New Books Network

New Books in Russian and Eurasian Studies

Society EN ↓ 1023 episodes

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠ newbooksnetwork.com ⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠ https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ ⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Sup...

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Eileen M. Kane, “Russian Hajj: Empire and the Pilgrimage to Mecca” (Cornell University Press, 2015) 04.03.2016 35:21

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...

Guntis Smidchens, “The Power of Song: Nonviolent National Culture in the Baltic Singing Revolution” (University of Washington Press, 2014) 18.12.2015 1:05:03

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 S...

David E. Hoffman’s “The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal” (Doubleday, 2015) 15.11.2015 54:49

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 pr...

David Frick, “Kith, Kin and Neighbors: Communities and Confessions in 17th-Century Wilno” (Cornell UP, 2013) 09.10.2015 1:06:38

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/adch...

Alexander Etkind, “Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied” (Stanford UP, 2013) 26.07.2015 50:53

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/a...

David R. Stone, “The Russian Army in the Great War: The Eastern Front, 1914-1917” (UP of Kansas, 2015) 12.06.2015 45:02

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!...

John-Paul Himka and Joanna Beata Michlic, “Bringing the Dark Past to Light” (U of Nebraska Press, 2013) 29.04.2015 1:12:38

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 me...

Bilyana Lily, “Russian Foreign Policy toward Missile Defense” (Lexington Books, 2014) 03.02.2015 36:26

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 becomin...

Thane Gustafson, “Wheel of Fortune: The Battle for Oil and Power in Russia” (Harvard UP, 2014) 20.01.2015 26:42

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 sho...

Jenny Kaminer, “Women with a Thirst for Destruction: The Bad Mother in Russian Culture” (Northwestern UP, 2014) 20.01.2015 51:52

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 Sup...

Alexander Cooley, “Great Game, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest in Central Asia” (Oxford UP, 2014) 11.11.2014 46:55

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 Suppor...

Angela Stent, “The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twentieth-First Century” (Princeton University Press, 2014) 03.11.2014 1:16:53

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! ht...

Oliver Ready (trans.), Vladimir Sharov, “Before and During” (Dedalus Books, 2014) 30.09.2014 58:22

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. Vis...

Willard Sunderland, “The Baron’s Cloak: A History of the Russian Empire in War and Revolution” (Cornell UP, 2014) 04.09.2014 1:07:55

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 p...

Katherine Pickering Antonova, “An Ordinary Marriage: The World of a Gentry Family in Provincial Russia” (Oxford UP, 2012) 17.08.2014 57:13

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 c...

Ivo Mijnssen, “The Quest for an Ideal Youth in Putin’s Russia I” (Ibidem Press, 2014) 12.08.2014 46:52

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 yo...

Edmund Levin, “A Child of Christian Blood: Murder and Conspiracy in Tsarist Russia” (Schocken, 2014) 13.07.2014 1:07:41

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...

Filip Slaveski, “The Soviet Occupation of Germany” (Cambridge UP, 2013) 02.07.2014 1:10:29

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.f...

Sener Akturk, “Regimes of Ethnicity and Nationhood in Germany, Russia, and Turkey (Cambridge UP, 2012) 11.06.2014 1:05:37

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 prem...

Anne Gorsuch, “All This is Your World: Soviet Tourism at Home and Abroad After Stalin” (Oxford UP, 2011) 22.05.2014 44:22

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 sh...

Anna Fishzon, “Fandom, Authenticity, and Opera: Mad Acts and Letter Scenes in Fin-de-Siecle Russia” (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2013) 17.04.2014 55:47

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 m...

Olga Gershenson, “The Phantom Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and Jewish Catastrophe” (Rutgers UP, 2013) 05.02.2014 1:13:06

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 Suppo...

Waitman Beorn, “Marching into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus” (Harvard UP, 2013) 10.01.2014 1:18:23

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!...

Denis Kozlov, “Novyi Mir: Coming to Terms with the Stalinist Past” (Harvard UP, 2013) 20.12.2013 42:14

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 Sup...

Peter Savodnik, “The Interloper: Lee Harvey Oswald Inside the Soviet Union” (Basic Books, 2013) 21.11.2013 56:02

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 pre...