New Books in Eastern European Studies

The Greek Junta and the International System: A Case Study of Southern European Dictatorships, 1967-74 (Routledge, 2020) examines the international dimensions of the Greek military dictatorship of 1967 to 1974 and uses it as a case study to evaluate the major shifts occurring in the international system during a period of rapid change.The policies of the major nation-states in both East and West were determined by realistic Cold War considerations. At the same time, the Greek junta, a profoundly anti-modernist force, failed to cope with an evolving international agenda and the movement towards international cooperation. Denouncing it became a rallying point both for international organizations and for human rights activists, and it enabled the EEC to underscore the notion that democracy was an integral characteristic of the European identity.This volume is an original in-depth study of an under-researched subject and the multiple interactions of a complex era. It is divided into three sections: Part I deals with the interaction of the Colonels with state actors; Part II deals with the responses of international organizations and the rising transnational human rights agenda for which the Greek junta became a totemic rallying point; and Part III compares and contrasts the transitions to democracy in Southern Europe, and analyses the different models of transition and region-building, and how they intersected with attempts to foster a European identity. The Greek dictatorship may have been a parochial military regime, but its rise and fall interacted with signifi cant international trends and can therefore serve as a salient case study for promoting a better understanding of international and European trends during the 1960s and 1970s.This book will be of much interest to students of Cold War studies, international history, foreign policy, transatlantic relations and International Relations, in general. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies

In I Saw It: Ilya Selvinsky and the Legacy of Bearing Witness to the Shoah (Academic Studies Press, 2013), based on archival and field research and previously unknown historical evidence, Maxim D. Shrayer introduces the work of Ilya Selvinsky, the first Jewish-Russian poet to depict the Holocaust (Shoah) in the occupied Soviet territories. In January 1942, while serving as a military journalist, Selvinsky witnessed the immediate aftermath of the massacre of thousands of Jews outside the Crimean city of Kerch, and thereafter composed and published poems about it. Shrayer painstakingly reconstructs the details of the Nazi atrocities witnessed by Selvinsky, and shows that in 1943, as Stalin's regime increasingly refused to report the annihilation of Jews in the occupied territories, Selvinsky paid a high price for his writings and actions. This book features over 60 rare photographs and illustrations and includes translations of Selvinsky's principal Shoah poems. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies

German Blood, Slavic Soil: How Nazi Königsberg Became Soviet Kaliningrad (Cornell UP, 2023) reveals how Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, twentieth-century Europe's two most violent revolutionary regimes, transformed a single city and the people who lived there. During World War II, this single city became an epicenter in the apocalyptic battle between their two regimes.Drawing on sources and perspectives from both sides, Nicole Eaton explores not only what Germans and Soviets thought about each other, but also how the war brought them together. She details an intricate timeline, first describing how Königsberg, a seven-hundred-year-old German port city on the Baltic Sea and lifelong home of Immanuel Kant, became infamous in the 1930s as the easternmost bastion of Hitler's Third Reich and the launching point for the Nazis' genocidal war in the East. She then describes how, after being destroyed by bombing and siege warfare in 1945, Königsberg became Kaliningrad, the westernmost city of Stalin's Soviet Union. Königsberg/Kaliningrad is the only city to have been ruled by both Hitler and Stalin as their own―in both wartime occupation and as integral territory of the two regimes.German Blood, Slavic Soil presents an intimate look into the Nazi-Soviet encounter during World War II. Eaton impressively shows how this outpost city, far from the centers of power in Moscow and Berlin, became a closed-off space where Nazis and Stalinists each staged radical experiments in societal transformation and were forced to reimagine their utopias in dialogue with the encounter between the victims and proponents of the two regimes.Nicole Eaton is Associate Professor of History at Boston College.Eric Grube is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Boston College. He also received his PhD from Boston College in the summer of 2022. He studies modern German and Austrian history, with a special interest in right-wing paramilitary organizations across interwar Bavaria and Austria. “Pro-Fascist, Anti-Nazi: Austrian Catholics weaponized religion against Hitler but for fascism," Commonweal, 2023 "Borderland Brothers: Austrofascist Competition and Cooperation with National Socialists, 1936–1938," Journal of Austrian Studies, 2023 "Casualties of War? Refining the Civilian-Military Dichotomy in World War I", Madison Historical Review, 2019 "Racist Limitations on Violence: The Nazi Occupation of Denmark", Essays in History, 2017. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies

In this episode of the CEU Press Podcast Series, host Bálint Madlovics sat down for a fascinating discussion on the impact of the war on Ukraine’s patronal democracy, with his co-editor Bálint Magyar and with Oksana Huss, Mikhail Minakov and Kálmán Mizsei, who all contributed to the new volumes from CEU Press on the Russia-Ukraine War. Volume one is entitled Ukraine's Patronal Democracy and the Russian Invasion and volume two Russia's Imperial Endeavor and Its Geopolitical Consequences.Both volumes are available open access through the Opening the Future initiative. You can download volume one on Ukraine here and volume two on Russia here.The CEU Press Podcast Series delves into various aspects of the publishing process: from crafting a book proposal, finding a publisher, responding to peer review feedback on the manuscript, to the subsequent distribution, promotion and marketing of academic books. We will also talk to series editors and authors, who will share their experiences of getting published and talk about their series or books.Interested in the CEU Press’s publications? Click here to find out more here.Stay tuned for future episodes and subscribe to our podcast to be the first to be notified. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies

The common image of World War II (1939-1945) is that of swift armored maneuver advances supported by combined arms, especially overwhelming air support. What often is neglected is that the difficult and often brutal task of urban combat was a common feature of the conflict as well. Although a few famous examples such as Stalingrad, Leningrad, and later Berlin receive considerable attention, this is too often a neglected aspect of historical examination of the Eastern Front. In response to this, Anthony Tucker-Jones outlines several other important incidents of urban combat in his book Battle of the Cities: Urban Warfare on the Eastern Front (Pen and Sword Military, 2023).Anthony Tucker-Jones spent nearly twenty years in the British Intelligence community before establishing himself as a defense writer and military historian. He has written extensively on aspects of warfare in the Second World War and has written over thirty books. Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar whose research areas are related to Civilizational Analysis, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, military history, War studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, as well as Russian and East European history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies

Natasha Wheatley is an Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University. Her bold and riveting debut monograph, The Life and Death of States: Central Europe and the Transformation of Modern Sovereignty (Princeton University Press, 2023), narrates the transition from empire to nation-states in the heartlands of Europe once governed by the Habsburg Empire. The book traces the modern history of sovereignty over one hundred tumultuous years, explaining how a regime of nation-states theoretically equal under international law emerged from the ashes of a dynastic empire. The Life and Death of States reveals how Habsburg Europe was the crucible for our contemporary world order. Wheatley's aim is to theorize from Central Europe to see how sovereignty can be (re)produced in a complex world. The study uncovers how the Central European experience crystallized legal questions that would arise again in the era of global decolonization, connecting the story of the end of empire to the birth of new nations throughout the twentieth century. In this respect, the work serves not only as a history of Central Europe but also a "prehistory" of the era of decolonization.Vladislav Lilic is a doctoral candidate in Modern European History at Vanderbilt University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies

What do the histories of currency and monetary policy tell us about societies at large, political structures, and cultures? Ekaterina Pravilova and Rebecca Spang tackle these questions, respectively, in two important books that examine the history of the Russian ruble from the time of Catherine the Great through the Soviet period, and the history of money during the time of time of the French Revolution. Their conversation delves not only into the past, but into the economic theories and assumptions that underlay the present. Pravilova is the author of The Ruble: A Political History (Oxford UP, 2023). Spang is the author of Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution (Harvard UP, 2017).Stephen V. Bittner is Special Topics Editor at Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History and Professor of History at Sonoma State University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies

Picturing Russian Empire (Oxford UP, 2023) appears as Russia’s imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine grinds on. The stakes could not be higher. It follows that grappling with Russia’s imperial history is inescapable. After all, “[s]elective, exaggerated or patently false reimaginings” of the past “have been central to Russia’s justification of its claims on its neighbor to the southwest,” write today’s guests in the introduction to his new edited volume. Picturing Russian Empire offers an rich, sweeping overview of the history of Russia from the tenth century to the present through the connections between empire and visuality. Using thought provoking images, Picturing Russian Empire presents readers with a visual tour of the lands and peoples that constituted the Russian Empire and those that confronted it, defied it, accommodated to it, and shaped it at various times in more than a millennium of history.Bringing together scholars and experts from across the world and from various disciplines, Picturing Russian Empire consistently raises big historical questions to stimulate readers to think about images as embedded in the diverse, lived worlds of the Russian empire. The authors challenge the reader to not only to see images as the creations of individuals, but as objects circulating among viewers in a variety of contexts, creating new impressions, meanings, and experiences.Valerie A. Kivelson is Thomas N. Tentler Collegiate Professor of History and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of History at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Cartographies of Tsardom, Desperate Magic, and Autocracy in the Provinces.Joan Neuberger Professor emerita of at the University of Texas at Austin. Her books include: This Thing of Darkness: Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible in Stalin’s Russia (Cornell: 2019) and Hooliganism: Crime, Culture & Power in St. Petersburg, 1900-1914.Sergei Kozlov is senior researcher at Tiumen State University in Siberia, Russia and a trained medievalist.Erika Monahan is the author of The Merchants of Siberia: Trade in Early Modern Eurasia (Cornell UP, 2016) and a 2023-2024 Alexander von Humboldt Fellow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies

Well-known for his work in Critical Romani Studies, Jan Selling talks with Lavinia Stan about his latest book. Centered on Scandinavia, Romani Liberation: A Northern Perspective on Emancipatory Struggles and Progress (Central European UP, 2022) challenges the stereotype describing Romani as passive and incapable of responsibility and agency. Selling also criticizes benevolent but paternalistic attitudes that center on Romani victimhood. The interview offers an overview of the various chapters, the rationale behind the book, its link to Critical Romani Studies, and analysis of Romani emancipation in Sweden and beyond. In an engaging interview that shows listeners his passion for the topic, Selling highlights how various historical contexts have enabled or impeded the success of the struggles against discrimination and for equal rights, emphasizing Romani activism as a precondition for liberation. Listen to the interview to find out more!Lavinia Stan is a professor of political science at St. Francis Xavier University in Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies

Czar Alexander III (1845-1894) is reported to have stated that "Russia only has two allies: the army and the navy." Military power has always been important to Russia in establishing itself as a great power, especially as the largest country in the world spanning two continents. Beginning with the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars (1789-1815), Russia has been involved in many major military conflicts that have engulfed Europe to the present day - especially the on-going war in Ukraine since February 2022. What is the exact nature of the Russian army, and what can be said about its long-term historical role as the guardian of Russian sovereignty? These are the subjects addressed comprehensively in Roger R. Reese's Russia's Army: A History from the Napoleonic Wars to the War in Ukraine (University of Oklahoma Press, 2023). Unlike most works that address only a specific period of Russian military history, Reese's book examines the Czarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods.Roger R. Reese is Professor of History at Texas A&M University and has authored numerous articles and books on the Russian military, including Why Stalin's Soldiers Fought: The Red Army's Military Effectiveness in World War II.Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar whose research areas are related to Civilizational Analysis, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, military history, War studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, as well as Russian and East European history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies