New Books in Eastern European Studies
Episodes
Szabolcs László, "Cold War Brokers: Hungarian-American Cultural Exchanges and Transnational Mobility,1956-1989" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
04 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of the CEU Review of Books Podcast, I sat down with Szabolcs László to talk about his new book, Cold War Brokers: Hungarian-America...
Francisco Martínez, "The Future of Hiding: Secrecy, Infrastructure, and Ecological Memory in Estonia's Siberia" (Cornell UP, 2025)
28 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
How can lives and things that are rendered invisible be crucial to identity, politics, and the future? Drawing on experimental ethnographic research i...
Gennady Estraikh, "The History of Birobidzhan: Building a Soviet Jewish Homeland in Siberia" (Bloombury, 2023)
26 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Alisa interviews Dr. Gennady Estraikh. His book titled, The History of Birobidzhan: Building a Soviet Jewish Homeland in Siberia (B...
Stephen F. Jones, "The First Social Democracy: The Democratic Republic of Georgia, 1918–1921" (Harvard UP, 2026)
21 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Following the collapse of the Russian Empire, the small nation of Georgia established its independence in May 1918. Its leaders surprised the world by...
Sasha Senderovich and Harriet Murav, "In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union" (Stanford UP, 2026)
20 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In their anthology, In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union (Stanford University Press, 2026), Sasha S...
Karolina Przewrocka-Aderet, "Polanim: From Poland to Israel" (Academic Studies Press, 2026)
19 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to leave one's homeland behind—and how do memories of that place shape the next generation? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits ...
From the Vilna Ghetto to Nuremberg: Memoir and Testimony
19 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
After escaping the Vilna Ghetto and surviving winter in the forest among partisan fighters, Avrom Sutzkever was airlifted to Moscow in 1944. The renow...
Kristan Stoddart, "Russia's Hybrid Warfare Offensive Against the West" (de Gruyter, 2025)
19 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Kristan Stoddart's Russia's Hybrid Warfare Offensive Against the West (de Gruyter, 2025) is a timely and systematic analysis of Russian hybrid warfa...
Katharina Wiedlack, "Under Western Eyes: Vulnerable Minorities and the Russian State in New Cold War Cultures" (Academic Studies Press, 2025)
12 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Under Western Eyes: Vulnerable Minorities and the Russian State in New Cold War Cultures (Academic Studies Press, 2025) examines the New Cold War...
Avrom Sutzkever: Ten Poems
10 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In 2017, a cache of Jewish materials was discovered in the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. The discovery included a manuscript of “...
Scott M. Kenworthy, "The People's Patriarch: Tikhon Bellavin and the Orthodox Church in North America and Revolutionary Russia" (Oxford UP, 2026)
06 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
On October 28, 1917, just days after the Bolsheviks seized power, the great Council of the Russian Orthodox Church voted to restore the patriarchate, ...
Rethinking Kishinev: How a Riot Changed 20th Century Jewish History
02 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Kishinev's 1903 pogrom was the first event in Russian Jewish life to receive international attention. The riot, leaving 49 dead in an obscure border t...
Jonathan Blackwood and Jasmina Tumbas, "Contemporary Art in the Post-Yugoslav Space" (Routledge, 2025)
24 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Contemporary Art in the Post-Yugoslav Space explores the production, discussion, and consumption of contemporary art across the post-Yugoslav region....
The Jews in Poland-Lithuania and Russia: 1350 to the Present Day
23 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
For centuries, Poland and Russia formed the heartland of the Jewish world. Until World War II, this area was home to over forty percent of world Jewry...
Andrew I. Port, "Germany" (Polity, 2025)
22 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Few countries are more haunted by the darker aspects of their history than Germany. Nazi crimes continue to cast a long shadow at home and abroad. ...
The Vilna Gaon and the Making of Modern Judaism
22 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The beginnings of contemporary Jewry are often associated with Jewish figures in Western Europe such as Moses Mendelssohn. But in his book, The Geniu...
Gudrun Persson, "Russian Military Thought: The Evolution of Strategy Since the Crimean War" (Georgetown UP, 2025)
15 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The development of the Russian military's strategic thought is an understudied and thus misunderstood subject in the West. Strategy in Russia encompas...
Populism, Polarization and Politics: Hungary on the Eve of Elections
10 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
How and why do leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orban not only come to power, but remain in power for so long (in Orban’s case 16 years)? And why doe...
The Shtetl: Myth and Reality with Samuel Kassow
27 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Even those who do not know much Yiddish have probably heard the word “shtetl,” but what does that word mean exactly? Can we just say that it was a...
Mark D. Steinberg, "Moral Storytelling in 1920s New York, Odessa, and Bombay: Sex, Crime, Violence, and Nightlife in the Modern City" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
21 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Using public storytelling as a driving force, Moral Storytelling in 1920s New York, Odessa, and Bombay: Sex, Crime, Violence, and Nightlife in the Mo...
Jeremy Black, "The Short History of Russia: Returning to Another Country" (Amberley, 2026)
21 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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: ...
Shelley Puhak, "The Blood Countess: Murder, Betrayal, and the Making of a Monster" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
17 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
There have long been whispers, coming from the castle; from the village square; from the dark woods. The great lady-a countess, from one of Europe's o...
Alexis Lerner, "Post-Soviet Graffiti: Free Speech in Authoritarian States" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
16 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Post-Soviet Graffiti: Free Speech in Authoritarian States (University of Toronto Press, 2025) is an empirically grounded ethnographic study of how gr...
Colleen M. Moore, "The Peasants' War: Russia's Home Front in the First World War and the End of the Autocracy" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025)
14 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
During the First World War, Russia relied on the mass mobilization of its peasant population. In the summer of 1914, approximately four million peasan...
Claire Morelon, "Streetscapes of War and Revolution: Prague, 1914–1920" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
13 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Prague entered the First World War as the third city of the Habsburg empire, but emerged in 1918 as the capital of a brand new nation-state, Czechoslo...
Ann Komaromi, "Soviet Samizdat: Imagining a New Society" (Cornell UP, 2022)
07 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Soviet Samizdat: Imagining a New Society (Cornell UP, 2022) traces the emergence and development of samizdat, a significant and distinctive phenomeno...
Andrew Monaghan, "Blitzkrieg and the Russian Art of War" (Manchester UP, 2025)
03 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A cutting-edge investigation of how Russia makes war. Russian strategy in the twenty-first century has been described in terms of 'hybrid' warfare, a...
Mark Harrison, "Secret Leviathan: Secrecy and State Capacity under Soviet Communism" (Stanford UP, 2023)
31 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The Soviet Union was one of the most secretive states that ever existed. Defended by a complex apparatus of rules and checks administered by the secre...
All You Need to Know about Russian Politics Today
30 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Host Licia Cianetti talks to two Russian experts, Vladislav Gorin and Alexandra Prokopenko, about the state of Russian domestic politics today. As Rus...
Jovana Babović, "The Youngest Yugoslavs: An Oral History of Post-Socialist Memory" (Indiana UP, 2025)
30 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The Youngest Yugoslavs: An Oral History of Post-Socialist Memory (Indiana UP, 2025) gathers interviews with members of the last generation to experie...
Debra Kaplan and Elisheva Carlebach, "A Woman Is Responsible for Everything: Jewish Women in Early Modern Europe" (Princeton UP, 2025)
29 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In small villages, bustling cities, and crowded ghettos across early modern Europe, Jewish women were increasingly active participants in the daily li...
Anna Reid, "A Nasty Little War: The West's Fight to Reverse the Russian Revolution" (Basic Books, 2024)
24 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In A Nasty Little War: The Western Fight to Reverse the Russian Revolution (Basic Books, 2024), award-winning reporter Anna Reid tells the extraordi...
Duncan Kelly, "Worlds of Wartime: The First World War and the Reconstruction of Modern Politics" (Oxford UP, 2025)
19 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Worlds of Wartime: The First World War and the Reconstruction of Modern Politics (Oxford University Press, 2025) by Duncan Kelly is a new intellectu...
Clare Griffin, "Mixing Medicines: The Global Drug Trade and Early Modern Russia" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022)
11 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Clare Griffin's book Mixing Medicines: The Global Drug Trade and Early Modern Russia (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022) introduces the reader to the dynamic...
Bruce Berglund, "The Moscow Playbook: How Russia Used, Abused, and Transformed Sports in the Hunt for Power" (Triumph Books, 2026)
10 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 cem...
Agata Fijalkowski, "Law, Visual Culture, and the Show Trial" (Routledge, 2023)
30 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Addressing the relationship between law and the visual, this book examines the importance of photography in Central, East, and Southeast European show...
Lisa Silverman, "The Postwar Antisemite: Culture and Complicity After the Holocaust" (Oxford UP, 2025)
28 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In his influential Anti-Semite and Jew, French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre observed "If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him." In...
Filip Kovacevic, "KGB Literati: Spy Fiction and State Security in the Soviet Union" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
25 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
KGB Literati: Spy Fiction and State Security in the Soviet Union (University of Toronto Press, 2025) offers a first-ever glimpse into the mysterious ...
Alexandra Ghiț, "Welfare Work Without Welfare: Women and Austerity in Interwar Bucharest" (De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025)
18 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Welfare Work Without Welfare: Women and Austerity in Interwar Bucharest (De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025) argues that women activists, wage worke...
Lucy Jeffery and Anna Váradi, "Replaying Communism: Trauma and Nostalgia in European Cultural Production" (CEU Press, 2025)
17 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) sat down with Lucy Jeffery and Anna Váradi to talk about their edited volume, Replaying Communism:...
Maja Davidović, "Governing the Past: 'Never Again' and the Transitional Justice Project" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
05 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The way we govern the past to ensure peaceful futures keeps conflict anxieties alive. In pursuit of its own survival, permanence and legitimacy, the p...
Jacob Daniels, "The Jews of Edirne: The End of Ottoman Europe and the Arrival of Borders" (Stanford UP, 2025)
03 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At the turn of the twentieth century, the city of Edirne was a bustling center linking Istanbul to Ottoman Europe. It was also the capital of Edirne P...
Jochen Hellbeck, "World Enemy No. 1: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews" (Penguin Group, 2025)
24 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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’...
Marek Kohn, "The Stories Old Towns Tell: A Journey Through Cities at the Heart of Europe" (Yale UP, 2023)
24 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Historic quarters in cities and towns across the middle of Europe were devastated during the Second World War—some, like those of Warsaw and Frankfu...
Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy, "Videotape" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
22 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Over the span of a single decade, VHS technology changed the relationship between privacy and entertainment, pried open the closed societies behind th...
Carol Lilly, "Death and Burial in Socialist Yugoslavia: The Politicization of Cemeteries and Ethnic Conflict in the Balkans" (Bloomsbury, 2024).
21 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Across the globe, memorial and grave sites are being increasingly weaponized in conflicts and politicized by parties to advance agendas. Here, Carol S...
Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov, "Our Dear Friends in Moscow: The Inside Story of a Broken Generation" (PublicAffairs, 2025)
18 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 thri...
Susanna Rabow-Edling, "The First Russian Revolution: The Decembrist Revolt Of 1825" (Reaktion Books, 2025)
16 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On the 200th anniversary of the Decembrist Revolt, Susanna Rabow-Edling published The First Russian Revolution: The Decembrist Revolt Of 1825 ...
Eric Halsey, "State Builders from the Steppe: A History of The First Bulgarian Empire" (This is RETHINK, 2025)
13 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
State Builders from the Steppe: A History of the First Bulgarian Empire (This is RETHINK, 2025) explores how the Proto-Bulgarians were able to build...
Eric Lee, "The August Uprising, 1924: The Georgian Anti-Soviet Revolt and the Birth of Democratic Socialism" (McFarland, 2025)
11 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For three years following the Russian Revolution, the small South Caucasian country of Georgia was a democracy, but Stalin later ordered the Red Army ...
Thomas Fleischman, "Communist Pigs: An Animal History of East Germany's Rise and Fall" (U Washington Press, 2020)
09 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The pig played a fundamental role in the German Democratic Republic's attempts to create and sustain a modern, industrial food system built on communi...
Georgios Giannakopoulos, "The Interpreters: British Internationalism and Empire in Southeastern Europe, 1870-1930" (Manchester UP, 2025)
06 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Georgios Giannakopoulos, Lecturer in Modern History at City St. George's, University of London, is the author of The Interpreters: British Intern...
Elizabeth R. Hyman, "The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto: The True Story of Five Courageous Young Women Who Sparked an Uprising" (Harper, 2025)
03 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is one of the most storied events of the Holocaust, yet previous accounts of have almost entirely focused on its male parti...
Cynthia Paces, "Prague: The Heart of Europe" (Oxford UP, 2025)
02 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of the CEU Review of Books Podcast, I sat down with Cynthia Paces to talk about her new book, Prague: The Heart of Europe (Oxford U...
Shaul Kelner, "A Cold War Exodus: How American Activists Mobilized To Free Soviet Jews" (NYU Press, 2025)
02 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Winner of The 74th National Jewish Book Award: American Jewish Studies Celebrate 350 Award Reveals the mass mobilization tactics that help...
Elissa Bemporad, "Jews in the Soviet Union: A History: Revolution, Civil War, and New Ways of Life, 1917–1930, Vol. 1" (NYU Press, 2025)
30 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Chronicles the encounter of one of the largest Jewish communities in the world with war, revolution, and Soviet power from 1917 through 1930 At the b...
Adair Rounthwaite, "This Is Not My World: Art and Public Space in Socialist Zagreb" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)
29 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This Is Not My World: Art and Public Spaces in Socialist Zagreb (U Minnesota Press, 2024) examines the Group of Six Authors—a collective of you...
Paula Oppermann, "Thunder Cross: Fascist Antisemitism in Twentieth-Century Latvia" (U Wisconsin Press, 2025)
29 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Founded in 1932, the Pērkonkrusts ("Thunder Cross") was the largest and most prominent right-wing political party in Latvia in the early twentieth ce...
Democratic Dialogues: Pathways of Democratic Backsliding, Resistance, and (Partial) Recoveries
28 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A podcast from Cornell University’s Brooks School of Public Policy Center on Global Democracy About the Podcast Each week, co-hosts Rachel Beatty ...
Democracy After Illiberalism: A Warning from Poland
28 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why are illiberal governments able to retain support? How are they defeated at election time? And how do (and should) governments driven by a desire t...
Mark Mazower, "On Antisemitism: A Word in History" (Penguin Press, 2025)
26 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What do we mean when we talk about antisemitism? A thoughtful, vital new intervention from the award-winning historian. For most of history, antisemit...
Cristina Plamadeala, "Dossierveillance, Collaboration, and Fear in Society: The Saga of a Journey Through the Securitate Archives and Beyond" (Routledge, 2025)
22 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Exploring the cultural history of surveillance practices of the Securitate, Romania's secret police during its communist period, the book blends biogr...
Anthony Valerio, "Semmelweis: The Women's Doctor" (Zantedeschi Books, 2019)
20 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Though his advice has saved the lives of millions of people, the name Ignaz Semmelweis is not one commonly known today. In his book Anthony Valerio’...
Martyn Whittock, "Vikings in the East: From Vladimir the Great to Vladimir Putin – The Origins of a Contested Legacy in Russia and Ukraine" (Biteback, 2025)
19 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Western Europe, we typically associate Vikings with the storm-tossed waters of the North Sea and the North Atlantic, the deep Scandinavian fjords a...
Oksana Sarkisova and Olga Shevchenko "In Visible Presence: Soviet Afterlives in Family Photos" (MIT Press, 2023)
15 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Visible Presence: Soviet Afterlives in Family Photos (MIT Press, 2023) is an absorbing exploration of Soviet-era family photographs that demonstra...
Nicolae Steinhardt, "The Journal of Joy" (SVS Press, 2025)
09 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A conversation with Fr. Bogdan Bucur and Dr. Razvan Porumb This publication represents the officially authorized translation of The Journal of Joy ...
Andrew Lambert, "No More Napoleons: How Britain Managed Europe from Waterloo to World War One" (Yale UP, 2025)
07 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How, for just over a century, Britain ensured it would not face another Napoleon Bonaparte--manipulating European powers while building a global marit...
Emília Barna, "Working in Music on the Semi-Periphery: Local Cultural Production and Global Capitalism" (CEU Press, 2025)
03 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) sat down with Emília Barna to discuss her new book, Working in Music on the Semiperiphery: Local C...
Branka Bogdan, "The New Yugoslav Woman: Reproductive Regulation in Socialist Yugoslavia" (Indiana UP, 2025)
30 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From 1945 to 1989, the Yugoslav state connected its claims of progressive politics and gender equality to its support of free healthcare, sex educatio...
Paris Papamichos Chronakis, "The Business of Transition: Jewish and Greek Merchants of Salonica from Ottoman to Greek Rule" (Stanford UP, 2024)
25 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Business of Transition: Jewish and Greek Merchants of Salonica from Ottoman to Greek Rule (Stanford UP, 2024) examines how the cosmopolitan bourg...
Tanja Petrovic, "Utopia of the Uniform: Affective Afterlives of the Yugoslav People's Army" (Duke UP, 2024)
21 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The compulsory service for young men in the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) created bonds across ethnic, religious, and social lines. These bonds persi...
Bradley A. Gorski, "Cultural Capitalism: Literature and the Market After Socialism" (Northern Illinois UP, 2025)
19 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bradley Gorski, a literary and culture scholar, examines the breakneck commercialization of Russian book publishing and of Russian literature more bro...
Dani Belo, "Russian Warfare in the 21st Century" (Routledge, 2025)
17 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dani Belo's Russian Warfare in the 21st Century: An Incentive-Opportunity Intervention Model (Routledge, 2025) provides a comprehensive analysis of...
Alex R. Tipei, "Unintended Nations: How French Liberals' Empire of Civilization Remade Southeast Europe and the Post-Napoleonic World" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025)
15 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, French liberals set out to create an informal empire. Their efforts to cultivate unequal partnerships with...
Huseyn Aliyev, "Who Fights for Governments? Paramilitary Mobilization in Ukraine and Beyond" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025)
13 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Exploring why, when and under which circumstances individuals decide to take up arms mobilizing for pro-government militias, Huseyn Aliyev's Who Figh...
Vera Michlin-Shapir, "Fluid Russia: Between the Global and the National in the Post-Soviet Era" (Cornell UP, 2021)
12 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Fluid Russia: Between the Global and the National in the Post-Soviet Era (Cornell UP, 2021) offers a new framework for understanding Russian nationa...
Chelsi West Ohueri, "Encountering Race in Albania: An Ethnography of the Communist Afterlife" (Cornell UP, 2025)
11 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Encountering Race in Albania: An Ethnography of the Communist Afterlife (Cornell University Press, 2025) is the first book to interrogate race and r...
Jovana Diković, "The Laissez-Faire Peasant: Post-Socialist Rural Development in Serbia" (UCL Press, 2025)
10 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What if rural progress isn’t about government intervention but about the self-reliance and ingenuity of peasants themselves? The Laissez-Fa...
Thomas Graham, "Getting Russia Right" (Polity Press, 2023)
10 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“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 s...
Cynthia Paces, "Prague: The Heart of Europe" (Oxford UP, 2025)
08 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Prague: The Heart of Europe (Oxford University Press, 2025) traces Prague's origins in the ninth century through the end of the Cold War. Highlights...
Stanley Bill and Ben Stanley, "Good Change: The Rise and Fall of Poland's Illiberal Revolution" (Stanford UP, 2025)
08 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Poland between 2015 and 2023, Jarosław Kaczyński and his Law and Justice Party (PiS) attempted a novel experiment. Could a governing party sustai...
Tia Sahrakorpi on a Use-Based History of Electricity in Finland
01 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Tiia Sahrakorpi, Visiting Professor at Weber State University, about her interesting book project, Our ...
Thane Gustafson, "Perfect Storm: Russia's Failed Economic Opening, the Hurricane of War and Sanctions, and the Uncertain Future" (Oxford UP, 2025)
29 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 th...
Elizabeth White, "A Modern History of Russian Childhood: From the Late Imperial Period to the Collapse of the Soviet Union" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
29 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A Modern History of Russian Childhood: From the Late Imperial Period to the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Bloomsbury, 2020) examines the changes a...
Stanislav Kulchytsky, "The Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine: An Anatomy of the Holodomor" (CIUS Press, 2018) - A Conversation with Bohdan Klid
27 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine: An Anatomy of the Holodomor (CIUS Press, 2018) is a distillation of thirty years of study of the topic by one ...
Jonathan Daly and Leonid Trofimov, "The Russian Revolution and Its Global Impact: A Short History with Documents" (Hackett Publishing, 2017)
26 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"On the centenary of the Russian Revolution, Jonathan Daly and Leonid Trofimov have reinvigorated the study of a turning point in world history. Inste...
Nicholas Birman Trickett, "Empire of Austerity: Russia and the Breaking of Eurasia" (Hurst, 2025)
25 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Empire of Austerity: Russia and the Breaking of Eurasia (Hurst, 2025) traces how Russian economic policy precipitated the country’s slide towards a...
Stephan Kieninger, "Securing Peace in Europe: Strobe Talbott, NATO, and Russia After the Cold War" (Columbia UP, 2025)
24 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This deeply researched book offers new perspective on the NATO-Russia relationship through the eyes of Strobe Talbott, a deputy secretary of state for...
Konrad H. Jarausch, "Embattled Europe: A Progressive Alternative" (Princeton UP, 2021)
23 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A bracing corrective to predictions of the European Union’s decline, by a leading historian of modern Europe Is the European Union in decline? Recen...
Paul Thomas Chamberlin, "Scorched Earth: A Global History of World War II" (Basic Books, 2025)
19 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In popular memory, the Second World War was an unalloyed victory for freedom over totalitarianism, marking the demise of the age of empires and the tr...
Georgiy Kasianov et al., "From 'the Ukraine' to Ukraine: A Contemporary History, 1991-2021" (Ibidem Press, 2021)
17 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2021, Ukraine celebrates its thirty-year independence anniversary. During this relatively short period of time—when considered in historical term...
José Vergara, "All Future Plunges to the Past: James Joyce in Russian Literature" (Cornell UP, 2021)
17 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
All Future Plunges to the Past: James Joyce in Russian Literature (Cornell UP, 2021) explores how Russian writers from the mid-1920s on have read and...
Anna Cichopek-Gajraj, "Beyond Violence: Jewish Survivors in Poland and Slovakia, 1944–48" (Cambridge UP, 2014)
16 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Beyond Violence: Jewish Survivors in Poland and Slovakia, 1944–48 (Cambridge UP, 2014) tells a story of Polish and Slovak Holocaust survivors retu...
Inna Faliks, "Weight in the Fingertips: A Musical Odyssey from Soviet Ukraine to the World Stage" (Backbeat Books, 2023)
15 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Adventurous and passionate” (The New Yorker) Ukrainian-born pianist Inna Faliks has established herself as one of the most communicative, and poetic...
Enrique Dussel, "The Theological Metaphors of Marx" (Duke UP, 2024)–A Conversation with Camilo Pérez-Bustillo and Eduardo Mendieta
15 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Theological Metaphors of Marx (Duke UP, 2024) by Enrique Dussel – A Conversation with Camilo Pérez-Bustillo and Eduardo Mendieta In The Th...
Michael Jabara Carley, "Stalin's Great Game: War and Neutrality, 1939-1941" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
13 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The period from September 1939 to early 1942 was crucial for Soviet foreign policy and coincided with the early stages of the Second World War, includ...
Jirí Anger, "Towards a Film Theory from Below: Archival Film and the Aesthetics of the Crack-Up" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
12 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jiří Anger is a scholar, archivist, and videographic critic devoted, as he says in this interview, to "making weird shapes shine." In this episode...
Karin Roginer Hofmeister, "Remembering Suffering and Resistance: Memory Politics and the Serbian Orthodox Church" (CEU Press, 2024)
10 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Remembering Suffering and Resistance investigates the role of the Serbian Orthodox Church in shaping memory politics in Serbia following the fall of ...
Alexander Mikaberidze, "Kutuzov: A Life in War and Peace" (Oxford UP, 2022)
06 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Every Russian knows him purely by his patronym. He was the general who triumphed over Napoleon's Grande Armée during the Patriotic War of 1812, not m...
Craig W. H. Luther, "Guderian's Panzers: From Triumph to Defeat on the Eastern Front (1941)" (Stackpole Books, 2025)
05 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, the surprise invasion of the Soviet Union that opened the Eastern Front in World War II....