Broken Empire : After the Fall of the USSR

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Broken Empire, Broken Dreams

Broken Empire : After the Fall of the USSR
Fen Montaigne
Manufacturer: National Geographic
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0792264320
Release Date: 2001-11-01

On December 25, 1991, at 7:35 p.m., soldiers lowered the red Soviet flag flying over the Kremlin and raised the Russian tri-color in its place. The moment passed without pomp or circumstance, resulting in a strangely muted end to a regime that had, in many ways, defined the 20th century.

Christmas 2001 is the tenth anniversary of the demise of the Soviet Union. To commemorate the event, National Geographic presents a mesmerizing retrospective that captures all the turbulence of Russia's new beginning.

With 120 extraordinary photographs by Gerd Ludwig and incisive essays by Fen Montaigne, Broken Empire captures Russia in all its complexity. The book examines not only the fledgling country's notorious corruption and poverty—the only aspects of Russia covered by most Western media—but many lesser known facets, including the rise of a new urban generation committed to building a prosperous society. Taking us into the daily lives of Russians, from entrepreneurs to pensioners, Broken Empire's images and words come together to capture as no book ever has the poignant resilience of a country endeavoring to find a workable middle road between capitalism and state control.

If your looking for images and insight text read "The Home Planet" by Kevin W Kelley. Two different subject matters, but the written text illustrates where this book went astray.

I have been traveling to the former Soviet Union now for the past twenty-five years and have always been surprised by how ignorant the world was about this marvelous nation. Ludwig clearly has an intimate feel for the soul of this great world. The images breathe and display the majesty of this people and empire wonderfully, warts and all. This is not a tragic populace, but a noble collection of races and groups who share a common pride, humanism and patriotism with a unique perspective and outlook on life that is both refreshing and vital.

I thought that the Western world would never get it right about the great land and her people, but Ludwig's masterpiece clearly and artfully reveals the nuances of an emerging colossus whose rightful place in history, commerce, politics, art and culture is assured by its dogged determinism to continue, to live, to strive to express the essence that is "Mother Russia".

And to do all of this with photography...what an achievement!!

In 1936 anthropologist Margaret Mead and her husband, Gregory Bateson, retreated from lowland Bali, which was the focal point of much scholarly and tourist activity, to the remote village of Bayung Gedé in the island's central highlands. Although they wrote relatively little about their work in this place, which Mead called "our village, way up in the mountains, a lovely self-contained village," they did leave behind a remarkably rich and extensive photographic record of their time there.

Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and Highland Bali includes 200 photographs that the couple took between 1936 and 1939, the vast majority of which have never before been published. They vividly capture the everyday lives of the men, women, and children of Bayung Gedé, their homes and their temples, and many other fascinating details of village life not featured in Mead and Bateson's publications.

In a substantial introductory essay, Gerald Sullivan, who selected the photographs, uses excerpts from fieldnotes and correspondence to illuminate Mead and Bateson's ethnographic work. Tracing the project from its inception in their proposals to the publication of their work, Sullivan shows how they used the photographs both as fieldnotes and as elements in their theoretical argument. Finally, he explores what the photographs reveal—independently of Mead and Bateson's project—about the Balinese character to the contemporary viewer.

The result is a both a substantial contribution to visual anthropology and an invaluable supplement to the published works of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson.

The 1920s is arranged thematically, with brief introductions in English, German, and French to the theme to be covered. For instance, there are sections devoted to "Movers and Shakers," "Work," "Leisure," "Science," and "Sport," to mention only a few. The photographs do a marvelous job of depicting many of the trends and concerns of the time. Most are striking, and some of the photographs are unforgettable.

The first photographs in the book are perhaps the most haunting: Studio shots from 1925 of a wildly gesticulating Adolf Hitler, standing in front of a phonograph, striking one over-the-top pose after another. They are chilling partly because they are the very poses he would strike a decade later in front of the multitudes at Nuremberg and elsewhere. But they are also chilling because one realizes in looking at them that Hitler obviously had practiced these very poses, probably in front of a mirror, and one can easily imagine him alone in his rooms, standing in front of a looking glass, practicing speeches and gestures. I found myself almost of necessity thinking of Robert DeNiro as Travis Bickle, standing in front of his own mirror. The photographs bring home Hitler's inherent insanity more powerfully than anything else I have seen.

There are many other striking photos. I was delighted to see a photo of the remarkably handsome Ivor Novello, who is the real life person that Jeremy Northam portrayed in GOSFORD PARK. The section on celebrities showed a number of actors and actresses in pictures I had never seen before (James Cagney, Buster Keaton, a strange photo of Greta Garbo). I especially liked a posed photo of Mary Pickford striking one of her classic poses with Anna Pavlova striking a balletic pose with a clownishly made up face (they atone later with a shot of Pavlova in her normal face). The book manages to summarize all the passions, fads, and trends of the entire decade.

I recommend this to anyone with either a passion for collections of photographs or with an interest in early 20th century history.

The photos that do chronicle the Second World War are outstanding, though those few that detail the various atrocities can make for difficult viewing. Pictures of bravery and heroics sit side by side with images of pure human suffering. Sacrifices at home are shown next to the work being done abroad. This is a well-done summation of those war years in all their different facets.

War is not the only subject catered to in this collection. Sports, fashion, show business, and other events of the post-war years are dealt with. Several celebrities of the day make cameos on these pages, but the primary focus is upon the regular people going about their everyday business; the entertainers are confined to making moral boosting visits to overseas troops. A selection of delightfully goofy pictures is a welcome change from some of the weightier offerings. Seeing Miss Italy knocking out Miss England, Ingrid Bergman chuckling at Alfred Hitchcock, or a Russian solder dancing with an American serviceman is a great antidote to the more depressing and destructive scenes.

The black and white photography here offers us a great insight into the way of life during the 1940s. Each photograph is captioned in English, German and French, but it's not those few words that will be sticking in your memory. There are some unforgettable images that have been captured here. They were stored for decades in plastic and glass, but many of them will now be imprinted in the minds of anyone who peruses this picture book. The photographs here are priceless.

I recently friends and relatives, and had a different volume edited by Nick Yapp from the Hutton Getty Collection. It was a lot of fun seeing one person, and then another, pick up the book, look at a picture or two, and then go back to the beginning and look page-by-page through the entire collection. These books are not only extremely informative and illuminating of the decades of the previous century, but enormously entertaining.

As I work through each volume in the series, I find the quirks of the series to be increasingly endearing. Like most Americans, cricket has about as much interest for me as bingo, but it is fun to see each volume celebrate cricketeers who are utterly unknown in the U.S. I can imagine that the Anglo-European slant of the volumes would be irritating to some. Few pictures of American everyday life are included. For the most part, Americans pictured are celebrities, athletes, or political figures. Nonetheless, I love all the volumes in the series that have been published so far, and am very excited about the forthcoming additional books that will complete the collection.