The Eurasian Knot

Ukraine's Euromaidan

23 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In the winter of 2013-14, protests erupted in Kyiv, Ukraine. Their goal was to oppose President Viktor Yanukovich’s rejection of the EU Association ...

KGB Same-Sex Honey Traps

16 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most salacious and storied methods of KGB spycraft during the Cold War was the honey trap. Agents would get an informant to seduce a target...

The Bolshevik Rank and File

09 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In 1917, the Bolshevik Party had roughly 24,000 members. A decade later, it boasted about 1.2 million. Recruitment came in waves and so did the purges...

Stalin's Last Days

05 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Joseph Stalin died today, March 5, seventy-three years ago. So, I thought it would be a good idea to dig out, re-edit and remaster, the interview I di...

Searching for Belief during the Soviet End Times

02 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

When societies are in crisis, people tend to seek alternative belief systems to give them comfort, explain a complex world, or fill a space left vacan...

Moscow's Hunt for Olympic Gold

23 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

As a Cold War kid, I remember the intense rivalry between the United States and USSR during the Olympics. Of course, we remember the US’ boycott in ...

The Long History of American-Russian Relations

16 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

A quick scan of the hundreds of books on US-Russia relations gives the impression that the two countries only met in the 20th century. But relations g...

REEES Faculty Spotlight: Gregor Thum

09 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The history of borders and nations in Eastern Europe is fraught. What we even call the region is a site of contestation. Is it “Eastern Europe,” “...

Russia Starts Here

02 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

What is Russia? There’s no easy answer. Travelers, scholars, philosophers, and journalists have pondered the question for centuries. And though answ...

The Further Adventures of the Black Russian

26 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

A decade ago, Vladimir Alexandrov published an excellent biography, The Black Russian, about an unknown historical figure–Fredrick Bruce Thomas. Tho...

The Great Reforms

20 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Alexander II’s Great Reforms were sweeping. They freed over 22 million serfs, overhauled the judicial, university, and municipal systems, and loosen...

Post-Soviet Graffiti

05 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

I love street art. And I don’t care in what form. Beautifully crafted murals. Spraypainted gang tags. Scrawls on bathroom stalls. Even guerilla stic...

The Stiliagi

15 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A new youth subculture emerged in the Soviet Union in the late 1940s and early 1950s–the Stiliagi. Roughly translated as “the stylish,” these yo...

Fraternization and Survival During WWII

24 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Soviet ideology called for the emancipation of women. Soviet women would be active participants in public life, unburdened by the home, children, and ...

The Art of War

17 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

About two years ago, I was brought on to a podcast project started by the Global Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh. The initial pitch was...

How Peat Electrified the USSR

27 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What is peat? We had no idea until the Eurasian Knot spoke to Katja Bruisch about how this coal-like soil was an energy source in Russia and the Sovie...

Murder Mystery in Moscow

20 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

I’ve grown to admire historians like Catherine Merridale. You know, those historians who buck academic conventions to write for a non-academic audie...

How Konigsberg Became Kaliningrad

13 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Prussian city of Konigsberg is well-known as the birthplace of Immanuel Kant. But in many ways it’s also a microcosm for the twentieth century. ...

The Judeo-Bolshevik Myth

06 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

I’ve been thinking about the use of “they” in our political rhetoric. In some respects, this third-person plural pronoun is indicative of politi...

Romani, Waste, and Race in Bulgaria

29 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There’s a paradox at the center of Elana Resnick’s book, Refusing Sustainability: Race and Environmentalism in a Changing Europe. EU policies of e...

Rebel Russia

22 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There are many stereotypes about Russia. But perhaps one of the strangest is that Russians prefer a strong hand, are politically passive, even apoliti...

Russians in San Francisco

15 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

After 1917, San Francisco’s small Russian community exploded with new arrivals. Over the next decade, thousands quit Soviet Russia, often via the Fa...

Soviet Jokes Under Stalin

08 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What power do jokes have in authoritarian societies? I’ve been thinking about this recently as Trump further consolidates power. Turn on any America...

Video Games of Eastern Europe

02 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Games have a long history. Several are centuries old. But a new crop of games has emerged over the last century. Elaborate board games, role playing g...

The Deforestation of Eastern Ukraine

26 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This week we check-in with frequent EK guest Brian Milakovsky to learn about the destruction of forests in Ukraine. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukrai...

From Great Fear to the Great Terror

19 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As frequent listeners know, my advisor and friend Arch Getty passed away from cancer a few months ago. I was recently in Los Angeles to attend his mem...

Communists and NY's Hotel Workers Union

12 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1912, a strike of 18,000 restaurant and hotel workers in New York City birthed the Hotel and Restaurant Employees International, a union representi...

City Symphonies

04 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What does it mean for the city to be a symphony? True, city symphonies are a silent film genre best represented by Dziga Vertov and Walter Ruttmann. T...

Russia's 1993 Constitutional Crisis

22 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In early October 1993, tanks pummeled the Russian Duma in central Moscow. It was a dark mirror of just two years prior when Boris Yeltsin definitely c...

Anthropology of Oil

08 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Yale anthropologist Doug Rogers visited Pitt back in April. The Eurasian Knot couldn’t resist pulling him into the studio. Doug was one of the earli...

Green Cities in the USSR and Brazil

01 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What makes a happy city? That is, what makes a city livable and responsive to humans’ physical, emotional and cultural needs? Over the last century,...

Abortion (Bio)politics in Russia

16 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the waning decades of the Soviet Union, abortion was the main form of birth control. For example, official statistics from the late 1970s report th...

Romanian Presidential Elections

02 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On May 17, the centrist, pro-EU Nicusor Dan narrowly defeated George Simion, a far-right populist, in Romania’s Presidential Election. The bout was ...

Remembering J. Arch Getty

26 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Last week, our friend, mentor, teacher, and comrade, J. Arch Getty, died from his battle with lung cancer. As a way to remember him, here’s an inter...

Muslim Refugees in the Ottoman Empire

19 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Between the 1850s and World War I, about one million North Caucasian Muslims fled to the Ottoman Empire. Some, like the Circassians, ran from a Russia...

Migration and Climate Change

12 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Few migrants report climate change as a specific push to leave their home. Climate change is more an extra add-on to existing precarity. According to ...

Birobidzhan

05 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Jews presented a particular national problem in the Soviet Union. Though seen as one of the many oppressed minorities in the Russian Empire, there wer...

Cold War Pen Pals

28 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

During WWII, the Soviet Women’s Antifascist Committee started an experiment–a pen pal campaign with American women to promote the friendship betwe...

Ukraine in the Global Food System

21 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Did you know that Ukraine is the fourth largest corn exporter globally? This is not the beginning of a Soviet joke. . . Ukraine plays a crucial role o...

Orthodoxy's Social Gospel

14 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In his memoir of life as a parish Orthodox priest in the 19th century, I. S. Belliustin wrote that the clergy was “humiliated, oppressed, downt...

Kicking the Hydrocarbon Habit

07 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

One daunting challenge to addressing climate change is to kick our addiction to hydrocarbons. But this is easier said than done. Hydrocarbons remain t...

Seizing the Donbas

31 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 2014, in the wake of the Maidan in Kyiv and Russia’s annexation of Crimea, small groups of Russian-backed militias began seizing towns in the Don...

Soviet Modernity

24 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Crucibles of Power: Smolensk under Stalinist and Nazi Rule Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet...

Terror and Democracy in the Soviet Union

17 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Wendy Goldman has researched and written about the Soviet Union for almost 40 years. And her topics have been wide ranging– women, feminism, revolut...

Withering Water in Central Asia and East Africa

10 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Water is life. A cliché and undeniable reality. So, what happens when climate change imperils water access? This episode, the second in our Eurasian ...

Climate Change and Authoritarianism

17 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Debates about climate change and what to do about it occur a perilous political climate. It’s a problem that requires international cooperation. But...

Recording Georgians in WWI POW Camps

10 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1916, the German anthropologist Rudolf Pöch and musicologist Robert Lach set out to the Eger prisoner of war camp with a unique research agenda: t...

Intellectual Roots of Neoliberalism

03 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Neoliberalism has so many meanings that some say it has no meaning. Nailing down a consensus is also hampered by the fact that no one calls themselves...

Saving Seeds During the Siege of Leningrad

27 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1941, as Nazi forces laid siege to Leningrad, a group of Soviet botanists faced an unthinkable choice: eat their life’s work, a rare seed bank, o...

Russian Antifa vs Neo-Nazis

20 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Vladimir Kozlov’s new book Shramy (Scars) explores street battles between anti-fascists and neo-Nazi skinheads in Moscow during the late 2000s. Kozl...

Romani Music and NGOs

13 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Who speaks for whom within the Romani rights movement today? This is the question that drives Adriana Helbig’s investigation into the relationship b...

Introducing: The Eurasian Climate Brief

03 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The 2024 UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) ended in late November in Baku. Two weeks of intense climate negotiations unveiled deep divides—partic...

The Russia and China Brain Trusts

23 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Who are those “experts” who sit in Washington DC and come up with policy toward China and Russia? You know, those academics, journalists, and thin...

A Tale of Two Nationalisms

16 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Nationalists are not born. They are made. But how? That journey is far trickier. Fabian Baumann’s award-winning book, Dynasty Divided: A Family Hist...

Adapting Master and Margarita

25 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 2020, Russian-American filmmaker Michael Lockshin and his co-writer, Roman Kantor, were offered an impossible task: to adapt Mikhail Bulgakov’s&n...

Georgia in Crisis

18 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Bryan Gigantino, co-host of the podcast Reimagining Soviet Georgia, on the context and causes for the current political crisis in Georgia.The p...

The World of Soviet Dissidents

11 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Soviet dissidents have long been objects of fascination. Who were they? What made them dissent? What did they believe? And what did they endure at the...

A Deep Dive into Kabardino-Balkaria

04 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Ian Lanzillotti guides through the history of Kabardino-Balkaria in his book Land, Community, and the State in the Caucasus published by Blooms...

Soviet DIY Folk Museums

28 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Erin Hutchinson on her award-winning article, “Gathering the Nation in the Village: Intellectuals and the Cultural Politics of Nationality in...

Intimate Lives of International Communism

21 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Maurice Casey on the “lost world” of international communism in his book, Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism’s Forgotten Radical...

Gulag Memory in Russia’s Far North

14 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Tyler Kirk on After the Gulag: A History of Memory in Russia's Far North published by Indiana University Press.The post Gulag Memory in Russia’...

The Russia That Was Lost

07 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Pavel Khazanov on The Russia That We Have Lost: Pre-Soviet Past as Anti-Soviet Discourse published by the University of Wisconsin Press.The pos...

Free Marc Fogel!

30 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Ambassador Eric Rubin on the efforts to free Marc Fogel, an American serving 14 years in the Russian prison for possessing 17 g of medical mari...

A New History of Northern Eurasia

23 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guests: Marina Mogilner and Ilya Gerasimov on their new textbook, A New Imperial History of Northern Eurasia, 600–1700: From Russian to Global Histo...

The Sound of Socialism, Part 3

09 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Andrea Bohlman on the curious history of the sound postcard in People's Republic of Poland.The post The Sound of Socialism, Part 3 appeared fir...

Women in Russian Politics

03 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Valeria Umanets on women in municipal governance in the Soviet Union and under Putin.The post Women in Russian Politics appeared first on The E...

Illiberalism and Civil Society in Hungary

26 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Daniel Mikecz on Civil Movements in an Illiberal Regime: Political Activism in Hungary published by Central European University Press.The post ...

The Sound of Socialism, Part 2

19 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Matthew Kendall on his article “Room for Noise in Soviet Sound Recording” in the Winter 2023 issue of the Slavic Review.The post The Sound...

The Sound of Socialism, Part 1

12 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Gabrielle Cornish on the sound of Lenin's voice and other sounds of socialism.The post The Sound of Socialism, Part 1 appeared first on The Eur...

The Eastern International

05 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Masha Kirasirova on The Eastern International: Arabs, Central Asians, and Jews in the Soviet Union's Anticolonial Empire published by Oxford Un...

The Soviet Bid to Run the World

29 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Sergey Radchenko on To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power published by Cambridge University Press.The post The Soviet...

The Rise and Fall of Yevgeny Prigozhin

01 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guests: Anna Arutunyan and Mark Galeotti on their new book Downfall: Prigozhin, Putin, and the New Fight for the Future of Russia published by Penguin...

Russians in Latvia

24 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Kevin Platt on Border Conditions: Russian-Speaking Latvians Between World Orders published by Cornell University Press.The post Russians in La...

Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip

17 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Lisa Kirschenbaum on Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists: Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip published by Cambridge University Pr...

Soviet Afghan War and Islam

10 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Vassily Klimentov on A Slow Reckoning: The USSR, the Afghan Communists, and Islam published by Cornell University Press.The post Soviet Afghan ...

Populist Elitism in Russia and the US

03 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Alexandar Mikhailovic on the unlikely convergence of the American and Russian far-right.The post Populist Elitism in Russia and the US appeared...

Soviet Industrial Ecology

20 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Elena Kochetkova on wood, forests and industrial ecology in the Soviet Union.The post Soviet Industrial Ecology appeared first on The Eurasian ...

Everyday War in Donbas

13 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Greta Uehling on the ethics of care in Everyday War: The Conflict over Donbas, Ukraine published by Cornell University Press.The post Everyday ...

Sugarland

06 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Artan Hoxha on his new book, Sugarland: The Transformation of the Countryside in Communist Albania published by Central European University Pre...

Citizen Poet

29 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Russian poet Dmitrii Bykov on the War in Ukraine, the role of art in politics, satire, his poisoning in 2019, protest, love and family.The post...

Baku Oil and the Soviet State

22 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Sara Brinegar on her book The Power and Politics of Oil in the Soviet South Caucasus: Periphery Unbound, 1920-29 published by Bloomsbury.The po...

Gleaning for Communism

15 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Xenia Cherkaev on her book Gleaning for Communism: The Soviet Socialist Household in Theory and Practice published by Cornell University Press....

The Tunguska Mystery

08 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Andy Bruno on his new book Tunguska: A Siberian Mystery and its Environmental Legacy published by Cambridge University Press.The post The Tungu...

Sesame Street in Russia

01 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Natasha Lance Rogoff on making Sesame Street in Russia in the turbulent 1990s.The post Sesame Street in Russia appeared first on The Eurasian K...

Soviet Investigation of Nazi War Crimes

25 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Paula Chan on the Extraordinary State Commission and its investigations in the Nazi atrocities in the Soviet Union.The post Soviet Investigatio...

The Soviet Century

18 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Karl Schlogel on the lost world of Soviet civilization.The post The Soviet Century appeared first on The Eurasian Knot. Hosted on Acast. See ac...

Black Skies Over Krasnoyarsk

11 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Mariia Koskina on Siberian industrialization, the environment and the black skies over Krasnoyarsk.The post Black Skies Over Krasnoyarsk appear...

Revisiting Nagorno-Karabakh

04 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guests: Tigran Grigoryan (The Regional Center for Democracy and Security) and Kelsey Rice (Berry College) revisiting the ongoing conflict between Arme...

The Soviet Avant Garde

26 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Natalia Krylova on life, love, language, and the Soviet Avant Garde.The post The Soviet Avant Garde appeared first on The Eurasian Knot. Hosted...

Russia’s Prison Knocking Language

16 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How did generations of Russian revolutionaries communicate in prison? Especially under strict surveillance, censorship and enforced silence? One way w...

Ukraine’s Gloomy Winter

09 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Brian Milakovsky with a grim update on Ukraine, the war, and the shrinking prospects of even a lousy peace.The post Ukraine’s Gloomy Winter a...

A Century Without Lenin

02 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Christopher Read on Vladimir Lenin's legacy 100 years since his death.The post A Century Without Lenin appeared first on The Eurasian Knot. Hos...

Genealogy in Russia

26 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Maria Lotsmanova on her genealogical journey to find information about her repressed great-grandfather, Jacob Jansen.The post Genealogy in Russ...

The Black Russian

12 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Vladimir Alexandrov on The Black Russian published by Grove Press.The post The Black Russian appeared first on The Eurasian Knot. Hosted on Ac...

Recording Russia

05 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Gabriella Safran on Recording Russia: Trying to Listen in the Nineteenth Century published by Cornell University Press.The post Recording Russi...

Making the Soviet Jew

01 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Sasha Senderovich on How the Soviet Jew Was Made published by Harvard University Press.The post Making the Soviet Jew appeared first on The Eur...

Defection and the Cold War

17 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Erik Scott on defection, the Cold War, and the regulation of borders and movement in a globalizing world.The post Defection and the Cold War ap...

Ainu Fever

10 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Roma Shatrov is the founder of the Silent Cape Nature Park in Sakhalin. Irina Grudova is Ainu, the indigenous inhabitants of Sakhalin. Roma is obsesse...

Fakes, Forgeries, and Frauds

03 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Guest: Ilya Vinitsky on the persistence of fakes, forgeries, and frauds in Russian literary culture.The post Fakes, Forgeries, and Frauds appeared fir...

The Cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh

27 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Guests: Rafael Khachaturian and Richard Antaramian on Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh.The post The Cleansing of Nago...