Moskau lesen

by Karl Schlögel

No European city has undergone as much upheaval in the past fifteen years as Moscow. The stage for the fall of a world empire and the rebirth of a globally-connected Russia, Moscow has transformed from a monochrome capital city to a new Babylon iridescent with neon lights. Karl Schlögel's Moscow offers a fascinating and engaging portrait of this international metropolis in transformation.

First published in German in 1984, and now rapidly attaining the status of a classic work, this debut English edition of Moscow has been updated with a new introduction and conclusion covering the post-Soviet period. Schlögel describes the modern history of Moscow from various aspects as he explores the city's streets and unearths the rich histories of its buildings, monuments, and parks. A city where the past and future continually clash, Moscow struggles to define its global role in the twenty-first century, and Karl Schlögel's insightful essays in Moscow provide a valuable window into the complex and resilient character of the ever-evolving capital and its citizens.

Genres: History

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Karl Schlögel (born 7 March 1948 in Hawangen, Bavaria, Germany) is a noted German historian of Eastern Europe who specialises in modern Russia, the history of Stalinism, the Russian diaspora and dissident movements, Eastern European cultural history and theoretical problems of historical narration.

Reviews

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

When contemplating cities conducive to flâneries and urban wandering, Moscow isn't the first place we generally think of, beset as it is with vast traffic-crammed bulvars, myriad underpasses and overwhelming, sprawling size. Nevertheless, Schlögel manages to bring the underside of the place vividly to life by turning our attention to subjects the casual traveller would usually ignore.
In the prologue, he describes the lack of perspective, the stereotypical viewpoints and the hackneyed representations that cities like Moscow are subject to. His approach is to choose different reference points and plumb these to arrive at another, more personal reading of the city.
One such reference point is the role of the bookshop in Moscow; from this we see the way that the book as an object has here taken on an entirely different symbolic value to that which it holds elsewhere. Moscow, where samizdat was the only method of circulating many texts, is going to be radically different to a city where readers didn't have recourse to this subterfuge - one of many examples in the book of things that lend the Russian capital its distinctive dimension.
Schlögel values the myth and symbolism of the city as much as the bricks and mortar or the city's historical 'facts'. In many ways this book owes much to New History and writers like Pierre Nora who take historical subjects and mine them for their mythologies and subjective readings down the years rather than seeking out the usual objective truths. Schlögel makes of Moscow one of Nora's archetypal lieux de mémoire.
A great companion to take on a future Moscow trip.