uulyk24.js","https://dlhg59ksjeb0y.cloudfront.net/_next/static/chunks/3vyhf5n3zugq3.js","https://dlhg59ksjeb0y.cloudfront.net/_next/static/chunks/11tga8gv621-f.js","https://dlhg59ksjeb0y.cloudfront.net/_next/static/chunks/2ureo05iszfhx.js","https://dlhg59ksjeb0y.cloudfront.net/_next/static/chunks/00pn5b4f33zqj.js","https://dlhg59ksjeb0y.cloudfront.net/_next/static/chunks/2yz0gl-3dg51y.js"],"default"] 21:T464,

The clash between scholarship and politics—between truth and propaganda—was ruthless for historians in Istpart, the Russian Communist Central Committee's official historical department.

Istpart was tasked with preserving the documentary record, compiling memoirs, and upholding ideological conformism within the national narrative of the 1917 revolution. In Revising the Revolution, Larry E. Holmes examines the role of Istpart's historians, in both the Moscow office and a regional branch in Viatka, who initially believed they could adhere to the traditional standards of research and simultaneously provide a history useful to the party. However, they quickly realized that the party rejected any version of history that suggested nonideological or nonpolitical sources of truth. By 1928, Istpart had largely abandoned its mission to promote scholarly work on the 1917 revolution and instead advanced the party's master narrative.

Revising the Revolution explores the battle for the Russian national narrative and the ways in which history can be used to centralize power.

22:T51b,

In Win or Else, Larry E. Holmes shows us how Soviet football culture regularly disregarded official ideological and political imperatives and skirted the boundaries between socialism and capitalism.

In the early 1920s, the Soviet press denounced football as a bourgeois sport that was injurious to both mind and body. Within that same decade, however, it blew up, becoming the most popular spectator sport in the USSR and growing into a fiercely competitive business with complex regional and national bureaucracies, a strong international presence, and a conviction that victory on the field was also a victory of Soviet supremacy. Writing as both historian and fan, Holmes focuses his study on the provincial Kirov team Dinamo from 1979 to 1985, when the club played at both its worst and its best. Spurred by a dismal 1979 season, the team's administrators and regional authorities had two options: obey Moscow's edict to reduce expenditures on professional sports or seek out new—and often illicit—funding sources to fill out a team of champions.

Drawing on rich archival materials as well as newspapers and interviews with former players, Win or Else reveals the foundations of Soviet sports culture—and the hazards that teams faced both in victory and in loss.

Books By Larry E. Holmes (2 Books)

Revising the Revolution

Win or Else

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