New Books in Eastern European Studies

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....

Tricia Starks, "Smoking Under the Tsars: A History of Tobacco in Imperial Russia" (Cornell UP, 2018)

03 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How and when did Russia become a country of smokers? Why did makhorka and papirosy become ubiquitous products of tobacco consumption? Tricia Starks ex...

Y. Kokosalakis and F. J. Leira-Castiñeira, "Violence and Propaganda in European Civil Wars" (Routledge, 2025)

02 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Violence and Propaganda in European Civil Wars explores the complex interplay between violence and propaganda during the continent's major civil conf...

Richard W. Harrison, "The Soviet Army's High Commands in War and Peace, 1941–1992" (Casemate Academic, 2022)

28 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Richard W. Harrison's The Soviet Army's High Commands in War and Peace, 1941-1992 (Casemate Academic, 2022) is the first full treatment of the un...

John Givens, "The Image of Christ in Russian Literature: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Pasternak" (Northern Illinois UP, 2018)

27 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In The Image of Christ in Russian Literature: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Pasternak (Northern Illinois University Press, 2018), Dr. John Givens of ...

Regina Kazyulina, "Women Under Suspicion: Fraternization, Espionage, and Punishment in the Soviet Union During World War II" (U Wisconsin Press, 2025)

23 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Officially, women in the Soviet Union enjoyed a degree of equality unknown elsewhere in Allied countries at the time. However, long-standing norms of ...

Scott Harrison et al., "Socialist Subjectivities: Queering East Germany under Honecker" (U Michigan Press, 2025)

21 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Socialist Subjectivities: Queering East Germany under Honecker (University of Michigan Press, 2025) works within the logics of queer time to rean...

Joseph Kellner, "The Spirit of Socialism: Culture and Belief at the Soviet Collapse" (Cornell UP, 2025)

21 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Spirit of Socialism is a cultural history of the Soviet collapse. It examines the millions of Soviet people who, during the cascading crises of t...

Darius Von Guttner-Sporzynski, "The Jagiellon Dynasty, 1386-1596: Politics, Culture, Diplomacy" (Brepols, 2024)

21 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The volume offers a re-examination of the rise of the Jagiellon dynasty in medieval and early modern Central Europe. Originating in Lithuania and ...

Sean McMeekin, "Stalin's War: A New History of World War II" (Basic Books, 2021)

20 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

World War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its events. But Hitler was ...

Alex J. Kay and David Stahel, "Mass Violence in Nazi-Occupied Europe" (Indiana UP, 2018)

20 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Alex J. Kay (senior lecture of History at Potsdam University in Berlin) and David Stahel (senior lecturer in History at the University of New South Wa...

Volha Bartash, Tomasz Kamusella, and Viktor Shapoval eds., "Papusza/Bronislawa Wajs. Tears of Blood: A Poet's Witness Account of the Nazi Genocide of Roma" (Brill, 2024)

16 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Papusza / Bronisława Wajs. Tears of Blood: A Poet’s Witness Account of the Nazi Genocide of Roma (Brill, 2024) is nothing less of an academic, l...

Juliane Fürst, "Flowers Through Concrete: Explorations in Soviet Hippieland" (Oxford UP, 2021)

13 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Flowers Through Concrete: Explorations in Soviet Hippieland (Oxford University Press, 2021) is the first chronological history of Soviet hippies, ...

Phil Tiemeyer, "Women and the Jet Age: A Global History of Aviation and Flight Attendants" (Cornell UP, 2025)

11 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Women and the Jet Age: A Global History of Aviation and Flight Attendants (Cornell University Press, 2025) is a global history of postwar aviation th...

Decolonizing Ukraine: The Indigenous People of Crimea and Pathways to Freedom

10 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Decolonizing Ukraine, by Dr. Greta Lynn Uehling, illuminates the untold stories of Russia's occupation of Crimea from 2014 to the present, revealing t...

Foreign Aid and State Building in Interwar Romania

04 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of the CEU Review of Books Podcast I sat down with Dr Doina Anca Cretu to talk about her first book, Foreign Aid and State Building i...

NIAS Podcast from the University of Tartu Asia Centre: Migration Policies and Realities in Estonia and Japan

02 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This Nordic Asia Podcast episode explores how Estonia and Japan, two countries under demographic pressure with different immigration histories, are ma...

Sergey Radchenko, "To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

29 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What would it feel like To Run the World? The Soviet rulers spent the Cold War trying desperately to find out. In To Run The World: The Kremlin’s C...

Yaroslav Hrytsak, "Ukraine: The Forging of a Nation" (PublicAffairs, 2024)

25 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the world witnessed the “creative, freewheeling, darkly humorous, and deeply resilient society” that is conte...

Danielle Leavitt, "By the Second Spring: Seven Lives and One Year of the War in Ukraine" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025)

25 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

An intimate, affecting account of life during wartime, told through the lives that have been shattered. Even as scores of Americans rally to the Ukrai...

Ewa Herbst, "Visionaries from Lviv: The Story of a Jewish Hospital" (Academic Studies Press, 2024)

22 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Year 2023 marked 120 years of the Lazarus Jewish Hospital in Lviv (Lwów/Lemberg). This richly illustrated book is a tribute to its place in the once-...

Amy Simon, "Emotions in Yiddish Ghetto Diaries: Encountering Persecutors and Questioning Humanity" (Routledge, 2024)

09 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Emotions in Yiddish Ghetto Diaries: Encountering Persecutors and Questioning Humanity (Routledge, 2024) uses an empathic reading of Yiddish diarists...

Semmy Stalhammer, "Codename Barber: My Father’s Story" (Albert Bonniers Publishers, 2007)

06 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Nazi threat emerges from Germany 1933 and shatters the small town life in Krasnik south of Lublin in eastern Poland. The teenager Mischa Stahlhamm...

Tobias Brinkmann, "Between Borders: The Great Jewish Migration from Eastern Europe" (Oxford UP, 2924)

03 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Between the 1860s and the early 1920s, more than two million Jews moved from Eastern Europe to the United States while smaller groups moved to other d...

Katarina Kušic, "Beyond International Intervention: Politics of Improvement in Serbia" (University of Michigan Press, 2025)

01 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Studies of statebuilding and peacebuilding have been criticized for their disregard of people living the consequences of intervention projects. Beyon...

Antonio J. Muñoz, "Hitler's War Against the Partisans During Operation Barbarossa: June 1941 to the Spring of 1942" (Frontline, 2025)

30 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A detailed history of Nazi anti-partisan warfare on the Eastern Front during Operation Barbarossa. From the start of the war on the Eastern Front, Hi...

Thomas Mutch, "The Dogs of Mariupol: Russia's Invasion and the Forging of Ukraine's Iron Generation" (Biteback, 2025)

29 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In early 2022, as Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s border, Tom Mutch, a freelance war reporter, took a trip to Mariupol to take the temperature of...

Keir Giles, "Who Will Defend Europe?: An Awakened Russia and a Sleeping Continent" (Hurst & Co., 2024)

28 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Who will defend Europe? The answer should be obvious: Europe should be able to defend itself. Yet, for decades, most of the continent enjoyed a defenc...

Greta Lynn Uehling, "Decolonizing Ukraine: The Indigenous People of Crimea and Pathways to Freedom" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025)

26 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Decolonizing Ukraine: The Indigenous People of Crimea and Pathways to Freedom (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025), anthropologist Dr. Greta Lynn Uehling...

Claire Knight, "Stalin's Final Films: Cinema, Socialist Realism, and Soviet Postwar Reality, 1945-1953" (Cornell UP, 2024)

24 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Stalin's Final Films: Cinema, Socialist Realism, and Soviet Postwar Reality, 1945-1953 (Cornell UP, 2024) explores a neglected period in the history ...

Yitzhak Conforti, "Zionism and Jewish Culture: A Study in the Origins of a National Movement" (Academic Studies Press, 2024)

23 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What many people don’t realize is that Zionism is not a monolithic term. From its inception there were rigorous debates about the nature and directi...

Charles Hecker, "Zero Sum: The Arc of International Business in Russia" (Oxford UP, 2025)

22 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today I interviewed Charles Hecker about Zero Sum. The Arc of International Business in Russia (Oxford UP, 2025). Hecker, a journalist and busine...

Jan Borowicz, "Perverse Memory and the Holocaust: A Psychoanalytic Understanding of Polish Bystanders" (Routledge, 2024)

21 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today I interviewed Jan Borowicz about Perverse Memory and the Holocaust: A Psychoanalytic Understanding of Polish Bystanders (Routledge, 2024). "...

Richard Calis, "The Discovery of Ottoman Greece: Knowledge, Encounter, and Belief in the Mediterranean World of Martin Crusius" (Harvard UP, 2025)

19 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the late sixteenth century, a German Lutheran scholar named Martin Crusius compiled an exceptionally rich record of Greek life under Ottoman rule. ...

Júlia Király, "Hungary and Other Emerging EU Countries in the Financial Storm: From Minor Troubles to Global Hurricane" (Springer, 2020)

14 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Donald Trump is putting liberal democracy through its greatest test in 80 years.  None of it is original. His style of rule is straight from the de...

Victoria Khiterer, "Bitter War of Memory: The Babyn Yar Massacre, Aftermath, and Commemoration" (Purdue UP, 2025)

13 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Bitter War of Memory: The Babyn Yar Massacre, Aftermath, and Commemoration (Purdue UP, 2025) discusses the Holocaust in Kyiv and the efforts to memo...

Paul R. Magocsi and Yohanan Petrovskiĭ-Shtern, "Jews and Ukrainians: A Millennium of Co-existence" (U Toronto Press, 2018)

12 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There is much that ordinary Ukrainians do not know about Jews and that ordinary Jews do not know about Ukrainians. As a result, those Jews and Ukraini...

Alex Storozynski, "Spies In My Blood: A Polish Family’s Secret Fight Against Nazis & Communists" (Polestar-Media, 2025)

11 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Spies In My Blood: A Polish Family’s Secret Fight Against Nazis & Communists (Polestar-Media, 2025) is the true story of two brothers raised in New...

Chris Webb and Artur Hojan, "The Chelmno Death Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance" (Ibidem Press, 2019)

10 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Chelmno Death Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance (Ibidem Press, 2019) is a comprehensive account of the Chelmno death camp. Chelmno was not ...

Katerina Krlov, "Homecoming: Holocaust Survivors and Greece, 1941-46" (Brandeis UP, 2025)

09 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Homecoming: Holocaust Survivors and Greece, 1941-46 (Brandeis UP, 2025) records the experiences of Greek Jews who returned to their native country a...

Living Right: Far Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe

08 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What is the growing appeal of fascist idealism for young people? Why is radical nationalism on the rise in Europe and throughout the world? In Living...

Deana Jovanović, "Staging the Promises: Everyday Future-Making in a Serbian Industrial Town" (Cornell UP, 2025)

06 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Built on the shifting grounds of post-Yugoslav transformation, Staging the Promises examines how the residents of Bor — a Serbian copper-mining to...

Charlie English, "The CIA Book Club: The Best-Kept Secret of the Cold War" (Random House, 2025)

05 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For nearly five decades after the Second World War, the Iron Curtain divided Europe, forming the longest and most heavily guarded border on earth. No ...

Catching the China-Europe Express: Logistics, Local Agency & Eurasian Geopolitics in the Polish Borderlands

04 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, we focus on the often-overlooked geographies of Eurasian connectivity with Dr. Wojciech Kębłowski, whose research brings attention...

Michael David-Fox, "Crucibles of Power: Smolensk Under Stalinist and Nazi Rule" (Harvard UP, 2025)

03 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Michael David Fox's Crucibles of Power: Smolensk under Stalinist and Nazi Rule (Harvard UP, 2025) provides a local, close-up look at the everyday w...

Polly Jones, "Gulag Fiction: Labour Camp Literature from Stalin to Putin" (Bloombury, 2024)

26 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Gulag Fiction: Labour Camp Literature from Stalin to Putin (Bloombury, 2024) is a unique exploration of Russian prose fiction about the Soviet labou...

Udi Greenberg, "The End of the Schism: Catholics, Protestants, and the Remaking of Christian Life in Europe, 1880s-1970s" (Harvard UP, 2025)

25 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Reconciliation between Europe's Protestants and Catholics led to a new era of Christian collaboration.  Why did these erstwhile foes end their schis...

John Lechner, "Death Is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare" (Bloombury, 2025)

24 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 2014, a well-trained, mysterious band of mercenaries arrived in Ukraine, part of Russia's first attempt to claim the country as its own. Upon cease...

Alexandra Popoff, "Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century" (Yale UP, 2019)

23 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Memory and truth are malleable and nowhere more so than in the Soviet Union.  To be a writer in that country was to face an ongoing dilemma: conform ...

Geoffrey Roberts, "Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books" (Yale UP, 2022)

22 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this engaging life of the twentieth century’s most self-consciously learned dictator, Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read, how he rea...

Maurizio Ferrera, "Politics and Social Visions: Ideology, Conflict, and Solidarity in the EU" (Oxford UP, 2024)

21 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The starting point of this book is the 'civil war' of ideas that broke out during the early 2010s about the purpose and even the desirability of the E...

Sasha Colby, "The Matryoshka Memoirs: A Story of Ukrainian Forced Labour, the Leica Camera Factory, and Nazi Resistance" (ECW Press, 2023)

19 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Irina Nikifortchuk was 19 years old and a Ukrainian schoolteacher when she was abducted to be a forced laborer in the Leica camera factory in Nazi Ger...

Agnieszka Pasieka, "Living Right: Far-Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe" (Princeton UP, 2024)

18 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Radical nationalism is on the rise in Europe and throughout the world. Living Right: Far-Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe (Princeton Uni...

Understanding Ukraine: A Discussion with Author Yaroslav Trofimov

17 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Yaroslav Trofimov, chief foreign affairs correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, is a native of Kyiv. In this conversation, we discuss two books....

Serhiy Kudelia, "Seize the City, Undo the State: The Inception of Russia's War on Ukraine" (Oxford UP, 2015)

16 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do separatist conflicts arise and spread? When does separatism become a cover for a foreign aggression? How do local communities respond when stat...

Ðermana Kuric on Muslimness in Bosnia

11 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Hizer Mir and Chella Ward talked to Ðermana Kuric about Bosnia and Muslimness, focussing on the ways the history of Muslimness in Bo...

Eli Rubin, "Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity: An Existential History of Chabad Hasidism" (Stanford UP, 2025)

05 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity: An Existential History of Chabad Hasidism (Stanford University Press, 2025), Eli Rubin provides a comprehe...

Research Spotlight: Revenant Project-Revivals of Empire

04 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of the CEU Review of Books podcast host, Andrea Talabér (Managing Editor) is joined by three members of the the ERC-funded project R...

Alexander Hill, "The Routledge Handbook of Soviet and Russian Military Studies" (Routledge, 2025)

01 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Routledge Handbook of Soviet and Russian Military Studies (Routledge, 2025) edited by Alexander Hill brings together historical and contemporary ...

Lilia Topouzova, "Unsilencing: The History and Legacy of the Bulgarian Gulag" (Cornell UP, 2025)

31 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Not many people know that Bulgaria's forced prison camp was in operation throughout the communist regime from 1945 to 1989. In Unsilencing: The Histo...

The Free Speech and Poetry of Ana Blandiana

26 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, we sit down with Director and Producer Diana Nicolae and Editor and Camera Matt Jozwiakowski to discuss their documentary film, "Bet...

Andrew Long, "BRIXMIS and the Secret Cold War: Intelligence Collecting Operations Behind Enemy Lines in East Germany" (Pen and Sword, 2024)

23 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The German Democratic Republic, or East Germany, was the frontline in the Cold War, packed with hundreds of thousands of Soviet and East German troops...

Peter Whitewood, "The Soviet-Polish War and its Legacy: Lenin’s Defeat and the Rise of Stalinism" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

22 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This detailed study traces the history of the Soviet-Polish War (1919-20), the first major international clash between the forces of communism and ant...

Oleksandr Melnyk, "World War II as an Identity Project: Historicism, Legitimacy Contests, and the (Re-) Construction of Political Communities in Ukraine, 1939–1946" (Ibidem, 2022)

22 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

World War II as an Identity Project (Ibidem, 2022) explores the relationship between history, legitimacy, and violence in the building and breaking ...

Vuk Vuksanovic, "Serbia’s Balancing Act: Between Russia and the West" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

21 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Even before its rebirth as a nation in the 1990s, Serbia had acquired a reputation abroad as Russia’s stalwart Slavic ally in the Western Balkans. Y...

Daniela Richterova, "Watching the Jackals: Prague's Covert Liaisons with Cold War Terrorists and Revolutionaries" (Georgetown UP, 2025)

18 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The untold history of Czechoslovakia's complex relations with Middle Eastern terrorists and revolutionaries during the closing decades of the Cold War...

Ariel Evan Mayse, "Laws of the Spirit: Ritual, Mysticism, and the Commandments in Early Hasidism" (Stanford UP, 2024)

16 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Laws of the Spirit: Ritual, Mysticism, and the Commandments in Early Hasidism (Stanford UP, 2024), Ariel Evan Mayse faces up to an enduring quest...

Fractured Alliances: Trump, Ukraine, and Europe's Security Dilemma

15 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, RBI director John Torpey speaks with Estonian parliamentarian and defense expert Kalev Stoicescu about the recent tensions between th...

Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe, "Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, and Cult" (Ibidem Press, 2014)

13 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist (Ibidem Verlag, 2014) is the first comprehensive and scholarly biography of the U...

Sabrina P. Ramet and Lavinia Stan, "East Central Europe Since 1989" (Routledge, 2025)

09 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

East Central Europe Since 1989 (Routledge, 2025)  examines politics, economics, media, religious institutions, transitional justice, gender inequal...

Tamizdat under Putin: A Discussion with Publisher Feliks Sandalov

05 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Russia has a long history of publishers operating from abroad, producing books and periodicals for a Russian-speaking audience. One notable example is...

Stefan Cristian Ionescu, "Justice and Restitution in Post-Nazi Romania: Rebuilding Jewish Lives and Communities, 1944-1950" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

05 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On 23rd August 1944, following the collapse of the pro-Nazi dictatorship of Ion Antonescu, Romania changed sides and abandoned the Axis to join the Al...

Robert C. Austin, "Royal Fraud: The Story of Albania's First and Last King" (Central European UP, 2024)

04 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Listen to this engaging podcast with historian Robert Austin, the author of Royal Fraud: The Story of Albania's First and Last King (Central Europea...

László Borhi, "Survival under Dictatorships: Life and Death in Nazi and Communist Regimes" (Central European UP, 2024)

03 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A complex array of individual responses to the abuse of power by the state is represented in this book in three horrific episodes in the history of Ea...

Victoria Khiterer, "Jewish Pogroms in Kiev During the Russian Civil War, 1918-1920" (Edwin Mellen, 2015)

01 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Jewish Pogroms in Kiev During the Russian Civil War discusses how anti-Jewish violence began during the revolution and civil war 1917-1920 raising qu...

Christina Kiaer, "Collective Body: Aleksandr Deineka at the Limit of Socialist Realism" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

26 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Dislodging the avant-garde from its central position in the narrative of Soviet art, Collective Body: Aleksandr Deineka at the Limit of Socialist Rea...

Doina Anca Cretu, "Foreign Aid and State Building in Interwar Romania" (Stanford UP, 2025)

26 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The decades following World War I were a period of political, social, and economic transformation for Central and Eastern Europe. Foreign Aid and Sta...

Shay A. Pilnik, "The Ravine of Memory: Babyn Yar Between the Holocaust and the Great Patriotic War" (Purdue UP, 2025)

22 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Nazis and their collaborators buried over 100,000 victims at Babyn Yar, a ravine in modern-day Ukraine. Most of the individuals were Jewish, makin...

Noa Shashar, "The Marital Knot: Agunot in the Ashkenazi Realm, 1648-1850" (Brandeis UP, 2024)

21 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

 In The Marital Knot: Agunot in the Ashkenazi Realm, 1648 - 1850 (Brandeis UP, 2024), Noa Shashar sheds light on Jewish family life in the early m...

Emine Ö Evered, "Prohibition in Turkey: Alcohol and the Politics of Identity" (U Texas Press, 2024)

19 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Historian Emine Ö. Evered’s Prohibition in Turkey: Alcohol and the Politics of Identity (University of Texas Press, 2024) investigates the histo...

Marek Kohn, "The Stories Old Towns Tell: A Journey Through Cities at the Heart of Europe" (Yale UP, 2023)

17 Feb 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...

Adelina Stefan, "Vacationing in Dictatorships: International Tourism in Socialist Romania and Franco's Spain" (Cornell UP, 2024)

17 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Vacationing in Dictatorships: International Tourism in Socialist Romania and Franco's Spain (Cornell UP, 2024) examines the political effects of inte...

Saulius Suziedelis, "Crisis, War, and the Holocaust in Lithuania" (Academic Studies Press, 2025)

14 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Crisis, War, and the Holocaust in Lithuania is the first scholarly English-language study of Lithuania during World War II which utilizes previously ...

Magdalena Buchczyk, "Weaving Europe, Crafting the Museum: Textiles, History and Ethnography at the Museum of European Cultures, Berlin" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

10 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Weaving Europe, Crafting the Museum: Textiles, history and ethnography at the Museum of European Cultures, Berlin (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Dr. Magdalena...

Finlandization to ‘Finland Boom‘ in Japan: Finland’s Public Diplomacy in Japan

08 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Finland, a minor player on the international arena and burdened with the tag of ‘Finlandization’ during much of the post-WWII period, has won surp...

Peter Whitewood, "The Red Army and the Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Soviet Military" (UP of Kansas, 2015)

07 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On June 11, 1937, a closed military court ordered the execution of a group of the Soviet Union's most talented and experienced army officers, includin...

Jonathan Haslam, "Hubris: The American Origins of Russia's War against Ukraine" (Harvard UP, 2025)

06 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 should not have taken the world by surprise. The attack escalated a war that began in 2014 wi...

"We Remember Lest the World Forget: Memories of the Minsk Ghetto" (JewishGen, 2018)

02 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We Remember Lest the World Forget: Memories of the Minsk Ghetto (JewishGen, 2018) is a collection of memories from child survivors of the Minsk Ghett...

Ewa Stańczyk, "Cartoons and Antisemitism: Visual Politics of Interwar Poland" (U Press of Mississippi, 2024)

01 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Antisemitic caricatures had existed in Polish society since at least the mid-nineteenth century. But never had the devastating impacts of this imagery...