New Books in Russian and Eurasian Studies
1,012 episodes — Page 19 of 21
Matthew Pauly, “Breaking the Tongue: Language, Education, and Power in Soviet Ukraine, 1923-1934” (U. of Toronto Press, 2014)
Matthew Pauly’s Breaking the Tongue: Language, Education, and Power in Soviet Ukraine, 1923-1934 (University of Toronto Press, 2014) offers a detailed investigation of the language policy–officially termed Ukrainization–that was introduced in Ukraine during the formative years of the Soviet Union. Out of a massive amount of archival records and documents,... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Douglas Rogers, “The Depths of Russia: Oil, Power, and Culture after Socialism” (Cornell UP, 2015)
Ever since the accidental discovery of oil in Perm in 1929, the so-called “Second Baku” has been known to be an industrial hub as well as the home to a GULAG labor camp. In post-Soviet times, however, Perm has become a new cultural center on Russia’s map. In his book... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Michael David-Fox, “Crossing Borders: Modernity, Ideology, and Culture in Russia and the Soviet Union” (U Pittsburgh Press, 2015)
It’s been a quarter century since the collapse of the Soviet Union. This anniversary marks a good occasion to ask a seemingly simple question: “What was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?” Was it Russia in a new wrapper? Or was it something new and unheralded in world history? Was... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
McKenzie Wark, “Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene” (Verso, 2015)
McKenzie Wark’s new book begins and ends with a playful call: “Workings of the world untie! You have a win to world!” Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene (Verso, 2015) creates a conversation between work from two very different Soviet and American contexts. After guiding readers through the work and... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Asif A. Siddiqi, “The Red Rockets’ Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination, 1857-1957” (Cambridge UP, 2013)
In The Red Rockets’ Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination, 1857-1957 (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Asif Siddiqi approaches the history of the Soviet space program as a combination of engineering and imagination, both necessary to achieve the launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957. Beginning in the late 19th century,... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Mark R. Andryczyk, “The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian History” (U. of Toronto Press, 2012)
In The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian Fiction (University of Toronto Press, 2012), Mark R. Andryczyk takes his readers to an intriguing territory of dense narratives, arising from a complex network of literary, political, and philosophical connections that were accompanying the history of the countries constituting the USSR. Mark... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Neil Kent, “Crimea: A History” (Hurst/Oxford UP, 2016)
In 2014 Crimea shaped the headlines much as it did some 160 years ago, when the Crimean War pitted Britain, France and Turkey against Russia. Yet few books have been published on the history of the peninsula. For many readers, Crimea seems as remote today as it was when colonized... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Yanni Kotsonis, “States of Obligation: Taxes and Citizenship in the Russian Empire and Early Soviet Republic” (U. of Toronto Press, 2014)
I have to admit that I was quite intimidated by a book on taxation in imperial Russia. But States of Obligation: Taxes and Citizenship in the Russian Empire and Early Soviet Republics (U. of Toronto Press, 2014) is an award winning book so I decided to give it a try.... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Benjamin Peters, “How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet” (MIT Press, 2016)
Something we might think of as the Soviet internet once existed, according to Benjamin Peters‘ new book, and its failure was neither natural nor inevitable. How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet (MIT Press, 2016) traces the history of early efforts to network the... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
David Brophy, “Uyghur Nation: Reform and Revolution on the Russia-China Frontier” (Harvard UP, 2016)
Bringing together secondary and primary sources in a wide range of languages, David Brophy’s new book is a masterful study of the modern history of the Uyghurs, the Turkic-speaking Muslims of Xinjiang. Uyghur Nation: Reform and Revolution on the Russia-China Frontier (Harvard University Press, 2016) joins what have usually been... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Per Anders Rudling, “The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism, 1906-1931” (U of Pittsburgh Press, 2015)
I don’t often have a chance to read books that focus solely on Belarus, which is exactly why I was intrigued by The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism, 1906-1931 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015). Per Anders Rudling‘s study seeks to answer a basic question Why is there today an... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Valerie Sperling, “Sex, Politics and Putin: Political Legitimacy in Russia” (Oxford UP, 2015)
The prevalence of media that reinforces a traditional masculine image of Vladimir Putin, Russia’s leader, is at the core of Valerie Sperling‘s analysis of gender norms and sexualization as a means of political legitimacy. Not surprisingly, the cover of her book Sex, Politics, and Putin: Political Legitimacy in Russia (Oxford... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Adeeb Khalid, “Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR” (Cornell UP, 2015)
In what promises to become a classic, Adeeb Khalid’s (Professor of History, Carleton College), Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR (Cornell University Press, 2015) examines the interaction of nationalism and religious reform in 20th-century Muslim Central Asia. How does the desire and anticipation of revolution generate... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Timothy Nunan, “Humanitarian Invasion: Global Development in Cold War Afghanistan” (Cambridge UP, 2016)
The plight of Afghanistan remains as relevant a question as ever in 2016. Just what did the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the international occupation of this country accomplish? Will an Afghan government ever exercise effective control over its territory and build a modern, prosperous integrated nation-state? How will Afghanistan... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Eileen M. Kane, “Russian Hajj: Empire and the Pilgrimage to Mecca” (Cornell University Press, 2015)
In her gripping new book Russian Hajj: Empire and the Pilgrimage to Mecca (Cornell University Press, 2015), Eileen M. Kane, Associate Professor of History at Connecticut College, presents a compelling narrative of the Russian empire’s patronage of the Hajj in the late nineteenth century. Through a careful study of a variety... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Guntis Smidchens, “The Power of Song: Nonviolent National Culture in the Baltic Singing Revolution” (University of Washington Press, 2014)
In the late 1980s, the Baltic Soviet Social Republics seemed to explode into song as Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian national movements challenged Soviet rule. The leaders of each of these movements espoused nonviolent principles, but the capacity for violence was always there – especially as Soviet authorities engaged in violent... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
David E. Hoffman’s “The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal” (Doubleday, 2015)
David E. Hoffman‘s The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal (Doubleday, 2015) was first brought to my attention in a superb interview conducted with the author at The International Spy Museum. The story immediately captivated my attention and I realized this would be a... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
David Frick, “Kith, Kin and Neighbors: Communities and Confessions in 17th-Century Wilno” (Cornell UP, 2013)
In 1636, King Wladyslaw IV’s quartermaster surveyed the houses of Wilno in advance of the king’s visit to the city. In Kith, Kin and Neighbors: Communities and Confessions in Seventeenth-Century Wilno (Cornell University Press, 2013), David Frick begins with this house-by-house account to reveal the complex relationships among the city’s... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Alexander Etkind, “Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied” (Stanford UP, 2013)
Theoretical and historical accounts of postcatastrophic societies often discuss melancholia and trauma at length but leave processes of mourning underexplored. In Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied (Stanford UP, 2013), Alexander Etkind shows why mourning is more conducive to cultural analysis. Where trauma is... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
David R. Stone, “The Russian Army in the Great War: The Eastern Front, 1914-1917” (UP of Kansas, 2015)
Readers wanting to learn more about the Great War on the Eastern Front can do no better than David R. Stone‘s new work, The Russian Army in the Great War: The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 (University Press of Kansas, 2015). The last work to treat this comprehensively was Norman Stone’s (no... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
John-Paul Himka and Joanna Beata Michlic, “Bringing the Dark Past to Light” (U of Nebraska Press, 2013)
I’ll be leaving soon to take students on a European travel course. During the three weeks we’ll be gone, in addition to cathedrals, museums and castles, they’ll visit Auschwitz, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and a variety of other Holocaust related sights. And I’ll ask them to... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Bilyana Lily, “Russian Foreign Policy toward Missile Defense” (Lexington Books, 2014)
The current conflict in Ukraine has reopened old wounds and brought the complexity of Russia’s relationship with the United States and Europe to the forefront. One of the most important factors in relations between the Kremlin and the West has been the issue of Ballistic Missile Defense, particularly as a... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Thane Gustafson, “Wheel of Fortune: The Battle for Oil and Power in Russia” (Harvard UP, 2014)
Russia’s economy hinges on its ability to produce and sell natural resources. Especially oil. It comes as no surprise that the collapse of Soviet Union ushered in a mad scramble for control over oil resources. The oligarchs who sat atop the treasure trove of oil production following post-Soviet privatization, clashed... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Jenny Kaminer, “Women with a Thirst for Destruction: The Bad Mother in Russian Culture” (Northwestern UP, 2014)
Jenny Kaminer‘s new book, Women with a Thirst for Destruction: The Bad Mother in Russian Culture (Northwestern University Press, 2014) analyzes Russian myths of motherhood over time and in particular, the evolving myths of the figure of the “bad mother.” Her study examines how political, religious, economic, social, and cultural... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Alexander Cooley, “Great Game, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest in Central Asia” (Oxford UP, 2014)
Central Asia is one of the least studied and understood regions of the Eurasian landmass, conjuring up images of 19th century Great Power politics, endless steppe, and impenetrable regimes. Alexander Cooley, a professor of Political Science at Barnard College in New York, has studied the five post-Soviet states of Kyrgyzstan,... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Angela Stent, “The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twentieth-First Century” (Princeton University Press, 2014)
In 2005, the Comedy Central Network aired an episode of “South Park” in which one of the characters asked if any “Third World” countries other than Russia had the ability to fly a whale to the moon. During a press conference that took place two years later, Russian President Vladimir... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Oliver Ready (trans.), Vladimir Sharov, “Before and During” (Dedalus Books, 2014)
Historical fiction, by definition, supplements the verifiable documentary record with elements of the imagination. Otherwise, it is not fiction but history. These elements often include invented characters, made-up dialogue, the filling in of vague or unknowable events and personalities. Through the more or less careful manipulation of historical truth, the... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Willard Sunderland, “The Baron’s Cloak: A History of the Russian Empire in War and Revolution” (Cornell UP, 2014)
The Russian Empire once extended from the Baltic Sea to the Sea of Japan and contained a myriad of different ethnicities and nationalities. Dr. Willard Sunderland‘s The Baron’s Cloak: A History of the Russian Empire in War and Revolution (Cornell University Press, 2014) is an engaging new take on the... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Katherine Pickering Antonova, “An Ordinary Marriage: The World of a Gentry Family in Provincial Russia” (Oxford UP, 2012)
Katherine Pickering Antonova‘s An Ordinary Marriage: The World of a Gentry Family in Provincial Russia (Oxford University Press, 2012) investigates the Chikhachevs, members of the middling nobility in the pre-emancipation era. The book’s principal characters are Andrei, a graphomaniacal paterfamilias who (conveniently for historians) enlists his entire family in diary... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Ivo Mijnssen, “The Quest for an Ideal Youth in Putin’s Russia I” (Ibidem Press, 2014)
The Soviet Union once boasted of its unparalleled political participation among youth. Belonging to outwardly political organizations, these Octobrists, Pioneers, and Komsomoltsy often represented the spirit of Soviet youth. They were engaged, well-informed, and enthusiastic about their country. In his book, Back To Our Future! History, Modernity, and Patriotism According to... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Edmund Levin, “A Child of Christian Blood: Murder and Conspiracy in Tsarist Russia” (Schocken, 2014)
There is a lot of nasty mythology about Jews, but surely the most heinous and ridiculous is the bizarre notion that “they” (as if Jews were all the same) have long been in the habit of murdering Christian children, draining them of blood, and mixing said blood into Passover matzo.... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Filip Slaveski, “The Soviet Occupation of Germany” (Cambridge UP, 2013)
For over three years, from June 1941 to late 1944, the German Army and related Nazi forces (the SS, occupation troops, administrative organizations) conducted a Vernichtungskrieg–a war of annihilation–against the Soviet Union on Soviet soil. The Germans killed millions upon millions of Red Army soldiers, Communist Party officials, and ordinary... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Sener Akturk, “Regimes of Ethnicity and Nationhood in Germany, Russia, and Turkey (Cambridge UP, 2012)
What processes must take place in order for countries to radically redefine who is a citizen? Why was Russia able to finally remove ethnicity from internal passports after failing to do so during seven decades of Soviet rule? What led German leaders to finally grant guest workers from Southern and... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Anne Gorsuch, “All This is Your World: Soviet Tourism at Home and Abroad After Stalin” (Oxford UP, 2011)
Thirty years after a trip to the GDR, Soviet cardiologist V.I. Metelitsa still remembered mistakenly trying to buy a dress for a ten-year-old daughter in a maternity shop: ‘In our country I couldn’t even imagine that such a specialized shop could exist’.” Well-stocked shops, attractive cafes, and medieval streets were... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Anna Fishzon, “Fandom, Authenticity, and Opera: Mad Acts and Letter Scenes in Fin-de-Siecle Russia” (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2013)
Pretty much everyone understands what is called the “Cult of Celebrity,” particularly as it manifests itself in the arts. It’s a mentality that privileges the actor over the act, the singer over the song, the painter over the painting, and so on. The Cult of Celebrity’s essence is a fanatical... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Olga Gershenson, “The Phantom Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and Jewish Catastrophe” (Rutgers UP, 2013)
Fifty years of Holocaust screenplays and films -largely unknown, killed by censors, and buried in dusty archives – come to life in Olga Gershenson‘s The Phantom Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and Jewish Catastrophe (Rutgers University Press, 2013). As she ventures across three continents to uncover the stories behind these films, we... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Waitman Beorn, “Marching into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus” (Harvard UP, 2013)
The question of Wehrmacht complicity in the Holocaust is an old one. What might be called the “received view” until recently was that while a small number of German army units took part in anti-Jewish atrocities, the great bulk of the army neither knew about nor participated in the Nazi... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Denis Kozlov, “Novyi Mir: Coming to Terms with the Stalinist Past” (Harvard UP, 2013)
In Russia’s collective memory, the Stalin terror is often remembered and referred to by its most grueling year: “1937.” Following Stalin’s death and the shocking revelations about his regime exposed by his successor Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet citizens began to remember and rethink the turbulent first half of the twentieth century... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Peter Savodnik, “The Interloper: Lee Harvey Oswald Inside the Soviet Union” (Basic Books, 2013)
For many people, the most important questions about the Kennedy assassination are “Who killed Kennedy?” and, if Lee Harvey Oswald did, “Was Oswald part of a conspiracy?” This is strange, because we know the answers to both questions: Oswald killed Kennedy and he did so alone. These facts won’t keep... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Steven Usitalo, “The Invention of Mikhail Lomonosov: A Russian National Myth” (Academic Studies Press, 2013)
Mikhail Lomonosov is a well known Russian figure. As poet, geographer, and physicist, Lomonosov enjoyed access to the best resources that 18th century Russia had to offer. As a result, his contributions to Russian arts and sciences were immeasurable. The source and shape of his celebrity, however, is as interesting... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Robert Gellately, “Stalin’s Curse: Battling for Communism in War and Cold War” (Knopf, 2013)
It takes two to tango, right? Indeed it does. But it’s also true that someone has got to ask someone else to dance before any tangoing is done. Beginning in the 1960s, the American intellectual elite argued–and seemed to really believe–that the United States either started the Cold War full... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Kate Brown, “Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters” (Oxford UP, 2013)
Kate Brown‘s Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (Oxford University Press, 2013) is a tale of two atomic cities–one in the US (Richland, Washington) and one in the Soviet Union (Ozersk, Russia)–united by their production of plutonium. Seeking the security they believed could come... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Kees Boterbloem, “Moderniser of Russia: Andrei Vinius, 1641-1716” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)
As you can read in any Russian history textbook, a series of seventeenth-century tsars culminating in Peter the Great attempted to “modernize” Russia. This is not false: the Romanovs did initiate a great wave of “Europeanizing” reforms. But it’s not exactly true either in the sense that they–the tsars themselves–didn’t... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Wendy Z. Goldman, “Inventing the Enemy: Denunciation and Terror in Stalin’s Russia” (Cambridge UP, 2011)
A period of mass repression and terror swept through the Soviet Union between the years of 1936-39. Following the shocking Kirov assassination and show trials of alleged factory saboteurs, paranoia gripped the nation and culminated in the execution and imprisonment of millions of Soviet citizens. The state’s and Stalin’s role... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Donald J. Raleigh, “Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia’s Cold War Generation” (Oxford UP, 2012)
The Cold War was experienced by millions around the world. For many, Soviets were the enemies, and nuclear war the threat. For millions more, however, the Cold War enemies and threats were different. In Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia’s Cold War Generation (Oxford University Press, 2012), historian Donald... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
John Earl Haynes, et al., “Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America” (Yale UP, 2009)
For decades, the American Right and Left argued about the degree to which the KGB infiltrated the U.S. political and scientific establishment. The Right said “A lot”; the Left said “Much less than you think.” Both sides did a lot of finger-pointing and, sadly, slandering. Things got very ugly. At... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Ben Judah, “Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin” (Yale UP, 2013)
Debates about the nature of Putin’s rule abound. Is Putin a hard fisted authoritarian? Is he the master of the power vertical? An arbiter of competing clans? Or something else? In his Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin (Yale University Press, 2013), Ben... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Barbara Engel, “Breaking the Ties that Bound: The Politics of Marital Strife in Late Imperial Russia” (Cornell UP, 2011)
Divorce was virtually impossible in Imperial Russia. The Russian Orthodox Church monopolized matrimony, and it rarely granted divorce except in extraordinary cases of adultery, abandonment, sexual impotence, or exile. Marriage as an unbreakable religious sacrament still held. Yet, by the end of the nineteenth century, Russian perceived a “crisis of... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Vladimir Alexandrov, “The Black Russian” (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2013)
Vladimir Alexandrov‘s new book The Black Russian (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2013) tells the epic and often tragic story of Fredrick Bruce Thomas, an African American born to recently freed slaves, who would go on to make a fortune in Russia as a club owner and entrepreneur. Mr. Thomas was a... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Eric Lohr, “Russian Citizenship: From Empire to Soviet Union” (Harvard UP, 2012)
Russians have a reputation for xenophobia, that is, it’s said they don’t much like foreigners. According to Eric Lohr‘s new book, Russian Citizenship: From Empire to Soviet Union (Harvard University Press, 2012), this reputation is at once deserved and undeserved. It’s true that at various moments in Russian history, foreigners... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies