New Books in Russian and Eurasian Studies

In 1986 Soviet Ukraine, two boys and two girls are welcomed into the world in a Donetsk maternity ward. Following a Soviet tradition of naming things after prominent Communist leaders from far away, a local party functionary offers great material benefits for naming children after Ernst Thälmann, the leader of the German Communist Party from 1925 to 1933. The fateful decision is made, and the local newspaper presents the newly born Ernsts and Thälmas in a photo on the front page, forever tying four families together.In Cecil the Lion Had to Die (HURI, 2023), Olena Stiazhkina follows these families through radical transformations when the Soviet Union unexpectedly implodes, independent Ukraine emerges, and neoimperial Russia occupies Ukraine's Crimea and parts of the Donbas. Just as Stiazhkina's decision to write in Ukrainian as part of her civic stance--performed in this book that begins in Russian and ends in Ukrainian--the stark choices of family members take them in different directions, presenting a multifaceted and nuanced Donbas.A tour de force of stylistic registers, intertwining stories, and ironic voices, this novel is a must-read for those who seek deeper understanding of how Ukrainian history and local identity shapes war with Russia.Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a Preceptor in Ukrainian at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Michael W. Doyle's book Cold Peace: Avoiding the New Cold War (Liveright, 2023) offers an urgent examination of the world barreling toward a new Cold War.By 1990, the first Cold War was ending. The Berlin Wall had fallen and the Warsaw Pact was crumbling; following Russia’s lead, cries for democracy were being embraced by a young Chinese populace. The post–Cold War years were a time of immense hope and possibility. They heralded an opportunity for creative cooperation among nations, an end to ideological strife, perhaps even the beginning of a stable international order of liberal peace.But the days of optimism are over.As renowned international relations expert Michael Doyle makes hauntingly clear, we now face the devastating specter of a new Cold War, this time orbiting the trilateral axes of Russia, the United States, and China, and exacerbated by new weapons of cyber warfare and more insidious forms of propaganda.Such a conflict at this phase in our global history would have catastrophic repercussions, Doyle argues, stymieing global collaboration efforts that are key to reversing climate change, preventing the next pandemic, and securing nuclear nonproliferation. The recent, devastating invasion of Ukraine is both an example and an augur of the costs that lay in wait.However, there is hope.Putin is not Stalin, Xi is not Mao, and no autocrat is a modern Hitler. There is also an unprecedented level of shared global interest in prosperity and protecting the planet from environmental disaster.While it is unlikely that the United States, Russia, and China will ever establish a “warm peace,” there are significant, reasonable compromises between nations that can lead to a détente. While the future remains very much in doubt, the elegant set of accords and non-subversion pacts Doyle proposes in this book may very well save the world.Andrew O. Pace is a historian of moral dilemmas of US foreign relations and an adjunct professor of history at Salt Lake Community College. He is a co-host of the Diplomatic History Channel on the New Books Network and is currently working on a book about the reversal in US foreign policy from victory at all costs in World War II to peace at any price in the Vietnam War. He can be reached at apace24@slcc.edu or via andrewopace.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

In the current context, where Vladimir Putin justifies his war against Ukraine by insisting on an inevitable, unbroken teleology that binds Kyiv to Moscow, he need to critically reexamine such interpretations is painfully evident. Christian Raffensperger and Donald Ostrowski's book The Ruling Families of Rus: Clan, Family and Kingdom (Reaktion Books, 2023) takes a brave and important step in that direction by charting a history of Kyivan Rus’ through the framework of a history of families. The Ruling Families of Rus is not polemical; rather, through an erudite and trenchant exploration of the region’s history through local families and the marriages that manifested their priorities and strategies, this book reveals a fascinating history that brings us much closer to how ruling elites at the time approached and understood their world while also including women in histories that have often been told by “reading past” the roles women played. In short, this fascinating examination of the development of Rus, Lithuania, Muscovy, and Tver and their relationships with the Mongols, Byzantines, and others reveals a history close to the sources and quite different from the one Vladimir Putin tells.The Ruling Families of Rus will appeal to scholars interested in the medieval history of eastern Europe. It contains beautifully produced illustrations and contextualized stories that will be a treasured resource for those who teach about this region and period. Have a listen to this conversation to get a sense of why.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/russian-studies

Investigating Babyn Yar: Shadows from the Valley of Death (Lexington Books, 2023) pieces together the story of the destruction of Kyiv's Jews using history's shattered fragments. Martin Dean traces their journey out of the city, using discarded clothing and distinctive terrain as a trail of breadcrumbs to identify the killing site in the ravine. Shadowy figures in photographs and escape stories from the mass grave reveal the suffering of many that is documented by the survival of just a few. Using aerial photographs, ground photographs, and extensive eye-witness testimony, the author locates specific incidents in the topography to explain what happened on September 29-30, 1941. Interwoven into the main narrative, this book examines the massacre's broader context. Respective chapters describe efforts by Jews to flee the city, the escalation of Nazi mass shootings, and the plunder of Jewish property. During its occupation of Kyiv, the Gestapo established a network of prison camps and deployed a special unit to exhume and burn the corpses at Babyn Yar, covering up the crime before their hasty retreat. Postwar, the ravine was scarred by a terrible mudslide in 1961. Then Soviet redevelopment and memorial plans sought to erase both the topography and the Jewish identity of this symbolic site of Holocaust memory.Martin C. Dean is historical consultant based in Washington DC, who works for the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, the University of Cologne, and other organizations as researcher and lecturer.Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

The “barbarian” nomads of the Eurasian steppes have played a decisive role in world history, but their achievements have gone largely unnoticed. These nomadic tribes have produced some of the world’s greatest conquerors: Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, among others. Their deeds still resonate today. Indeed, these nomads built long-lasting empires, facilitated the first global trade of the Silk Road and disseminated religions, technology, knowledge and goods of every description that enriched and changed the lives of so many across Europe, China and the Middle East. From a single region emerged a great many peoples—the Huns, the Mongols, the Magyars, the Turks, the Xiongnu, the Scythians, the Goths—all of whom went on to profoundly and irrevocably shape the modern world. Professor Kenneth W. Harl’s newest book Empires of the Steppes: A History of the Nomadic Tribes Who Shaped Civilization (Bloomsbury, 2023) vividly re-creates the lives and world of these often-forgotten peoples from their beginnings to the early modern age. Their brutal struggle to survive on the steppes bred a resilient, pragmatic people ever ready to learn from their more advanced neighbors. In warfare, they dominated the battlefield for over fifteen hundred years. Under charismatic rulers, they could topple empires and win their own. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938) is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century's most influential poets. This collection, compiled, translated, and edited by poet and scholar Ian Probstein, provides Anglophone audiences with a powerful selection of Mandelstam's most beloved and haunting poems. Both scholars and general readers will gain a deeper understanding of his poetics, as Probstein situates each poem in its historical and literary context. The English translations presented in Centuries Encircle Me with Fire: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam (Academic Studies Press, 2022) are so deeply immersed in the Russian sources and language through the ear of a Russian-born Probstein who has spent most of his adult life in the US, that they provide reader's with a Mandelstam unseen any translations that precede it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

The IS-2 is the quintessential Soviet heavy tank from World War 2. Heavily armored and boasting a fearsome 122mm gun, this tank matched the German panzers on the Eastern front by more than just its fierce appearance. In Peter Samsonov's book IS-2: Development, Design, and Production of Stalin's Warhammer (Military History Group, 2022), this tank's history is told from the beginning of the Soviet heavy tank programme until the very end of World War 2, in the most detailed and complete account of its development, design and production available in English. Supported by extensive research of Russian language sources, this publication includes a comprehensive breakdown of prototypes, the Soviet analysis of weaknesses in German tanks including the Tiger and Panther, the development of the 122mm gun, the principles of the new tank's armor layout and a wealth of technical data. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Russia and Ukraine have alternative histories and alternative destinies. After the Soviet Union collapsed - depending on who you spoke to – they were either a single people artificially divided and destined for reunification, or one nation with a distinct history, culture, and language serially repressed by a dominant neighbour.In Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States (Polity, 2023), Maria Popova and Oxana Shevel argue that: "The root of the difficult Russia–Ukraine relationship is the misaligned understanding of Soviet dissolution – as the end of common statehood or as its reinvention".Maria Popova is a Jean Monnet Chair and Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University in Montreal. Oxana Shevel is an Associate Professor of comparative politics at the Department of Political Science at Tufts University in Massachusetts.*The authors' own book recommendations are: [Popova] Europe Undivided: Democracy, Leverage, and Integration After Communism by Milada Anna Vachudova (OUP Oxford, 2005) and Courage and Fear by Ola Hnatiuk - translated by Ewa Siwak - (Academic Studies Press, 2019) and [Shevel] Nations and Nationalism by Ernest Gellner (Wiley-Blackwell, 2006) and In Isolation: Dispatches from Occupied Donbas by Stanislav Aseyev - translated by Lidia Wolanskyj - (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2022).Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the twenty4two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Returning to the New Books Network today is Paul Le Blanc, here to discuss his new book Lenin: Responding to Catastrophe, Forging Revolution (Pluto Press, 2023). The book deals with Lenin’s life and thought, looking at his ideas in their original context. Starting from his early development and thoughts on the importance of the vanguard, through the revolutions of 1917 and to his political mistakes and attempt at course-correction in the final years of his life, Le Blanc’s study is an accessible and informative survey for students and activists wondering what lessons Lenin might have to offer us today.Paul Le Blanc is a professor of history at La Roche University. He is the author of numerous books on labor, class struggle and radical political movements, including Revolutionary Collective, which we discussed last year. He has also helped edit some volumes of the ongoing Collected Works of Rosa Luxemburg. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

The common perception of Russia's status as a great power is often portrayed as being based largely on land power. Being the largest country in the world and fielding massively large field armies, there is some considerable truth to this perception. By contrast, when concerning Russian capabilities as a naval power, the picture is different. Common references to the Battle of Tsushima during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), the Kursk submarine incident of 2000, and more recently the sinking of the Moskva warship in 2022 tend to portray Russia's naval abilities as very negligible at best.Nevertheless, this common perception is very misleading. Russia has in the 21st century been highly active in establishing itself as a major maritime power on the global stage, and these efforts have even accelerated since the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022. Andrew Monaghan and Richard Connolly have co-edited The Sea in Russian Strategy (Manchester University Press, 2023), bringing together top-tier scholars and experts to analyze Russia's growing maritime strength and how it should not be underestimated.Andrew Monaghan is Director of the Russia Research Network and a Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies