New Books in Russian and Eurasian Stu...

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Society & Culture
History
951
Alexander Etkind, “Warped Mourning: Stories of ...
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),
49 min
952
David R. Stone, “The Russian Army in the Great ...
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).
43 min
953
John-Paul Himka and Joanna Beata Michlic, “Brin...
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 Holocau...
70 min
954
Bilyana Lily, “Russian Foreign Policy toward Mi...
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...
34 min
955
Thane Gustafson, “Wheel of Fortune: The Battle ...
24 min
956
Jenny Kaminer, “Women with a Thirst for Destruc...
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...
50 min
957
Alexander Cooley, “Great Game, Local Rules: The...
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,
45 min
958
Angela Stent, “The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-...
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 l...
75 min
959
Oliver Ready (trans.), Vladimir Sharov, “Before...
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,
56 min
960
Willard Sunderland, “The Baron’s Cloak: A Histo...
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 Unive...
66 min
961
Katherine Pickering Antonova, “An Ordinary Marr...
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.
55 min
962
Ivo Mijnssen, “The Quest for an Ideal Youth in ...
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,
45 min
963
Edmund Levin, “A Child of Christian Blood: Murd...
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,
65 min
964
Filip Slaveski, “The Soviet Occupation of Germa...
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.
68 min
965
Sener Akturk, “Regimes of Ethnicity and Nationh...
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?
63 min
966
Anne Gorsuch, “All This is Your World: Soviet T...
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...
42 min
967
Anna Fishzon, “Fandom, Authenticity, and Opera:...
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.
54 min
968
Olga Gershenson, “The Phantom Holocaust: Soviet...
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).
71 min
969
Waitman Beorn, “Marching into Darkness: The Weh...
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,
76 min
970
Denis Kozlov, “Novyi Mir: Coming to Terms with ...
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,
40 min
971
Peter Savodnik, “The Interloper: Lee Harvey Osw...
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 Kenn...
54 min
972
Steven Usitalo, “The Invention of Mikhail Lomon...
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.
58 min
973
Robert Gellately, “Stalin’s Curse: Battling for...
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 ...
75 min
974
Kate Brown, “Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic...
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,
54 min
975
Kees Boterbloem, “Moderniser of Russia: Andrei ...
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.
62 min