On today's episode we welcome Samuel Moyn, professor of Law and History at Yale, to discuss the political history of human rights and in particular how this relates to the Cold War, Soviet collapse, and neoliberalism as a politics in the post-Cold War era. Here's an article by Samuel Moyn based on his book Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/human-rights-are-not-enough/ And here is a description of his book Not Enough : The age of human rights has been kindest to the rich. Even as state violations of political rights garnered unprecedented attention due to human rights campaigns, a commitment to material equality disappeared. In its place, market fundamentalism has emerged as the dominant force in national and global economies. In this provocative book, Samuel Moyn analyzes how and why we chose to make human rights our highest ideals while simultaneously neglecting the demands of a broader social and economic justice. In a pioneering history of rights stretching back to the Bible, Not Enough charts how twentieth-century welfare states, concerned about both abject poverty and soaring wealth, resolved to fulfill their citizens’ most basic needs without forgetting to contain how much the rich could tower over the rest. In the wake of two world wars and the collapse of empires, new states tried to take welfare beyond its original European and American homelands and went so far as to challenge inequality on a global scale. But their plans were foiled as a neoliberal faith in markets triumphed instead. Moyn places the career of the human rights movement in relation to this disturbing shift from the egalitarian politics of yesterday to the neoliberal globalization of today. Exploring why the rise of human rights has occurred alongside enduring and exploding inequality, and why activists came to seek remedies for indigence without challenging wealth, Not Enough calls for more ambitious ideals and movements to achieve a humane and equitable world.

On this episode, we have a discussion with political geographer Dr. Gerard Toal about the 2008 August War that embroiled Georgia, Russia and South Ossetia in conflict, along with the contingencies and background that led to the fighting and what this event can tell us or not tell us about Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Dr. Toal wrote a book in 2016 entitled "Near Abroad: Putin, The West and the Contest Over Ukraine and The Caucasus" - here's a description of the book below: "Before Russia invaded Ukraine, it invaded Georgia. Both states are part of Russia's "near abroad"--newly independent states that were once part of the Soviet Union and are now Russia's neighbors. While the Russia-Georgia war of 2008 faded from the headlines in the wake of the global recession, the geopolitical contest that created it did not. In Near Abroad, Gerard Toal moves beyond the polemical rhetoric that surrounds Russia's interventions in Georgia and Ukraine to study the underlying territorial conflicts and geopolitical struggles. Central to understanding are legacies of the Soviet Union collapse: unresolved territorial issues, weak states and a conflicted geopolitical culture in Russia over the new territorial order. Toal explains the road to invasion and war in Georgia and Ukraine, thereafter, and provides an account of real life geopolitics, one that emphasizes changing spatial relationships, geopolitical cultures and the power of media images. Not only a penetrating analysis of Russia's relationships with its regional neighbors, Near Abroad also offers an analysis of how US geopolitical culture frequently fails to fully understand Russia and the geopolitical archipelago of dependencies in its near abroad.

In this interview with French political scientist Laure Neumayer, we discuss how a particular form of anti-communist memory politics were mobilized and utilized by "memory entrepreneurs" in Europe following the Cold War. A particular interpretation of the socialist past was put up against  official European memory of the 20th century as the EU enlarged into Eastern Europe. A mixture of anti-communist nationalists, former dissidents and liberals wanted a pan-European identity to be rewritten in a way that criminalized communism as it had after World War II criminalized Nazism.   Here's a description of Laure Neumayer's 2019 book The Criminalisation of Communism in the European Political Space After The Cold War: Memory has taken centre stage in European-level policies after the Cold War, as the Western historical narrative based on the uniqueness of the Holocaust was being challenged by calls for an equal condemnation of Communism and Nazism. This book retraces the anti-communist mobilisations carried out by Central European representatives in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and in the European Parliament since the early 1990s. Based on archive consultation, interviews and ethnographic observation, it analyses the memory entrepreneurs’ requests for collective remembrance and legal accountability of Communist crimes in European institutions, Pan-European political parties and transnational advocacy networks. The book argues that these newcomers managed to strengthen their positions and impose a totalitarian interpretation of Communism in the European assemblies, which directly shaped the EU’s remembrance policy. However, the rules of the European political game and recurring ideological conflicts with left-wing opponents reduced the legal and judicial implications of this anti-communist grammar at the European level.

In this episode we sit down with anthropologist Erin Koch to have a conversation about the shifts in medical practices, treatments as well as epidemic management from the Soviet period to Post-Soviet period in Georgia through a discussion of her 2013 book Free Market Tuberculosis: Managing Epidemics in Post-Soviet Georgia. The shift to a market economy after the collapse of the Soviet Union radically transformed health care and epidemic management in Georgia resulting in drastic consequences for patient care and public health. Here's a description of Erin Koch's book Free Market Tuberculosis: Managing Epidemics in Post-Soviet Georgia: "The Soviet health care infrastructure and its tuberculosis-control system were anchored in biomedicine, but the dire resurgence of tuberculosis at the end of the twentieth century changed how experts in post-Soviet nations--and globally--would treat the disease. As Free Market Tuberculosis dramatically demonstrates, market reforms and standardized treatment programs have both influenced and undermined the management of tuberculosis care in the now-independent country of Georgia. The alarming rate of tuberculosis infection in this nation at the crossroads of Eastern Europe and Asia cannot be disputed, and yet solutions to attacking the disease are very much debated. Anthropologist Erin Koch explores the intersection of the nation's extensive medical history, the effects of Soviet control, and the highly standardized yet poorly regulated treatments promoted by the World Health Organization. Although statistics and reports tell one story--a tale of success in Georgia--Koch's ethnographic approach reveals all facets of this cautionary tale of a monolithic approach to medicine."

One of the Soviet Union's most well known directors Mikhail Kalatozov was born as Mikhail Kalatoziashvili in Tiflis in 1903. Before releasing his more famous works such as Soy Cuba (1964) and The Cranes Are Flying (1957), or winning an award at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, he along with Nutsa Gogoberidze (Soviet Georgia's first female director) co-directed their first film together - a documentary called Their Kingdom (1928). For decades Their Kingdom was lost in Moscow archives and was only recently rediscovered. The film is an early Soviet critique of the Menshevik controlled Democratic Republic of Georgia (1918-21) (also known as the First Republic). The portion of the film that was recently restored was recently shown at a film festival in Tbilisi showcasing early Soviet Georgian films and we were lucky enough to watch it. This episode begins with Sopo Japaridze reflecting on the film Their Kingdom and is followed by an interview with scholar Salome Tsopurashvili. Salome is currently a professor at Ilia State University in Tbilisi, and author of an upcoming book that explores women and film in 1920s Soviet Georgia.

On today's episode we sit down with prolific historian Dr. Gerald Horne to discuss the intimate political relationship in the 20th century between the Soviet Union, the Communist Party of the USA and Black political struggle in the United States. We discuss a number of topics including African American Marxists such as Paul Robeson - who Dr. Horne has written a biography on - as well as the role the Soviet Union's political support of Civil Rights in the United States had in strengthening the movement for black civil rights. Dr. Horne holds the Moores Professorship of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. His research has addressed issues of racism in a variety of relations involving labor, politics, civil rights, international relations and war. He has also written extensively about the film industry. Dr. Horne received his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and his B.A. from Princeton University.

Kristen Ghodsee and Mitchell Orenstein have recently released a new book entitled "Taking Stock of Shock: The Social Consequences of the 1989 Revolutions" - this week we have both authors on as guests to discuss their new book, their methodological process, how to make sense of the social consequences of socialist collapse and how it relates to Georgia. You can check out their new book's website here; https://www.takingstockofshock.com/ And here's the book's description: "After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, more than 400 million people suddenly found themselves in a new reality, a dramatic transition from state socialist and centrally planned workers' states to liberal democracy (in most cases) and free markets. Thirty years later, postsocialist citizens remain sharply divided on the legacies of transition. Was it a success that produced great progress after a short recession, or a socio-economic catastrophe foisted on the East by Western capitalists? Taking Stock of Shock aims to uncover the truth using a unique, interdisciplinary investigation into the social consequences of transition—including the rise of authoritarian populism and xenophobia. Showing that economic, demographic, sociological, political scientific, and ethnographic research produce contradictory results based on different disciplinary methods and data, Kristen Ghodsee and Mitchell A. Orenstein triangulate the results. They find that both the J-curve model, which anticipates sustained growth after a sharp downturn, and the "disaster capitalism" perspective, which posits that neoliberalism led to devastating outcomes, have significant basis in fact. While substantial percentages of the populations across a variety of postsocialist countries enjoyed remarkable success, prosperity, and progress, many others suffered an unprecedented socio-economic catastrophe. Ghodsee and Orenstein conclude that the promise of transition still remains elusive for many and offer policy ideas for overcoming negative social and political consequences."

In this episode we sit down with Tbilisi-based researcher and lecturer Archil Sikharulidze, who specializes in securitization, Georgia-Russia relations and more, to discuss the hurdles that dominant forms of nationalism pose to doing research on critical yet politically sensitive topics in Georgia. His most recent article here on Georgian identity and the West is available here: https://www.commonspace.eu/opinion/opinion-alternative-view-georgias-european-identity-and-past-history

On today’s show we welcome Anastasia Shesterinina to discuss her excellent new book Mobilizing in Uncertainty: Collective Identities and War in Abkhazia which, using hundreds interviews and extensive field research, explains how and why Abkhaz did or did not mobilize to fight in the war with Georgia in the early 1990s, and how to many Abkhaz as the war was beginning  it came as an unexpected surprise leading to the uncertain and uneven mobilization of a collective identity both immediately preceding and  during the 1992-1993 war with Georgia.  

Our guests for today's episode are author, educator and journalist Vijay Prashad as well as world literature professor and author Ian Almond.  With Vijay Prashad, we discuss the basic idea of one of his recent books Red Star Over the Third World (2019, Pluto Press) - how the 1917 Russian Revolution and then the seventy year existence of the Soviet Union directly inspired Third World Marxism and anti-colonial struggles during the 20th century, as well as what this century of Soviet internationalism and the collapse of the socialist world mean today. With Ian Almond we explore how 20th century Soviet internationalism and it's anti-communist opposite both influenced and manifested themselves in the global literary imagination and more.