New Books in Russian and Eurasian Studies

Snapshots of the Soul: Photo-Poetic Encounters in Modern Russian Culture (Cornell UP, 2021) considers how photography has shaped Russian poetry from the early twentieth century to the present day. Drawing on theories of the lyric and the elegy, the social history of technology, and little-known archival materials, Molly Thomasy Blasing offers close readings of poems by Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva, Joseph Brodsky, and Bella Akhmadulina, as well as by the late and post-Soviet poets Andrei Sen-Sen'kov, Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, and Kirill Medvedev, to understand their fascination with the visual language, representational power, and metaphorical possibilities offered by the camera and the photographic image.Within the context of long-standing anxieties about the threat that visual media pose to literary culture, Blasing finds that these poets were attracted to the affinities and tensions that exist between the lyric or elegy and the snapshot. Snapshots of the Soul reveals that at the core of each poet's approach to writing the photograph is the urge to demonstrate the superior ability of poetic language to capture and convey human experience.Molly T. Blasing holds degrees in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Harvard University (AB, 2002) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (MA, 2006; PHD, 2014). After teaching at Florida State University, Wellesley College, and Oberlin College, she joined the faculty of the University of Kentucky as Assistant Professor of Russian Studies in 2014 and was promoted to Associate Professor in July 2021. Steven Seegel is Professor of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

In recent years the resurgence of great power competition has gripped the headlines, with new emerging powers (such as Russia and China) seeking to challenge the American and Western hegemony that has prevailed since the end of the Cold War. While the geopolitics of the Cold War era were based on ideology, the current geopolitics appear to be based more on cultural and civilizational identities. In his pioneering book The Rise of the Civilizational State (Polity Press, 2019), renowned political philosopher Christopher Coker examines in depth how Xi Jinping’s China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia not only seek to challenge Western powers, but also operate under very different conceptions of how the world should be structured. Instead of the standard nation-state and liberal internationalism that Western power operate under, both powers insist more on the civilizational basis of both the state and world order.Christopher Coker is Director of the London School of Economics’ foreign policy think tank LSE Ideas. He was Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics, retiring in 2019. He is a former twice serving member of the Council of the Royal United Services Institute, a former NATO Fellow and a regular lecturer at Defense Colleges in the United Kingdom, United States, Rome, Singapore, Tokyo, Norway and Sweden.Stephen Satkiewicz is independent scholar whose research areas are related to Civilizational Analysis, Big History, Historical Sociology, War studies, 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/russian-studies

In this episode of How To Be Wrong we talk with Marshall Poe, founder and head of the New Books Network, about his work as an historian of Russia and his ideas about making mistakes as a researcher. The interview explores Marshall’s own experience with error and his ideas about the relationship between uncertainty, truth, and expertise.John Kaag is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at UMass Lowell and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. John W. Traphagan, Ph.D. is Professor and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Fellow in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also a professor in the Program in Human Dimensions of Organizations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

The latest book by Vladimir Alexandrov is a brilliant examination of the enigmatic Russian revolutionary, Boris Savinkov.Although now largely forgotten outside Russia, Boris Savinkov was famous, and notorious, both at home and abroad during his lifetime, which spans the end of the Russian Empire and the establishment of the Soviet Union. A complex and conflicted individual, he was a paradoxically moral revolutionary terrorist, a scandalous novelist, a friend of epoch-defining artists like Modigliani and Diego Rivera, a government minister, a tireless fighter against Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and an advisor to Churchill. At the end of his life, Savinkov conspired to be captured by the Soviet secret police, and as the country’s most prized political prisoner made headlines around the world when he claimed that he accepted the Bolshevik state. Alexandrov argues that this was Savinkov’s final play as a gambler, staking his life on a secret plan to strike one last blow against the tyrannical regime.To Break Russia's Chains: Boris Savinkov and His Wars Against the Tsar and the Bolsheviks (Pegasus, 2021) reads like a spellbinding thriller. Professor Alexandrov’s biography of Boris Savinkov not only sheds light on one of the most fascinating figures in Russian history, but also prompts speculation about how the history of Russia may have played out differently if the former terrorist turned government minister had achieved his goals.Interview conducted by Lynne Hartnett, Associate Professor of History at Villanova University. Professor Hartnett is the author of The Defiant Life of Vera Figner: Surviving the Russian Revolution and is currently writing a book about Russian political exiles in Britain at the turn of the twentieth century. She is also the author and narrator of two courses for The Great Courses: Understanding Russia: A Cultural History and The Great Revolutions of Modern History Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art (Ibidem Press, 2021) focuses on political and social expressions in contemporary art of Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. It explores the transformations that art in Ukraine and the Baltic states has undergone since their independence in 1991, discussing how the conflicts and challenges of the last three decades have impacted the reconsideration of identity and fostered resistance of culture against economic and political crises. It analyzes connections between the past and the present as seen by the artists in these countries and looks at their visions of the future.Contemporary Ukrainian art portrays various perspectives, addressing issues from controversial historical topics to the present military conflict in the East of the country. Baltic art speaks out against the erasure of past historical traumas and analyzes the pertinence of its cultural scene to the European community. The contributions in this collection open a discussion of whether there is a single paradigm that describes the contemporary processes of art production in Ukraine and the Baltic countries.With contributions by Ieva Astahovska, Svitlana Biedarieva, Kateryna Botanova, Olena Martynyuk, Vytautas Michelkevičius, Lina Michelkeviče, Margaret Tali, and Jessica Zychowicz.Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a PhD candidate in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures, Indiana University Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Central Asia (Routledge, 2021), edited by Rico Isaacs and Erica Marat, offers the first comprehensive, cross-disciplinary overview of key issues in Central Asian Studies. The 30 chapters by leading and emerging scholars summarise major findings in the field and highlight long-term trends, recent observations, and future developments in the region. The handbook features case studies of all five Central Asian republics and is organised thematically in seven sections: History, Politics, Geography, International Relations. Political Economy, Society and Culture, Religion. An essential cross-disciplinary reference work, the handbook offers an accessible and easy to understand guide to the core issues permeating the region to enable readers to grasp the fundamental challenges, transformations and themes in contemporary Central Asia. It will be of interest to researchers, academics and students of the region and those working in the field of Area Studies, History, Anthropology, Politics and International Relations.Nicholas Seay is a PhD student at Ohio State University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Yuri Kostenko’s Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament: A History (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2020) is a meticulous account of how the Ukrainian government made a decision in the 1990s to give up the nuclear status. The book includes unique documents from the private archive, which Yuri Kostenko shares with the readers. Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament provides not only an account of nuclear weapons elimination in Ukraine, but also offers a broader picture of the political environment in which Ukraine found itself after the fall of the USSR. What political players participated in the construction of the newly formed independent state? What challenges did the country face? In addition to this retrospective approach, the book also provides insights into the present moment, particularly in terms of the ongoing armed conflict initiated by Russia in 2014. Yuri Kostenko mentions that the occupation of the Crimea and the subsequent Russian military aggression against Ukraine were not a surprise to him. The book engages with the consequences of the nuclear disarmament and prompts the readers to draw parallels between the decisions that were made in the 1990s and the current international position that was created for Ukraine. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a PhD candidate in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures, Indiana University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

In 1917, the adoption of the revolutionary Mexican Constitution and the October Revolution shook the foundations of international order in profound, unprecedented and lasting ways. These events posed fundamental challenges to international law, particularly to foundational concepts of property, statehood and non-intervention, and the role of law itself. Revolutions in International Law: The Legacies of 1917 (Cambridge UP, 2021) asks what we might learn about international law from analysing how its various sub-fields have remembered, forgotten, imagined, incorporated, rejected or sought to manage the revolutions of 1917. It shows that those revolutions had wide-ranging repercussions for the development of laws relating to intervention, human rights, investment, alien protection and state responsibility, and for the global economy subsequently enabled by international law and overseen by international institutions. The varied legacies of 1917 play an ongoing role in shaping political struggle, global anti-imperialist and anti-racism movements to this day. Listen in and see how these complex events shaped international law, human rights and anti-imperialist movements globally. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

This month we are delighted to host one of the most important voices in Central Asian Studies worldwide: Professor Marlene Laruelle from George Washington University in DC, to discuss her latest, Open Access book Central Peripheries: Nationhood in Central Asia (UCL Press 2021).This is a much-anticipated book, which is going to become the go-to resource for every reader interested in nationalism in Central Asia. Bringing together for the first time Laruelle's articles on Central Asian nationalism, the book offers an intriguing overview of 30 years of nation-building in the region, linking back the choices made in the different nationalising states to concepts and constructs of nationhood developed during the Soviet era.The first part of this very readable book looks comparatively at the nationalism processes as developed in the southern part of the region [Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan. Uzbekistan] while the second segment features a collection of Laruelle's writing on the many complexities associated with nation-building in Kazakhstan, Central Asia's multi-national state par excellence.Marlene Laruelle is Director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES), Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University. Her latest books include Is Russia Fascist? Unraveling Propaganda East and West (Cornell University Press, 2021) and Memory Politics and the Russian Civil War (Bloomsbury, 2020)Luca Anceschi is Professor of Eurasian Studies at the University of Glasgow, where he is also the editor of Europe-Asia Studies. Follow him on Twitter @anceschistan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Serhii Plokhy’s The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine’s Past and Present (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2021) includes discussions that focus on the major milestones of the history of Ukraine, ranging from the first ancient mentionings of the territory to the recent Russian military aggression against Ukraine. The book offers a concise and comprehensible commentary on the most contested and controversial issues, including the legacy of Kyivan Rus’, the Pereiaslav Agreement, historical and political representations of Ivan Mazepa, the formation and the collapse of the USSR, the Chornobyl disaster, and the 2014 Russo-Ukrainian war, to name but a few. Providing thoroughly researched materials, the essays are important contributions that enrich and detail the study of Ukraine; additionally, the book inscribes Ukraine into a broader, global historical and political context. In this regard, The Frontline is an invitation to think about Ukraine not only as a territory whose history was overshadowed for a long time by the overbearing presence of Russia, but also as a historical and political unit that participated in and propelled a number of changes that led to major geopolitical shifts that eventually entailed the transformation of how the region was perceived and understood at the local and global levels.Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a PhD candidate in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures, Indiana University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies