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The Ghost Of The Executed Engineer
''The Ghost of the Executed Engineer: Technology and the Fall of the Soviet Union'' is a documentary book written by Loren Graham, an MIT professor specializing in the history of modern Russian science that criticizes the direction of Soviet industrialization. Published by the Harvard University Press in 1993, it describes the life of Peter Palchinsky, in whom it personifies the struggles and misfortunes of Soviet industrialization. Peter Palchinsky Palchinsky was born in 1875 in a city on the Volga, Kazan. He was a mining engineer who wanted to take a more humanitarian approach to engineering than the communist government desired. His life is used in this book as a focus for the subject. Technology in the Soviet Union Stalin's vision for the Soviet Union and industrialization was very different from Palchinsky's. Joseph Stalin had an ideological outlook for economic advancement in the Soviet Union that set unrealistic goals that required massive human effort. Stalin emphasi ...
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Loren Graham
Loren R. Graham (born June 29, 1933, in Hymera, Indiana) is an American historian of science, particularly science in Russia. Career He has taught and published at Indiana University, Columbia University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard University, where he is currently a research associate. He was a participant in one of the first academic exchange programs between the United States and the Soviet Union, studying at Moscow University in 1960-61. He wrote a popular book on Native American history (''A Face in the Rock'') and a memoir (''Moscow Stories'') which describes his youth in the United States and his adventures in Russia. He has also been a strong supporter of human rights and scholarship. He was a member of the board of trustees of the Soros Foundation. For many years he has been a member of the Governing Council of the Program on Basic Research and Higher Education, which supports the combining of research and teaching in Russian univer ...
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Jack Littlepage
John Dickinson "Jack" Littlepage (September 14, 1894 - July 8, 1948) was an American mining engineer. He was born in Gresham, Oregon on September 14, 1894. Littlepage was employed in the USSR from 1928 to 1937, becoming Deputy Commissar of the USSR's Gold Trust in the 1930s. He is one of the recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour.Tzouliadis, Tim, ''The Forsaken'', Penguin, New York, 2008, pp 164-166 Biography Alexander Serebrovsky (1884-1938), "one of the mainstays of the ovietregime", was charged by Joseph Stalin with reforming the Soviet gold industry. Stalin had read several books about the 1849 California Gold Rush, including works by Bret Harte and Blaise Cendrars' book ''Sutter's Gold'', later turned into an American film. In 1927, the 45-year-old Serebrovsky travelled to Alaska posing as a simple "Professor of Mines" (he was in fact a professor at the Moscow Mining Institute as well as a key functionary of the regime); his plan was to duplicate American m ...
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Non-fiction Books About Soviet Repression
Nonfiction, or non-fiction, is any document or media content that attempts, in good faith, to provide information (and sometimes opinions) grounded only in facts and real life, rather than in imagination. Nonfiction is often associated with being presented more objectively, like historical, scientific, or otherwise straightforward and accurate information, but sometimes, can be presented more subjectively, like sincerely held beliefs and thoughts on a real-world topic. One prominent usage of nonfiction is as one of the two fundamental divisions of narrative (storytelling)—often, specifically, prose writing—in contrast to narrative fiction, which is largely populated by imaginary characters and events, though sometimes ambiguous regarding its basis in reality. Some typical examples of nonfiction include diaries, biographies, news stories, documentary films, textbooks, travel books, recipes, and scientific journals. While specific claims in a nonfiction work may ...
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1993 Non-fiction Books
File:1993 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Oslo I Accord is signed in an attempt to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; The White House (Moscow), Russian White House is shelled during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis; Czechoslovakia is peacefully Dissolution of Czechoslovakia, dissolved into the Czech Republic and Slovakia; In the United States, the ATF Waco siege, besieges a compound belonging to David Koresh and the Branch Davidians in a search for illegal weapons, which ends in the building being set alight and killing most inside; Eritrea gains independence; A major 1993 Storm of the Century, snow storm passes over the United States and Canada, leading to over 300 fatalities; Drug lord and narcoterrorism, narcoterrorist Pablo Escobar is killed by Military Forces of Colombia, Colombian special forces; Ramzi Yousef and other Islamic terrorism, Islamic terrorists 1993 World Trade Center bombing, detonate a truck bomb in the subterranean garage of List of t ...
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The Gulag Archipelago
''The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation'' (russian: Архипелаг ГУЛАГ, ''Arkhipelag GULAG'') is a three-volume non-fiction text written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It was first published in 1973, and translated into English and French the following year. It covers life in what is often known as the Gulag, the Soviet forced labour camp system, through a narrative constructed from various sources including reports, interviews, statements, diaries, legal documents, and Solzhenitsyn's own experience as a Gulag prisoner. Following its publication, the book initially circulated in '' samizdat'' underground publication in the Soviet Union until its appearance in the literary journal ''Novy Mir'' in 1989, in which a third of the work was published in three issues. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, ''The Gulag Archipelago'' has been officially published in Russia. Structure As stru ...
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, in particular the Gulag system. Solzhenitsyn was born into a family that defied the Soviet anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and remained devout members of the Russian Orthodox Church. While still young, Solzhenitsyn lost his faith in Christianity, became an atheist, and embraced Marxism–Leninism. While serving as a captain in the Red Army during World War II, Solzhenitsyn was arrested by the SMERSH and sentenced to eight years in the Gulag and then internal exile for criticizing Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in a private letter. As a result of his experience in prison and the camps, he gradually became a philosophically-minded Eastern Orthodox Christian. As a result of the Khrushchev Thaw, Solzhenitsyn was ...
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Tim Harford
Timothy Douglas Harford (born 27 September 1973) is an English economic journalist who lives in Oxford. Harford is the author of four economics books and writes his long-running ''Financial Times'' column, " The Undercover Economist", syndicated in ''Slate'' magazine, which explores the economic ideas behind everyday experiences. His column in the ''Financial Times'', "Since You Asked", ran between 2011 and 2014 and offered a sceptical look at the news of the week. Since October 2007 Harford has presented the BBC Radio 4 programme '' More or Less.'' The series segments are also available as podcasts. Subsequently Harford launched his own podcast on the podcast production network Pushkin Industries, called ''Cautionary Tales''. Education Harford was educated at Aylesbury Grammar School and then at Brasenose College, Oxford. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and then a Master of Philosophy in Economics, in 1998. Harford said tha ...
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Shakhty Trial
The Shakhty Trial (russian: Ша́хтинское де́ло) was the first important Soviet show trial since the case of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in 1922. Fifty-three engineers and managers from the North Caucasus town of Shakhty were arrested in 1928 after being accused of conspiring to sabotage the Soviet economy with the former owners of the coal mines. The trial was conducted on May 18, 1928 in House of Trade Unions, Moscow. The Trial In 1928, the local OGPU arrested a group of engineers, including Peter Palchinsky, Nikolai von Meck and A. F. Velichko, in the North Caucasus town of Shakhty, accusing them of conspiring with former owners of coal mines, who were living abroad and barred from the Soviet Union since the Revolution, to sabotage the Soviet economy. The group was charged with a multitude of crimes, including planning the explosions in the mines, buying equipment from foreign companies that was not needed, incorrectly administering labor laws and safety ...
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Robert Robinson (engineer)
Robert Nathaniel Robinson (June 22, 1906 – February 23, 1994) was a Jamaican-born toolmaker who worked in the auto industry in the United States. At the age of 23, he was recruited to work in the Soviet Union. Shortly after his arrival in Stalingrad, Robinson was racially assaulted by two white American workers, both of whom were subsequently arrested, tried and expelled from the Soviet Union with great publicity. Starting with a one-year contract to work in the Soviet Union, Robinson twice renewed his contract. After the publicity of his assault, he felt unable to return to the US and accepted Soviet citizenship. He earned a degree in mechanical engineering. His repeated attempts to visit outside the USSR finally resulted in an approved trip to Uganda in 1974, where he asked for and was given asylum. He married an African-American professor working there. He finally gained re-entry to the United States in 1986, and gained attention for his accounts of his 44 years in the Sovie ...
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White Sea Canal
White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White on television and computer screens is created by a mixture of red, blue, and green light. The color white can be given with white pigments, especially titanium dioxide. In ancient Egypt and ancient Rome, priestesses wore white as a symbol of purity, and Romans wore white togas as symbols of citizenship. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance a white unicorn symbolized chastity, and a white lamb sacrifice and purity. It was the royal color of the kings of France, and of the monarchist movement that opposed the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War (1917–1922). Greek and Roman temples were faced with white marble, and beginning in the 18th century, with the advent of neoclassical architecture, white became the most common color of n ...
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Massachusetts Institute Of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the most prestigious and highly ranked academic institutions in the world. Founded in response to the increasing Technological and industrial history of the United States, industrialization of the United States, MIT adopted a European History of European universities, polytechnic university model and stressed laboratory instruction in applied science and engineering. MIT is one of three private land grant universities in the United States, the others being Cornell University and Tuskegee University. The institute has an Campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, urban campus that extends more than a mile (1.6 km) alongside the Charles River, and encompasses a number of major off-campus fa ...
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Stephen Kotkin
Stephen Mark Kotkin (born February 17, 1959) is an American historian, academic, and author. He is currently the John P. Birkelund '52 Professor in History and International Affairs at Princeton University, where he is also co-director of the program in history and the practice of diplomacy and the director of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. He is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He has won a number of awards and fellowships, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. Kotkin's most prominent book project is his three-volume biography of Joseph Stalin, of which the first two volumes have been published as '' Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928'' (2014) and '' Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941'' (2017), while the third volume remains to be published. Academic career Kotkin graduated from the University of Roch ...
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