New Books in Russian and Eurasian Studies

Towards the end of the Cold War, the last great struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union marked the end of détente, and escalated into the most dangerous phase of the conflict since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Aaron Donaghy examines the complex history of America's largest peacetime military buildup, which was in turn challenged by the largest peacetime peace movement. Focusing on the critical period between 1977 and 1985, Donaghy shows how domestic politics shaped dramatic foreign policy reversals by Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. These reversals, the book argues, were influenced by president's willingness to take risks, by their perception of credibility, and by the timing of their decision.  Donaghy explains why the Cold War intensified so quickly and how - contrary to all expectations - US-Soviet relations were repaired. Drawing on recently declassified archival material, The Second Cold War: Carter, Reagan, and the Politics of Foreign Policy (Cambridge UP, 2021) traces how each administration evolved in response to crises and events at home and abroad. This compelling and controversial account challenges the accepted notion of how the end of the Cold War began. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

The invasion of Ukraine in 2022 began a new episode in history and was surrounded by a miscellany of historical claims. The Short History of Russia: Returning to Another Country (Amberley, 2026) is a succinct, up-to-date guide to the histories on offer about and from Russia, one that seeks to make sense of present issues and future prospects, as well as of the past. There is a heavy emphasis on war and international relations, but that is appropriate not only for the past but also for a present in which both are to the fore. Peter the Great (r. 1689-1725), an eager moderniser, was viewed as an un-Russian evil phenomenon in light of his denial of the divine identity of traditional Russian monarchy, his blasphemy, his theft of time from God when he changed the calendar, and his sacrilegious violation of the image of God in man when he forced men to cut off their beards. Vladimir Putin cuts off no beards, he is no moderniser; the fall of the Berlin Wall left him with an abiding mistrust of democracy and ‘People's Power'. At Davos in 2000, American journalist Trudy Rubin asked a panel of top Russian officials: ‘Who is Mr Putin?' None of them could answer, except to say: ‘He is the President of Russia.' How did this KGB foreign intelligence officer become (temporarily) Trump's favourite running dog of capitalism? To answer the question, we have to understand what Russia was. There is a continuity that will give us a clue about what it is and will become. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Industrial workers in Ukraine have a complex political lifeworld because their political action aimed at bringing radical social change coexists with a demobilizing stance that condemns all political participation as corrupt. This contradictory attitude to politics defines the character of populist mass mobilizations that shook Ukraine in 2004 and 2014, as well as the electoral overhaul of 2019 and the popular response to the Russian invasion in 2022. Based on three years of fieldwork in the city of Kryvyi Rih, the book focuses on the moral economy that constitutes the working-class and structures its relations with other social groups. The Making and Unmaking of the Ukrainian Working Class is written by Denys Gorbach, published in 2024 by Berghan Books. Denys Gorbach is a teaching and research adjunct at the University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Post-Soviet Graffiti: Free Speech in Authoritarian States (University of Toronto Press, 2025) is an empirically grounded ethnographic study of how graffiti and street art can be used as a political tool to circumvent censorship, express grievances, and control public discourse, particularly in authoritarian states. For more than a decade, Dr. Alexis M. Lerner combed the alleyways, underpasses, and public squares of cities once under communist rule, from Berlin in the west to Vladivostok in the east, recording thousands of cases of critical and satirical political street art and cataloging these artworks linguistically and thematically across space and time. Complemented by first-hand interviews with leading artists, activists, and politicians from across the region, Post-Soviet Graffiti provides theoretical reflection on public space as a site for political action, a semiotic reading of signs and symbols, and street art as a form of text. The book answers the question of how we conceptualize avenues of dissent under authoritarian rule by showing how contemporary graffiti functions not only as a popular public aesthetic, but also as a mouthpiece of political sentiment, especially within the post-Soviet region and post-communist Europe. A purposefully anonymous and accessible artform, graffiti is an effective tool for circumventing censorship and expressing political views. This is especially true for marginalized populations and for those living in otherwise closed and censored states. Post-Soviet Graffiti reveals that graffiti does not exist in a vacuum; rather, it can be read as a narrative about a place, the people who live there, and the things that matter to them. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

During the First World War, Russia relied on the mass mobilization of its peasant population. In the summer of 1914, approximately four million peasants answered the state's call to arms, while the millions who remained at home donated labour and other resources to the cause. Within three short years these same peasants were refusing to pay taxes or turn over their grain, dooming the autocracy to collapse.The Peasants' War: Russia's Home Front in the First World War and the End of the Autocracy (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025) argues that the experience of total war convinced peasants that the measure of a state's legitimacy was its ability to safeguard the wellbeing of its subjects. When the autocracy failed to meet this standard, peasants rejected its authority by challenging four areas of wartime policy: the prohibition of vodka, the conscription of peasant families' only workers, the redistribution of land belonging to enemy subjects, and the provisioning of the home front. The war awakened peasants to the reciprocal nature of the relationship between a state and its people. Colleen Moore investigates how peasants leveraged their wartime service to negotiate with the state for improved rights and privileges and how they used this power to shape the contours and legitimize the authority of the world's first socialist state.The Peasants' War charts the timing and success of the 1917 Russian Revolution by showing how total war flipped the script on peasant-state relations, transforming the state from something that peasants existed to serve into something that existed to serve peasants. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

When it comes to the political, acts of redaction, erasure, and blacking out sit in awkward tension with the myth of transparent governance, borderless access, and frictionless communication. But should there be more than this brute juxtaposition of truth and secrecy? Redacted: Writing in the Negative Space of the State (punctum books, 2024) brings together essays, poems, artwork, and memes—a bricolage of media that conveys the experience of living in state-inflected worlds in flux. Critically and poetically engaging with redaction in politically charged contexts (from the United States and Denmark to Russia, China, and North Korea), the volume closely examines and turns loose this disquieting mark of state power, aiming to trouble the liberal imaginaries that configure the political as a left-right spectrum, as populism and nationalism versus global and transnational cosmopolitanism, as east versus west, authoritarianism versus democracy, good versus evil, or the state versus the people—age-old coordinates that no longer make sense. Because we know from the upheavals of the past decade that these relations are being reconfigured in novel, recursive, and unrecognizable ways, the consequences of which are perplexing and ever evolving. This book takes up redaction as a vital form in this new political reality. Contributors both critically engage with statist redaction practices and also explore its alluring and ambivalent forms, as experimental practices that open up new dialogic possibilities in navigating and conveying the stakes of political encounters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

A cutting-edge investigation of how Russia makes war. Russian strategy in the twenty-first century has been described in terms of 'hybrid' warfare, an approach characterised by measures short of war, such as cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns. But as the invasion of Ukraine has brutally demonstrated, conventional armed violence remains a key element of Russian power. In Blitzkrieg and the Russian Art of War (Manchester UP, 2025), Andrew Monaghan offers a high-level view of Russian thinking about warfare. Drawing on extensive Russian sources, he addresses important questions that have been overlooked by most Western commentators: what is the military leadership's distinctive idea of twenty-first-century blitzkrieg? How does it understand holistic territorial defence? How does it manage the shifting balance between offence and defence? Introducing key concepts from Russian military thinking, Blitzkrieg and the Russian art of war is a crucial resource for understanding Russia's resurgent role on the global stage and the devastating threat the country poses to the international order. Andrew Monaghan is Academic Visitor at St Antony's College, Oxford and a Senior Research Fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme at The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House. Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar with research areas spanning Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, Military History, War Studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, and Russian and East European history. He served as the editor of the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations (ISCSC) newsletter from 2016 to 2018 and is currently the Book Review Editor for Comparative Civilizations Review. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Host Licia Cianetti talks to two Russian experts, Vladislav Gorin and Alexandra Prokopenko, about the state of Russian domestic politics today. As Russia's war of invasion in Ukraine rages on and Russians live under an ever more repressive authoritarian regime, we discuss how we got here: what made the invasion of Ukraine possible, what is keeping Putin in power, how both the regime's relationship with both the elites and the people has evolved over Putin's 26 years in power, and what a future Russia without Putin might look like. A transcript of the conversation is available here. Guests: Vladislav Gorin is a journalist at the Russian independent media company Meduza, which is based in Riga (Latvia) and has been designated as an “undesirable organisation” by the Russian government. Vladislav hosts a great podcast (in Russian) called Что случилось (What happened). You can find the English language reporting from Meduza here. As it is illegal and unsafe for people in Russia to contribute to Meduza and even share links from independent media sources, Meduza currently survives on donations from people outside of Russia. You can find their donations campaign here. Alexandra Prokopenko is a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, and before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine she has worked as a journalist reporting from the Kremlin, as an adviser to the Central Bank of Russia, and at the Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow. Her book From Sovereigns to Servants. How the War Against Ukraine Reshaped Russia's Elite will be out in English in summer 2026 (it is available to preorder) and it was already published in Russian (here). Presenter: Licia Cianetti is Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham and Founding Deputy Director of CEDAR. The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

In A Nasty Little War: The Western Fight to Reverse the Russian Revolution (Basic Books, 2024), award-winning reporter Anna Reid tells the extraordinary story of how the West tried to reverse the Russian Revolution. In the closing months of the First World War, Britain, America, France and Japan sent arms and 180,000 soldiers to Russia, with the aim of tipping the balance in her post-revolutionary Civil War. From Central Asia to the Arctic and from Poland to the Pacific, they joined anti-Bolshevik forces in trying to overthrow the new men in the Kremlin, in an astonishingly ambitious military adventure known as the Intervention. Fresh, in the case of the British, from the trenches, they found themselves in a mobile, multi-sided conflict as different as possible from the grim stasis of the Western Front. Criss-crossing the shattered Russian empire in trains, sleds and paddlesteamers, they bivouacked in snowbound cabins and Kirghiz yurts, torpedoed Red battleships from speedboats, improvised new currencies and the world's first air-dropped chemical weapons, got caught up in mass retreats and a typhus epidemic, organised several coups and at least one assassination. Taking tea with warlords and princesses, they also turned a blind eye to their Russian allies' numerous atrocities. Two years later they left again, filing glumly back onto their troopships as port after port fell to the Red Army. Later, American veterans compared the humiliation to Vietnam, and the politicians and generals responsible preferred to trivialise or forget. Drawing on previously unused diaries, letters and memoirs, A Nasty Little War brings an episode with echoes down the century since vividly to life. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Most people on the contemporary left see Stalin as an unfortunate stain on the history of the global left, a part of the historical process that we'd be better avoiding in our attempts to build towards socialism. He does still have some scattered defenders though, putting out books and articles trying to turn his legacy into something commendable that we ought to try and build upon today. Returning today is Douglas Greene, who is not one of his defenders, but instead has written a book exploring the defenses of Stalin with his new book In Stalin's Shadow: Leon Trotsky and the Legacy of the Moscow Trials (Resistance Books, 2025). Much of the text is concerned with fact-checking, going through the middle decades of the twentieth century to give a critical accounting of Stalin, but one that nonetheless holds onto the revolutionary Marxist tradition. Beyond this fact-checking mission though, the book also takes this time as an opportunity to reflect on some of the deeper structures of thought that might lead one to defend Stalin. Rather than a simple mistake that can be easily corrected with a couple new facts, Greene sees neo-Stalinism as a sort of leftist conspiracy theory, one that mirrors much of the paranoia of Stalin's own time. The book then is an opportunity to reflect on what sort of reasoning takes us into these sorts of dead-ends, and what sorts of reasoning might be needed to help us start building towards a truly revolutionary future. Much of the content of this book builds on Greene's previously published book The Dialectics of Saturn, which we discussed a couple years ago. Douglas Greene is an independent historian. His many previous books have included A Failure of Vision: Michael Harrington and the Limits of Democratic Socialism, Stalinism and the Dialectics of Saturn: Anticommunism, Marxism, and the Fate of the Soviet Union and The New Reformism and the Revival of Karl Kautsky: The Renegade's Revenge, all of which have been discussed previously on this show. He is a frequent contributor to Left Voice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

An eye-opening account of how Russia's leaders have used sports as a political tool to solidify their global power "Victories in sport do more to cement the nation than a hundred political slogans." This was the pep talk Russian athletes heard in 2000 from their new president, Vladimir Putin. And so, for more than two decades, Putin has used sports like his Soviet predecessors to stoke nationalism at home, boost prestige abroad, and cement his position as leader. The Moscow Playbook: How Russia Used, Abused, and Transformed Sports in the Hunt for Gold is the first book to fully examine the intersection of Russian sports and geopolitical power, from the dominant Soviet teams of past Olympics to recent doping scandals and international sanctions. With new research from Olympic archives, records of the Soviet bloc and current Russian media, historian Bruce Berglund shows how Moscow's leaders have defied the rules of the game for decades as the world's governing bodies turned a blind eye. Featuring oligarchs, sportocrats, and famous athletes from Olga Korbut to Alex Ovechkin, this is a timely investigation into the gears of power, nationalism, and money that drive the Russian sports machine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

The city of St. Petersburg held great significance to the Russian Empire when Peter the Great first built the city in 1703. It was intended to be Russia's "window to the West" and usher in Russia's place as a modern European power. It also replaced Moscow as the capital of the growing empire that stretched across two continents. It was also the site of the Russian Revolution, when the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin seized power in 1917. Subsequently the city was renamed Leningrad in honor of the founder of the Soviet Union.  During World War II (1939-1945), the city would play a critical role as an unconquerable fortress city that withstood years of siege with the explicit intention of starving its inhabitants into complete submission to Nazi Germany's war aims. The epic story of this saga is the subject of Prit Buttar's To Besiege a City: Leningrad 1941-42 (Osprey Publishing, 2023). Relying upon extensive research into both Soviet and German sources, Prit Buttar chronicles the first few years of the siege in great detail. Prit Buttar is the author of ten critically acclaimed books. His most recent publication was Meat Grinder: The Battles for the Rzhev Salient, 1942–43 (Osprey, 2022). Prit originally studied medicine at Oxford and London before joining the British Army as a doctor. He latterly worked as a General Practitioner for several years. He now writes exclusively from his home in rural Scotland where he can also indulge his hobbies for wildlife and astro photography. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

KGB Literati: Spy Fiction and State Security in the Soviet Union (University of Toronto Press, 2025) offers a first-ever glimpse into the mysterious and long-ignored world and work of Soviet spies- and counterspies-turned-writers. Once out of active service, many former spies have turned to writing spy fiction. They drop the dagger and pick up the pen. Some are very successful, like James Bond's creator Ian Fleming or the novelists John Le Carré and Graham Greene. Their Soviet counterparts have rarely been afforded the same attention or examination. Drawing on materials from KGB archives and Soviet publications long out of print, KGB Literati offers the first-ever account of spy fiction written, frequently with institutional support, by Soviet intelligence and counterintelligence officers. Spy fiction can give insights into the operational workings of clandestine agencies and the personal dimensions of secret service work. By analysing the literary output of KGB spies and counterspies, the book shows that for the KGB, this type of intervention into Soviet popular culture was a crucial component of their overall counterintelligence strategy. These texts played an instrumental role in the Soviet state's efforts to neutralize and counter Western cultural influences on the Soviet population. Dr. Filip Kovacevic's research is of great relevance today, given that a large segment of the Russian ruling elite is still composed of former KGB officers, including Russian president Vladimir Putin. KGB Literati illuminates the deep-seated KGB myths, values, aspirations, and fears that continue to have a profound impact on the foreign and domestic policies of the Russian Federation. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) sat down with Lucy Jeffery and Anna Váradi to talk about their edited volume, Replaying Communism: Trauma and Nostalgia in European Cultural Production. The volume explores the lasting impact of the communist era across Central and Eastern Europe, with chapters thematically threaded through by concepts including curation, immersion, interaction, humor, and authenticity. In the podcast we talked about what it means to “replay” communism, about the trauma/nostalgia paradigm in relation to cultural production, and about inter-generational experiences of media depicting the communist period. You can purchase a copy here. You can find out more about the Replaying Communism project here. If you would like to cooperate with Anna and Lucy, or you have a similar project, please contact them via the replayingcommunism@gmail.com email address. The CEU Press Podcast delves into various aspects of the publishing process: from crafting a book proposal, finding a publisher, responding to peer review feedback on the manuscript, to the subsequent distribution, promotion and marketing of academic books. We also talk to series editors and authors, who will share their experiences of getting published and discuss their series or books. Interested in CEU Press's publications? Click here to find out more: https://ceupress.com/ Stay tuned for future episodes and subscribe to our podcast to be the first to be notified. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Renovation, an urban renewal plan in Moscow that was announced in the spring of 2017, proposed to demolish thousands of socialist-era apartment buildings. In a country where it is rare under an authoritarian government, residents supported or opposed the redevelopment by mobilizing and organizing into local alliances. They were often shocked by their neighbors who were excited about the new housing or those suspicious of being displaced. Private Life, Public Action: How Housing Politics Mobilized Citizens in Moscow (Temple UP, 2025) by Dr. Anna Zhelnina traces how residents impacted by the relocation plan became activists despite having little to no experience organizing or even forming political affiliations and opinions. Dr. Zhelnina details the ways in which neighbors engaged in collective action, as well as the individual and structural changes these interactions caused. Dr. Zhelnina develops the concept of “housing strategies” to explain how residents' debates with their neighbors about housing were shaped by their private life strategies. She applies her findings about housing in Moscow to ongoing questions about political mobilization, demonstrating how public engagement is shaped by historical and social contexts. Examining the intersection of housing, politics, and citizenship in contemporary Russia, Private Life, Public Action offers a new way to look at urban change. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

The Babushka Phenomenon: Older Women and the Political Sociology of Ageing in Russia (UCL Press, 2025) by Dr. Anna Shadrina examines the social production of ageing in post-Soviet Russia, highlighting the role of grandmothers as primary caregivers due to men's traditional estrangement from family life. This expectation places grandmothers, or babushkas, in a position where they prioritise childcare and housework over their careers, making them unpaid family carers reliant on the state and their children. Dr. Shadrina situates older Russian women's experiences within the post-Soviet redefinition of the nation, analysing their portrayal in popular media and biographical narratives of women aged 60 and over in Russia and the UK. It addresses class and racial disparities, noting how some women outsource family duties to less qualified women, and emphasises age as a significant but overlooked axis of social inequality. From a feminist perspective, the book explores citizenship as both a status and a practice of inclusion and exclusion. By focusing on older women's rights to participate in private and public spheres, it discusses the new social inequalities that emerged after the USSR's collapse. Despite prioritising others' interests, older Russian women actively engage in economic citizenship, though their struggles for recognition are often excluded from formal economy and politics. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

In the West, World War II is commonly understood as the Allies' struggle against Nazism. Often elided, if not simply forgotten, is the Soviet Union's crucial role in that fight. With this book, acclaimed historian Jochen Hellbeck rectifies this omission by relocating the ideological core of the conflict. It was not the Western powers but Communist Russia that Nazi Germany viewed as an existential threat—in fact, “World Enemy No. 1.” Jewish revolutionaries, the Nazis believed, had seized power in 1917 and were preparing the Soviet state to destroy Germany and the world. And so, on June 22, 1941, a German army of three million attacked the Soviet Union to exterminate “Judeo-Bolshevism,” Hitler's cardinal obsession. While Europe's Jews were expelled, exiled, and persecuted by the Nazis, Soviet Jews were immediately slated for elimination. The Soviet lands thus became ground zero for systematic extermination, which was only later extended to all Jews, igniting the Holocaust.Hellbeck plumbs newly declassified archives and previously undiscovered sources—testimonies, diaries, and dispatches from soldiers and civilians, Soviet and German—to offer a unique history that takes account of both sides. He reconstructs the years leading up to the war when “Europe against Bolshevism” was the Nazis' most fervid rallying cry, and documents their annihilatory ambitions on the battlegrounds in the East. Widely disseminated accounts of German atrocities mobilized millions of Soviet citizens to join a people's war against the hated invaders. Hellbeck tracks the desire for revenge that drove the Red Army on its path of reconquest, an advance that further inflamed the belief in a murderous “Bolshevik Jew,” stirring the Germans to fight to the bitter end. Recounted here in vivid detail are the events at Babi Yar, the Battle of Stalingrad, the liberation of the concentration camps, and the arrival of the Red Army in the Nazi capital. Finally, Hellbeck reckons with the West's persistent disregard of the Soviet Union's incalculable contribution to winning the war—and its sacrifice of twenty-six million citizens—as anti-communism and the Cold War turned erstwhile allies into mortal enemies.Hellbeck's eye-opening work is an astonishing new reading of both the Second World War and how its history has been told. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Over the span of a single decade, VHS technology changed the relationship between privacy and entertainment, pried open the closed societies behind the Iron Curtain, and then sank back into oblivion. Its meteoric rise and fall encapsulated the dynamics of the '80s and foreshadowed the seismic cultural shifts to come after the Cold War.In the West, its advent deepened the trends of the age: individualism, consumerism, the fragmentation of society, and the consolidation of corporate power in the entertainment industry and its victory over the regulatory powers of the state. In the East, it encouraged new forms of socialization and economic exchanges, while announcing the gradual crumbling of government control over the imagination of the people.By the mid-1990s, the VHS format was displaced by the DVD. The DVD would eventually give way to streaming. As explored in Videotape (Bloomsbury, 2025), by Dr. Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy in the Object Lessons series, the cultural legacy of the videotape continues to inform our relationship to technology, privacy, and to entertainment. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

An Imaginary Cinema: Sergei Eisenstein and the Unrealized Film (Cornell UP, 2024) explores the unfinished cinematic projects developed and abandoned by Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein between 1927 and 1937. Centred on seven major film concepts, the book examines what it means for a work of art—particularly a film—to remain unfinished or unrealised, and how these projects fit within Eisenstein's broader theoretical and practical framework. Offering unique insight into the history of film production in Stalinist Russia, An Imaginary Cinema contrasts Eisenstein's experiences with both the Soviet film industry and Hollywood, and considers the technological transitions that shaped early cinema. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

1991 ushered in a new epoch of hope as Russia marched toward democracy and prosperity on the ruins of the Soviet Union. In 2025 those hopes for a thriving, democratic Russia have not panned out. Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov lived it as journalists in Russia from the start of Putin's reign. Specialists in documenting Russia's secret services, they've reported many, many important stories over the past decades. Our Dear Friends in Moscow: The Inside Story of a Broken Generation (PublicAffairs, 2025) tells an intimate story of a group of friends in journalism whose view diverged against the backdrop of Putin's revanchist, authoritarian rule. Soldatov and Borogan narrate the personal, perplexing, and painful story of the friends and colleagues who assimilated Kremlin-aligned views as the authors themselves moved from opposition journalists to exiles under threat from the Putin's regime. This conversation scratches the surface of the book's riveting and important attempt to make sense of polarization and allegiances with weighty consequences. Andrei Soldatov is a Russian investigative journalist in exile, co-founder and editor of Agentura ru, a watchdog of the Russian secret services' activities. He has been covering security services and terrorism issues since 1999. Irina Borogan is a Russian investigative journalist in exile. Borogan reported on terrorist attacks in Russia, including hostage takings in Moscow and Beslan. In 1999 Borogan covered the NATO bombing in Yugoslavia, in 2006 she covered the Lebanon War and tensions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. She chronicled the Kremlin's campaign to gain control of civil society and strengthen the government's police services under the pretext of fighting extremism. Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov are currently fellows at King's College London and the Center for Europan Policy Analysis (CEPA). They are co-authors of four books: The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia's Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB (2010); The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries (2015); The Compatriots: The Brutal and Chaotic History of Russia's Exiles, Émigrés, and Agents Abroad (2019);and Our Dear Friends in Moscow: The Inside Story of a Broken Generation (2025). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

On the 200th anniversary of the Decembrist Revolt, Susanna Rabow-Edling published The First Russian Revolution: The Decembrist Revolt Of 1825 (Reaktion Books, 2025), a new book about the first Russian Revolution. Though the 1825 coup attempt failed in its aspiration to change how Russia was governed, that failure has nevertheless cast a long shadow across Russian history since. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

For three years following the Russian Revolution, the small South Caucasian country of Georgia was a democracy, but Stalin later ordered the Red Army to invade and to bring the country back under Russian rule. Communist attacks on political opponents, trade unions, cooperatives, and even the church sparked resistance, and an armed uprising broke out across the nation in 1924. It was swiftly crushed, with massacres of thousands, including hostages. Social Democratic and Labor parties across Europe reacted with shock and indignation. Soviet opponents began to describe communism as “red fascism” and their own movement as “democratic socialism.” What followed—including Socialist support for the creation of NATO—resulted from the Georgian uprising and its aftermath. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine a century later, the long-forgotten Georgian experience examined in The August Uprising, 1924: The Georgian Anti-Soviet Revolt and the Birth of Democratic Socialism (McFarland, 2025) seems more relevant than ever. The website for this book is here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

In Western Europe, we typically associate Vikings with the storm-tossed waters of the North Sea and the North Atlantic, the deep Scandinavian fjords and the attacks on the monasteries and settlements of north-western Europe. This popular image rarely includes the river systems of Russia and Ukraine, the wide sweep of the Eurasian steppe, the far shores of the Caspian Sea, the incense and rituals of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the high walls and towers of the city of Constantinople. Yet for many Viking raiders, traders and settlers, it was the road to the East that beckoned. These Viking adventurers founded the Norse–Slavic dynasties of the Rus, which are entangled in the bitterly contested origin myths of Russia and Ukraine. The Rus were the first community in the region to convert to Christianity – in its Eastern Orthodox form – and so they are at the heart of the concept of ‘Holy Russia'. Russian rulers have frequently referenced these Norse origins when trying to enhance their power and secure control over the Ukrainian lands, most recently demonstrated by Vladimir Putin as his justification for seizing Crimea and invading Ukraine. In Vikings in the East: From Vladimir the Great to Vladimir Putin – The Origins of a Contested Legacy in Russia and Ukraine (BiteBack Publishing, 2025), historian Martyn Whittock explores the important but often misunderstood and manipulated role played by the Vikings in the origins of Russian power, the deadly consequences of which we are still living with today. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

In Visible Presence: Soviet Afterlives in Family Photos (MIT Press, 2023) is an absorbing exploration of Soviet-era family photographs that demonstrates the singular power of the photographic image to command attention, resist closure, and complicate the meaning of the past. A faded image of a family gathered at a festively served dinner table, raising their glasses in unison. A group of small children, sitting in orderly rows, with stuffed toys at their feet and a portrait of Lenin looming over their heads. A pensive older woman against a snowy landscape, her gaze directed lovingly at a tombstone. These are a few of the evocative images in In Visible Presence by Dr. Oksana Sarkisova and Dr. Olga Shevchenko, an exquisitely researched book that brings together photographs from Soviet-era family photo archives and investigates their afterlives in Russia.In Visible Presence explores the photographic images' singular power to capture a fleeting moment by approaching them as points of contestation and possibility. Drawing on over a decade of fieldwork and interviews, as well as internet ethnography, media analysis, and case studies, In Visible Presence offers a rich account of the role of family photography in creating communities of affect, enabling nostalgic longings, and processing memories of suffering, violence, and hardship. Together these photos evoke youthful aspirations, dashed hopes, and moral compromises, as well as the long legacy of silence that was passed down from grandparents to parents to children.With more than 250 black and white photos, In Visible Presence is an astonishing journey into domestic photography, family memory, and the ongoing debate over the meaning of the Soviet past that is as timely and powerful today as it has ever been. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

As the First World War drew to a close and regimes began to collapse across Europe, British officials plotted a daring campaign to send an unlikely band of maverick soldiers, diplomats and spies to the chaotic region around the Caspian Sea. Their mission: to block the advance of the Turks, to hold back the rising Bolsheviks and prevent a Turkish-inspired jihad overwhelming India, and to secure the vital supply of oil from Baku.It was an almost impossible task, but Mavericks: Empire, Oil, Revolution and the Forgotten Battle of World War One (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Nick Higham tells the gripping stories of the remarkable and enterprising characters at the centre of it all, who would be tested to the limit. There was Lionel Dunsterville, the inspiration for Kipling's Stalky and commander of the expedition; Ranald MacDonell, a Scottish aristocrat and diplomat who smuggled millions of roubles for the war effort; Edward Noel, a seemingly indestructible soldier who was held hostage for sixty-five days in horrific conditions; Toby Rawlinson, the younger brother of one of Britain's most senior generals and a brilliant inventor; and Reginald Teague-Jones, a spy who printed his own currency and would eventually emerge as an author at the age of ninety-nine.Drawing on personal diaries, memoirs and once-secret government archives, Mavericks brings to life a cast of eccentric heroes who survived against all odds to tell their extraordinary tales. This is a propulsive story of boldness and intrigue, set in a forgotten corner of the Great War where the rules were made to be broken. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Seeds of Exchange: Soviets, Americans, and Cooperation in Agriculture, 1921–1935 (Northern Illinois UP, 2025) examines the US and Soviet exchange of agricultural knowledge and technology during the interwar period. Maria Fedorova challenges the perception of the Soviet Union as a passive recipient of American technology and expertise. She reveals the circular nature of this exchange through official government bureaus, amid anxious farmers in crowded auditoriums, in cramped cars across North Dakota and Montana, and by train over the once fertile steppes of the Volga. Amid the post–World War I food insecurity, Soviet and American agricultural experts relied on transnational networks, bridging ideological differences. As Soviets traveled across the US agricultural regions and Americans plowed steppes in the southern Urals and the lower Volga, both groups believed that innovative solutions could be found beyond their own national borders. Soviets were avidly interested in American technology and American agricultural experts perceived the Soviet Union to be an ideal setting for experimenting with and refining modern farm systems and organizational practices. As Seeds of Exchange shows, agricultural modernization was not the exclusive domain of Western countries. Guest: Maria Fedorova (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Russian Studies at Macalester College. She received her PhD in history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on the history of agriculture, food insecurity, US-Russia/Soviet relations, and transnational history. Host: Jenna Pittman (she/her), a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990. Scholars@Duke: https://scholars.duke.edu/pers... Linktree: https://linktr.ee/jennapittman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

In this episode of International Horizons, Eli Karetny speaks with Marlene Laruelle, Research Professor at George Washington University and director of the Illiberalism Studies Program, about the rise of illiberalism in Russia and beyond. They explore how illiberal movements define themselves against liberalism, Russia's evolution since the 1990s, and how Putin has woven together competing narratives of nationalism, Eurasianism, and conservatism. The conversation also examines the growing role of religion in Russian politics, the appeal of Russia for parts of the American right, and the eschatological language shaping Russian elites' views of the war in Ukraine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Orthodoxy on the Line: Russian Orthodox Christians and Labor Migration in the Progressive Era (NYU Press, 2025) is an Immigration and labor history of the Russian Orthodox Church in the US At the turn of the twentieth century, thousands of immigrants from the borderlands of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires built a transnational church in North America. The community that church leaders called American Orthodox Rus' was created by and for working people, and transformed believers' identities as Eastern European migrants, as Orthodox Christians, and as American workers. Given how strongly the Russian Orthodox Christian community was tied to working class industrial life, this book makes the case that we cannot understand the scope of working class and immigrant religion in the United States without understanding American Orthodox Rus'. The work Russian Orthodox immigrants did in the Progressive Era United States occurred in factories, foundries, and mines; they lived mainly in industrial cities and mining towns; and they almost immediately got caught up in the most pivotal—and sometimes violent—political and social crises of their times, both nationally and internationally. To address their needs in these contexts, the Russian Orthodox Church expanded its missionary efforts in North America, forming a network of social and material aid for working-class believers. This book traces the rapid growth of this transnational religious world, then explores its unexpected collapse under the weight of the First World War, a global pandemic, and the transnational reach of revolutionary political change in Russia. A story of challenge and resilience, Orthodoxy on the Line complicates dominant paradigms in the study of labor and North American Religions. Guest: Aram G. Sarkisian (he/him) is a historian of religion, immigration, and labor in the United States. Host: Jenna Pittman (she/her), a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990. Scholars@Duke: here Linktree: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

The contemporaneous movements for human rights that Soviet rights defenders and the Black Panthers waged during the 1960s are analysed in a comparative fashion here for the very first time. The book also examines the extra-legal measures that both the KGB and FBI employed to destroy them.The Black Panthers and the Soviets: A Comparative History of Human Rights Movements (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Meredith Roman innovatively compares Soviet human rights activists' exposure of the workings of the Soviet police state with the miniature, city-level surveillance police states that the Black Panthers exposed as operating across the United States. It illuminates the legal tactics of counter-surveillance that Soviet rights defenders and the Black Panthers employed as a means of restraining acts of state-sanctioned violence. The book also highlights how the U.S. production of knowledge about Soviet 'dissidents' reified white supremacist, anti-communist notions of dissent, human rights, and state violence that facilitated the repression of the Black Panthers and the mass incarceration of African Americans as criminals.Dr. Roman disrupts the enduring Cold War binaries of authoritarianism-democracy and oppression-freedom that obscure our understanding of the complex, overlapping histories of these two superpowers. Dr. Roman convincingly argues that the Soviet rights defenders and the Black Panthers' vast documentation of domestic human rights abuses and the repressive measures that they faced for mobilizing to end them serve as an important societal reminder; they reaffirm that genuine democracy and the safeguarding of human rights are incompatible with authoritarian practices, the conditions of racial capitalism, and the ideology of national security. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

This podcast episode by Alevtina Solovyeva traces Central Asia as the enduring crossroads “between empires,” where caravan routes outlast the borders drawn over them. It opens with the Silk Roads: trade as the region's original superpower – moving goods, ideas, and identities. The narrative then tracks how Qing–Russian rivalry and the 19th century “Great Game” layered governors, railways, and taxes onto steppe and peoples, then the Soviet period engineered republics, industries, and pipelines while China watched, split, and later recalibrated. Independence for the five Central Asian states after 1991 reset the board: Russia remained the familiar security habit; China re-entered with capital and corridors, culminating in the Belt and Road. Multi-vector tendencies took hold as Turkey, Iran, Japan, Korea, the U.S., and the EU pressed in. The 2022, start of the full-scale war in Ukraine, accelerated internal and external processes concerning Central Asia as a strategic area, as well as a Russia-China partner-rivalry across energy, transport, finance, and soft power. Four platforms – SCO, EAEU, BRICS, and BRI – showcase both cooperation and competition, with BRI as the physical layer that forces choices on routes, rules, and control. Looking to 2025-2030, three stress tests loom: the terms of Power of Siberia-2, corridor races (CKU vs. Kazakh/Middle Corridor routes), and “security creep.” Central Asia has become a focal arena for international actors amid deep shifts in power balances and rules. It is a fast-moving environment with open-ended trajectories, multiple internal and external agents and situational theatres where interests intersect. Dr. Alevtina Solovyeva is the Head of the Centre for Oriental Studies and Mongolian Research Laboratory at the University of Tartu. She specializes in Asian studies, Chinese and Mongolian studies, folklore studies, historical and social anthropology, and social sciences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Shedding light on the origins of the Second World War in Europe, Stalin's Gamble: The Search for Allies Against Hitler, 1930-1936 (University of Toronto Press, 2023) aims to create a historical narrative of the relations of the USSR with Britain, France, the United States, Poland, Germany, Italy, Czechoslovakia, and Romania during the 1930s. The book explores the Soviet Union's efforts to organize a defensive alliance against Nazi Germany, in effect rebuilding the anti-German Entente of the First World War. Drawing on extensive research in Soviet as well as Western archives, Michael Jabara Carley offers an in-depth account of the diplomatic manoeuvrings which surrounded the rise of Hitler and Soviet efforts to construct an alliance against future German aggression. Paying close attention to the beliefs and interactions of senior politicians and diplomats, the book seeks to replace one-sided Western histories with records from both sides. The book also offers an inside look at Soviet foreign policy making, with a focus on Stalin as a foreign policy maker as well as his interactions with his colleagues. Told in a fascinating narrative style, Stalin's Gamble attempts to see the European crisis of the 1930s through Soviet eyes. Michael Jabara Carley is a professor of history at the Université de Montréal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Bradley Gorski, a literary and culture scholar, examines the breakneck commercialization of Russian book publishing and of Russian literature more broadly – in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the early 1990s, thousands of new publishers emerged, up from a mere two hundred at the Soviet Union's end. The notion of the “bestseller” quickly came to dominate the new market, fueling he rise of immensely popular genres such as detective novels, including its zhenskii variety (detective novels written by women and featuring female sleuths. Gorski artfully weaves together the evolution of the book market - from the chaos of the early post-Communist years to the near-monopoly in the 2000s - with literary analysis of some of the most prominent post-Soviet authors. At early stages, post-Soviet literature often reflected a degree of optimism about the Western ideal of personal liberty and embraced what sociologist Boris Dubin called a Russian version of the “American success story”. In recent years, however, the Russian literary market has taken a distinctly illiberal turn, exemplified by the writer Zakhar Prilepin, a bestselling author turned jingoistic patriot who fought in the Donbas region of Ukraine and inspired many of his admirers to join the front.  Cultural Capitalism: Literature and the Market after Socialism (Northern Illinois University Press, 2025) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Dani Belo's Russian Warfare in the 21st Century: An Incentive-Opportunity Intervention Model (Routledge, 2025) provides a comprehensive analysis of Russia's foreign policy in gray zone conflicts, with a particular focus on its interventions in Ukraine. Challenging conventional views, the book contends that Russia's use of varied gray zone tactics is influenced by both system-level incentives and domestic-level opportunities, which are integrated here into the Incentive-Opportunity Intervention (IOI) Model. The book examines case studies including Abkhazia, Crimea, Odesa, Kharkiv, and the Donbas, demonstrating how local ethnic-based movements and perceptions of regional retreat shape Moscow's coercive strategies. It highlights the reactive nature of Russia's tactics, driven by perceived threats to its protector role, and the significant role of ethnic and political dynamics in the region. The study underscores the importance of understanding these motivations for effective conflict resolution and suggests that protecting minority rights could mitigate such interventions. Policy recommendations emphasize the need for nuanced approaches that address both geopolitical and local dynamics. Ultimately, the book calls for future research to apply the IOI Model to other great powers, enhance the generalizability and applicability of the findings, and highlight the potential for multilateral coordination in promoting minority rights as a strategy for conflict prevention. This book will be of much interest to students and policy practitioners working on Russian foreign policy, international security, Eastern European politics, and International Relations.  Dani Belo is an Assistant Professor of International Relations and Security and Director of the Global Policy Horizons Research Lab, Webster University in St. Louis, USA. Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar with research areas spanning Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, Military History, War Studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, and Russian and East European history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Fluid Russia: Between the Global and the National in the Post-Soviet Era (Cornell UP, 2021) offers a new framework for understanding Russian national identity by focusing on the impact of globalization on its formation, something which has been largely overlooked. This approach sheds new light on the Russian case, revealing a dynamic Russian identity that is developing along the lines of other countries exposed to globalization. Vera Michlin-Shapir shows how along with the freedoms afforded when Russia joined the globalizing world in the 1990s came globalization's disruptions. Michlin-Shapir describes Putin's rise to power and his project to reaffirm a stronger identity not as a uniquely Russian diversion from liberal democracy, but as part of a broader phenomenon of challenges to globalization. She underlines the limits of Putin's regime to shape Russian politics and society, which is still very much impacted by global trends. As well, Michlin-Shapir questions a prevalent approach in Russia studies that views Russia's experience with national identity as abnormal or defective, either being too weak or too aggressive. What is offered is a novel explanation for the so-called Russian identity crisis. As the liberal postwar order faces growing challenges, Russia's experience can be an instructive example of how these processes unfold. This study ties Russia's authoritarian politics and nationalist rallying to the shortcomings of globalization and neoliberal economics, potentially making Russia "patient zero" of the anti-globalist populist wave and rise of neo-authoritarian regimes. In this way, Fluid Russia contributes to the broader understanding of national identity in the current age and the complexities of identity formation in the global world. Guest: Vera Michlin-Shapir (she/her), is a Visiting Research Fellow at King's Russia Institute, King's College London. Host: Jenna Pittman (she/her) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990. Scholars@Duke here Linktree here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Encountering Race in Albania: An Ethnography of the Communist Afterlife (Cornell University Press, 2025) is the first book to interrogate race and racial logics in Albania. Chelsi West Ohueri examines how race is made, remade, produced, and reproduced through constructions of whiteness, blackness, and otherness. She argues that while race is often limited to Western processes of modernity that exclude Eastern Europe, racialization processes are global, and the ethnography of everyday Albanian socialities makes visible how race operates. Historical and political science frameworks prevail in the study of post-Cold War East European societies, yet as West Ohueri shows, anthropological and ethnographic knowledge can equip scholars to ask questions that they might otherwise not consider, illustrating how racialization is ongoing and enduring in a period that she terms the communist afterlife. Encountering Race in Albania, through the unexpected optic of Albania, a small, formerly communist country in Southeast Europe, offers significant insights into into broader understandings of race in a global context. Chelsi West Ohueri is Assistant Professor of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at University of Texas, Austin. Her work focuses on ethnographic studies of race and racialization, belonging, marginalization, and medical anthropology, primarily in Albania and Southeast Europe. Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

The Social Railway and Its Workers in Europe's Modern Era, 1880-2023: Moments of Fury, Ramparts of Hope (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. David Welsh examines the evolution of rail transport and a number of railway workforces across Europe in the modern era, from around 1880 to 2023.Each chapter explores how, within the context of a social railway, rail workers developed distinct national and international perspectives on the nature of their work and their roles in societies and states. Dr. Welsh convincingly argues that workers formed a raft of entirely new and enduring organisations such as trade unions that, in turn, became ramparts of hope. Welsh goes on to consider how the insurgent character of these organisations produced moments of fury during tumultuous periods in the 20th century. The Social Railway and its Workers in Europe's Modern Era, 1880-2023 explores the national and European contexts in which both characteristics came to the fore, including the ecology of fossil fuel technology (coal and oil). Above all, it argues that social, economic and political forces are not simply external 'scene-shifting' but integral to the history of railway systems.The book examines the cultural construction of European railways through literature, art and other forms of writing as well as recent oral history. It also includes a detailed investigation of the role played by nationalisation and public ownership in Europe. In the context of neoliberalism and globalization, it proposes a 21st century programme for the social railway. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia,” Winston Churchill once said. “It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” That saying sounds as true now as ever in the midst of Russia's war in Ukraine. In Getting Russia Right (Polity Press, 2023), however, Thomas Graham provides an expert perspective on Russian history and statecraft and offers timely keys to Russian national interests which can help the United States get Russia right. As US-Russian relations scrape the depths of Cold-War antagonism, the promise of partnership that beguiled American administrations during the first post-Soviet decades increasingly appears to have been false from the start. Why did American leaders persist in pursuing it? Was there another path that would have produced more constructive relations or better prepared Washington to face the challenge Russia poses today? With a practitioner's eye honed during decades of work on Russian affairs, Graham, a distinguished fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, deftly traces the evolution of opposing ideas of national purpose that created an inherent tension in relations. Getting Russia Right (Polity Press, 2023) identifies the blind spots that prevented Washington from seeing Russia as it really is and crafting a policy to advance American interests without provoking an aggressive Russian response. Distilling the Putin factor to reveal the contours of the Russia challenge facing the United States whenever he departs the scene, Graham lays out a compelling way to deal with it so that the United States can continue to advance its interests in a rapidly changing world. Dr. Andrew O. Pace is a historian of the US in the world who specializes in the moral fog of war. He is currently a DPAA Research Partner Fellow at the University of Southern Mississippi and a co-host of the Diplomatic History Channel on the New Books Network. He is also working on a book about the reversal in US grand strategy from victory at all costs in World War II to peace at any price in the Vietnam War. He can be reached by email here or via his website. Andrew is not an employee of DPAA, he supports DPAA through a partnership. The views presented are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of DPAA, DoD or its components.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Moscow Underground (HarperCollins, 2025) by Dr. Catherine Merridale is a sweeping novel of life, death and politics in the quicksand world of Stalin's tyranny. Moscow's glittering new subway is under construction at last. The first line will run through the centre of the city, cutting deep through Moscow soil. But futures cannot be created without digging up the past. Though Russia's leaders want to build a glorious Soviet capital, what holds them in a fatal grip is history: old mud and bones. Anton Belkin is an Investigator at the Procuracy, a sensitive job at a dangerous moment on the road to the Show Trials. He is also someone who needs to keep his head down. His artist father was once the darling of the revolutionary avant-garde, a painter whose work could inspire devotion and great sacrifice. But now his dreams are out of place, too loud and red in Stalin's world of sterile rules and rubber stamps. Anton is dragged into a murder case. A prominent archaeologist, working alongside the subway dig, has been killed in a deserted mansion. Though Anton doesn't want the job, his former lover, Vika, who is now a powerful member of the secret police, browbeats him into paying a visit to the site with her. Against his better judgement he is drawn to follow though, embarking on investigations that will almost certainly get him killed. Deep underground, he finds a priceless secret that could genuinely unlock the future but links him to a vicious internecine fight for power in the young Soviet state. In the process, he is forced to reconsider the history he shares with Vika and the bonds that bind them both. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 brought a tragic close to a thirty-year period of history that began with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reopening of Russia to the West after six decades of Soviet isolation. The opening lasted for three tumultuous decades and ended with a new closing, driven by the Ukrainian war, the imposition of Western sanctions, and the Russian responses to them. In Perfect Storm: Russia's Failed Economic Opening, the Hurricane of War and Sanctions, and the Uncertain Future (Oxford University Press, 2025), Russia analyst Thane Gustafson reinterprets the story of Russia's failed opening to the West, focusing on its economic, technological, and social aspects, and the role they played in its ultimate failure. These parallel events are essential for understanding what happened and what went wrong. Yet they have received much less attention than the military and geopolitical aspects of the current conflict. Gustafson tells the story of the West's entry into Russia, the arrival of Russians into the West, and the conflicting emotions and responses these aroused on both sides, contributing to the ultimate breakdown of relations and the unprecedented hurricane of Western sanctions. The book concludes with an examination of possible futures under a new generation of leaders. A measured and nuanced account of the evolution of Russia's economic relations with the world, Perfect Storm illuminates the longer history of Russia's opening to the West, from its achievements and disappointments to the complexity of the post-invasion sanctions regime and Russia's responses to them. Thane Gustafson is Professor of Government at Georgetown University. He is the author of many books, including Klimat (2021), The Bridge (2020), and Wheel of Fortune (2012). Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

A Modern History of Russian Childhood: From the Late Imperial Period to the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Bloomsbury, 2020) examines the changes and continuities in ideas about Russian childhood from the 18th to the 21st century. It looks at how children were thought about and treated in Russian and Soviet culture, as well as how the radical social, political and economic changes across the period affected children. It explains how and why childhood became a key concept both in Late Imperial Russia and in the Soviet Union and looks at similarities and differences to models of childhood elsewhere.Focusing mainly on children in families, telling us much about Russian and Soviet family life in the process, Elizabeth White combines theoretical ideas about childhood with examples of real, lived experiences of children to provide a comprehensive overview of the subject. The book also offers a comprehensive synthesis of a wide range of secondary sources in English and Russian whilst utilizing various textual primary sources as part of the discussion.This book is key reading for anyone wanting to understand the social and cultural history of Russia as well as the history of childhood in the modern world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

"On the centenary of the Russian Revolution, Jonathan Daly and Leonid Trofimov have reinvigorated the study of a turning point in world history. Instead of rehashing the internal dynamics of the Bolshevik takeover, the authors have carefully juxtaposed the international ambitions of the Bolsheviks with the Revolution's reception around the world. Daly and Trofimov pair their lucid introductory essay with documents from Soviet officials, intellectuals in South America, W. E. B. Du Bois in the United States, and others, so readers will quickly realize how revolutionary ideas cross oceans and transcend geopolitical boundaries. The Russian Revolution and Its Global Impact: A Short History with Documents (Hackett Publishing, 2017) thus takes a topic once reserved for students of Russian history and places it in a world historical perspective; those interested in global history, European history, and, of course, those fascinated by events in Petrograd and Moscow will find ample sources of inspiration in this text. As the Russian Federation is now exerting its influence on a global scale, the time is ripe to consider the Russian Revolution in such broad terms." ―Nigel Raab, Loyola Marymount University Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Empire of Austerity: Russia and the Breaking of Eurasia (Hurst, 2025) traces how Russian economic policy precipitated the country's slide towards an increasingly coercive authoritarianism, a hubristic challenge to the West, and all-out war with Ukraine. Decades of dependence on commodity exports, failure to invest and failure to consume enough have condemned not only the Russian Federation, but Eurasia more broadly, to stagnation and conflict. Only time will tell if Russia and its neighbours can escape the zero-sum politics of austerity in a world of rapidly evolving geopolitical, energy and climate crises. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies