The Eurasian Knot

The history of Chechens, or Nokhchi, is defined by war, occupation, and ethnic cleansing. Yet despite these repeated traumas, the Nokhchi have persisted, resisted and survived. But how? Chechens comprise such a relatively small population, almost 2 million today. This is the question Marat Iliyasov asked himself as he entered adulthood. Given this history of violence, and uncertain future, what has inspired Chechens to continue getting married and raising families? Marat set out to find answers, which eventually became a book, Reproducing Resistance: Chechen Demography in Times of War. Chechen survival, he argues, was the result of the collective identities born from their traumatic history. Knowing little about Chechnya, the Eurasian Knot spoke to Marat about his book, how he dealt with questions of marriage, family and sex, and Nokhchi identity in Chechnya and in the Chechen diaspora. Guest: Marat Iliyasov is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the College of the Holy Cross. He’s the author of Reproducing…

Maya, the heroine of Svetlana Satchkova’s The Undead: A Novel of Modern Russia, is an aspiring Russian filmmaker. And after fits and starts she finally gets a break when the producer Belov greenlights her project. Maya’s film is an art-house horror flick about a resurrected Lenin who seeks to take control of Moscow with an army of zombies at his back. Maya has no political intent with the movie. To her, it’s just a horror film. She’s also naive to what Russia has become. All art is politically infused. The artist’s intent is meaningless. Maya is eventually denounced to the authorities, who, in turn, see zombie Lenin as a political satire of Putin’s Russia. To her shock and distress, Maya’s life is quickly turned upside down. The plot of The Undead unfortunately has a long tradition. Think of Lydia Chukovskaya’s Sofia Petrovna or Milan Kundera's The Joke. It’s when ordinary, innocent people get sucked into the oppressive machine of the state. The Eurasian Knot spoke to Satchkova about The Undead, her English…

World War II casts a long, dark shadow over eastern Europe. Especially in those nations caught between the Wehrmacht and Red Army. Some locals joined the Nazis, others served in the Red Army, and some others fought against both. Many more simply fled or hunkered down hoping just to survive. Regardless, the memory of the war doesn’t tolerate nuance. If you fought, you were either on the Nazi or Soviet side, even if the goal was to liberate yourself. Reality was much more complicated, says Harry Merritt in Latvian Soldiers of World War II: Fighting for the Homeland in Nazi and Soviet Service. Both Soviet and Nazis created special Latvian regiments to fight for their side. Why? What did it mean to Latvian in the service of the occupiers? And how does the experience of these Latvian soldiers complicate the war, its meaning, and memory then and now? The Eurasian Knot hasn’t given the Baltics its due, so we jumped at the opportunity to talk to Harry Merritt to learn more about this complex and controversial aspect…

An overlooked destination for thousands immigrating out of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union was Mexico. The reasons were many. Jews fled anti-semitic violence. Religious groups like the Molokans left because of persecution. Many more left in the wake of war, revolution, famine, and political repression. Regardless, Mexico was a viable alternative with the US borders closed to immigration in the interwar period. Collectively known as Los Rusos, these “Russians” built new lives, integrated into Mexican society, or eventually ended up in Los Angeles with the help of some dubious “ethnopolitical entrepreneurs.” Who were the Los Rusos? What was their immigrant experience like? How did the weather during the years of anti-communist hysteria, spy mania, and xenophobia? And why has Mexico eluded our attention as a destination for refugees from the Russian empire? The Eurasian Knot spoke to Andrew Jenks about his new book, Los Rusos: The Russian Departure to Mexico and Southern California, 1900-1965, to learn…

When did Putin decide to invade Ukraine? Was it shortly after 2012 when he returned as President? In 2014, after the seizure of Crimea and clashes in the Donbas? Or was it when Russian forces began massing at the Ukraine-Russia-Belarus borders for a full-scale assault? The answer to when, Michael Kimmage says, is important because that would tell us what drove Putin and what might be necessary to bring a diplomatic solution. The Ukraine War has been raging longer than WWI and WWII with no end in sight. And Kimmage argues that the global context and ramifications need analysis. The Ukraine War is the most documented war in history and we might not have all the information to answer “why?” for years, maybe decades. Kimmage recently gave a talk at the University of Michigan's Center for Russian, East European, & Eurasian Studies on the origins of the Ukraine War, and Rusana, the Eurasian Knot’s Midwest correspondent, sat down with him for a wide ranging interview. In the interview, Rusana and Michael discussed…

The fact that the USSR executed its citizens with little jurisprudence is well known. The word “troika” is synonymous with Stalinist repressions of the 1930s. What is less known is that the Soviet Union’s death penalty regime changed significantly in the postwar period. After a brief moratorium adopted by Stalin(!) in 1947, Khrushchev revived capital punishment in 1954 as part of his war on crime. Homicide became a capital offense. The application of the death penalty became professionalized with lawyers, forensics, psychologists, and an appeals process. The narrative of appeals for clemency also changed. Whereas those from the prewar generation often cited a convict’s service to the Soviet state, supplicants after the 1960s portrayed themselves as abandoned by the welfare state. In Fate in My Hands, Yana Skorobogatov looked at about a hundred of these death penalty cases and clemency appeals from 1954-1991 to understand this new regime. What were the circumstances of the crimes and their adjudication? How…

We tend to think of the 1990s when it comes to Protestantism in Russia. It was then that evangelicals descended on Russia to shine Jesus’ light into the post-Soviet void. Yet, the Soviet Union, despite its best efforts, was a multiconfessional state. And though officially atheist, religious belief persisted, including among the Union’s small pockets of Protestants. Like with other faiths, the state’s relations with Protestants vacillated between repression, accommodation, and control. As Miriam Dobson says in her new book, The Unorthodox, things shifted after Stalin’s death. By the 1960s, regulating religious life fell under the purview of the Council of Religious Affairs. Sure, the state still emphasized atheism, closed churches, and prosecuted Protestants. But its methods were more surgical and the Council relied more on policing the margins over mass repression. So what was life like for the USSR’s Protestant minority? How did they practice their faith and maintain community despite pressures of family,…

Over the last century, tens of millions of people quit Eastern Europe for the United States. The push-pull factors were many—war, poverty, instability, persecution at home and opportunity, refuge, and liberty abroad. But manna didn’t simply fall from the sky in America. Immigrants from Eastern Europe confronted many of the same challenges migrants do everywhere—exploitation, hardship, and discrimination. Thresholds is a REEES podcast series that will grapple with these histories through interviews with scholars and immigrants’ personal profiles. What pushed them to leave? What did they discover when they arrived? How did they change and be changed by American society? What opportunities and challenges did they face to become “American”? And what can we learn about immigration today? Guest: Olga immigrated to the United States from Moscow, Russia in 1990 as a child. She’s a high school teacher and lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the last century, tens of millions of people quit Eastern Europe for the United States. The push-pull factors were many—war, poverty, instability, persecution at home and opportunity, refuge, and liberty abroad. But manna didn’t simply fall from the sky in America. Immigrants from Eastern Europe confronted many of the same challenges migrants do everywhere—exploitation, hardship, and discrimination. Thresholds is a REEES podcast series that will grapple with these histories through interviews with scholars and immigrants’ personal profiles. What pushed them to leave? What did they discover when they arrived? How did they change and be changed by American society? What opportunities and challenges did they face to become “American”? And what can we learn about immigration today? Guest: Yelena immigrated to the United States in 1979 as part of the wave of Soviet Jewish emigration. She’s a retired engineer and lives in Reading, Pennsylvania. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the last century, tens of millions of people quit Eastern Europe for the United States. The push-pull factors were many—war, poverty, instability, persecution at home and opportunity, refuge, and liberty abroad. But manna didn’t simply fall from the sky in America. Immigrants from Eastern Europe confronted many of the same challenges migrants do everywhere—exploitation, hardship, and discrimination. Thresholds is a REEES podcast series that will grapple with these histories through interviews with scholars and immigrants’ personal profiles. What pushed them to leave? What did they discover when they arrived? How did they change and be changed by American society? What opportunities and challenges did they face to become “American”? And what can we learn about immigration today? Guest: Julia Alekseyeva immigrated to United States from Kyiv, Ukraine, in 1992. She’s Assistant Professor of English and Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She’s the author of Soviet Daughter: A Graphic…

Over the last century, tens of millions of people quit Eastern Europe for the United States. The push-pull factors were many—war, poverty, instability, persecution at home and opportunity, refuge, and liberty abroad. But manna didn’t simply fall from the sky in America. Immigrants from Eastern Europe confronted many of the same challenges migrants do everywhere—exploitation, hardship, and discrimination. Thresholds is a REEES podcast series that will grapple with these histories through interviews with scholars and immigrants’ personal profiles. What pushed them to leave? What did they discover when they arrived? How did they change and be changed by American society? What opportunities and challenges did they face to become “American”? And what can we learn about immigration today? Guest: Claudia Sadowski-Smith is Professor of English at Arizona State University. She is the author of The New Immigrant Whiteness: Race, Neoliberalism, and Post-Soviet Migration to the United States published by NYU Press.…

Over the last century, tens of millions of people quit Eastern Europe for the United States. The push-pull factors were many—war, poverty, instability, persecution at home and opportunity, refuge, and liberty abroad. But manna didn’t simply fall from the sky in America. Immigrants from Eastern Europe confronted many of the same challenges migrants do everywhere—exploitation, hardship, and discrimination. Thresholds is a REEES podcast series that will grapple with these histories through interviews with scholars and immigrants’ personal profiles. What pushed them to leave? What did they discover when they arrived? How did they change and be changed by American society? What opportunities and challenges did they face to become “American”? And what can we learn about immigration today? Guest: Nina Bogdan is a historian and cultural preservationist. She recently authored the “Russian American Historic Context Statement” for the San Francisco City Planning Department as part of the Citywide Cultural Resources…

Over the last century, tens of millions of people quit Eastern Europe for the United States. The push-pull factors were many—war, poverty, instability, persecution at home and opportunity, refuge, and liberty abroad. But manna didn’t simply fall from the sky in America. Immigrants from Eastern Europe confronted many of the same challenges migrants do everywhere—exploitation, hardship, and discrimination. Thresholds is a REEES podcast series that will grapple with these histories through interviews with scholars and immigrants’ personal profiles. What pushed them to leave? What did they discover when they arrived? How did they change and be changed by American society? What opportunities and challenges did they face to become “American”? And what can we learn about immigration today? Guest: David Roediger is the Foundation Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History at the University of Kansas. He is the author of Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey…

Over the last century, tens of millions of people quit Eastern Europe for the United States. The push-pull factors were many—war, poverty, instability, persecution at home and opportunity, refuge, and liberty abroad. But manna didn’t simply fall from the sky in America. Immigrants from Eastern Europe confronted many of the same challenges migrants do everywhere—exploitation, hardship, and discrimination. Thresholds is a REEES podcast series that will grapple with these histories through interviews with scholars and immigrants’ personal profiles. What pushed them to leave? What did they discover when they arrived? How did they change and be changed by American society? What opportunities and challenges did they face to become “American”? And what can we learn about immigration today? Guest: Tara Zahra is the Hanna Holborn Gray Professor of East European History at the University of Chicago. She’s the author of The Great Departure: Mass Migration and the Making of the Free World published by W. W. Norton &…

The Georgian Democratic Republic lasted a mere three years, from 1918-1921. And though it was viewed as an oddity at the time, many European social democrats marveled at its possibilities. Here was a state committed to social democracy in a mostly backward peasant and multiethnic country. What promises did it hold for the future? Unfortunately, the world never learned because the Bolsheviks crushed it in 1921 and proceeded to sovietize Georgia. The republic was denounced as counter revolutionary and its memory faded as its founders died in exile. So what was this brief experiment in social democracy in the south Caucasus? What were its political positions and aspirations? What does it say about the history of the Russian Revolution? How and why did it fall after only three years? Stephen Jones has been researching these questions for over 40 years, and that has culminated in his opus The First Social Democracy: The Democratic Republic of Georgia, 1918-1921. The Eurasian Knot spoke to Jones about his highly…

Everyone has an opinion about the late Russian historian Richard Pipes. Some loved him. Many hated him. He was a conservative and anti-communist. A hardliner on American policy toward the Soviet Union. Some would even say he was a Russophobe and cultural essentialist. But Pipes was a far more complicated figure. A Polish Jew whose family fled before the Nazis arrived, Pipes possessed a strong moral center that stood at the heart of his rejection of the USSR. He eventually applied his vision to his work as a Russian historian at Harvard. Pipes was also at the ground floor of a new academic discipline. He studied under Michael Karpovich, the founder of Russian studies in the US, and was part of a grad cohort that included Russian history Brahmins Leopold Haimson, Marc Raeff, Martian Malia, and Nicholas Raisonovsky. All these men would staff history departments at Berkeley, Harvard, and Columbia, and train a generation of scholars. Pipes knew his stuff, and eventually applied his knowledge in public debate and…

Marc Bennets has been reporting from Russia for over two decades. He’s covered Putin’s rise and consolidation of power, assassinations of oppositionists, mass protests, daily life, and even Russian football. It’s a storied career filled with zipping back and forth between Moscow and its regions. Marc also planted roots. He got married and became a dad. But then everything changed in February 2022 with Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine. Should he stay and keep reporting and risk arrest or worse? Or should he pick up his life and family and leave like so many of his colleagues? Marc finally settled on the latter when word came he might be arrested. Now he focuses most of his reporting on the war and Ukraine. How did this all happen? How did Russia descend into madness? Marc’s new book looks to answer that question with personal fire and passion. Is Russia really saturated with Putin? Is there any way back? It’s been a decade since the Eurasian Knot spoke with Marc. So, we caught up and discussed his new book,…

On the night of 27 February 2015, assassins gunned down Boris Nemtsov as he crossed the Bolshoi Moskvoretskii Bridge. Shock quickly spread throughout Russia, particularly among its political opposition. Not because Nemtsov was so brazenly gunned down. Such are the risks of being politically active in Putin’s Russia. Nemtsov had been a fixture in the movement since its earliest days, and in many ways one of its founders. That such an internationally well-connected figure could be wiped out in central Moscow signaled a grim turning point. Hindsight has proven this correct. A decade later, Russia is a very different place. But it always wasn’t like that. In the 1990s, Nemtsov was a young liberal darling, the charismatic hope to succeed Boris Yeltsin. That didn’t happen, as we all know. And another, totally different figure became President. As Mikhail Fishman writes in his political biography, The Successor: Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Putin, and the Decline of Modern Russia, Nemtsov’s life and death had a profound…

I met the graphic artist, Victoria Lomasko, about 10 years ago when she was a resident at the City of Asylum in Pittsburgh. I emceed an event with her back then. So I was happy when Victoria recently returned to the city to give a few talks at the University of Pittsburgh. Of course, the Eurasian Knot dragged her into a studio for an interview. A lot has changed for Victoria over the decade. Her graphic novel, Other Russias, represented the marginals of Russian society, and she won a Pushkin prize for the work. She got invited to speak, to show her art, and teach. She then went to Belarus to chronicle the mass protests. More art. More shows. But then Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. The invites dried up as everything Russia became toxic. And political art forced her into exile in Germany. These experiences have caused her to question the efficacy of political art, and even her graphic style. Today, she’s embraced symbolic art that speaks to her political disillusion and difficulty in representing our current…

When I opened Facebook this morning, as I do every morning, I learned that Alexander Rabinowitch died at 91 years old. Rabinowitch was arguably one of the most important historians of the Russian Revolution. It's hard to state how much Rabinowitch's work influence our understanding of 1917. Before him, it was assumed that the Bolsheviks were a highly disciplined, unpopular political party that came to power through a coup. What Rabinowitch repeatedly showed in his four books on Revolution, the Bolsheviks had popular support, most importantly in factories in Petrograd and in other large cities and at the front. Lenin's slogans, particularly, "Peace, Land, Bread!" had mass support, and by October 1917, successfully rode a wave of revolution into power. And now that Alexander Rabinowitch has left us, I figured I’d dig out my old interview with him from 2017, clean it up, and re-release it to commemorate the life and work of this scholarly giant. Guest: Alexander Rabinowitch was a Professor Emeritus of History…

How Stalin personally ran the Soviet Union has rightly received much attention. Less discussed is the small group of men that served as his top lieutenants. They carried out his orders, and after his death, were instrumental in establishing the post-Stalin order. This week, the Eurasian Knot features a discussion with Pietro Shakarian about his new book Anastas Mikoyan: An Armenian Reformer in Khrushchev's Kremlin. We mostly know Mikoyan as a statesman and political survivor who successfully navigated Stalin’s Kremlin. But who was Anastas Mikoyan beyond that? What did he believe? What was his role as Stalin’s henchman? How did he push for de-Stalinization after the leader’s death in 1953, particularly on Soviet nationality policy. Shakarian tells us that in the end, Mikoyan was more than a survivor. He was a critical player in shaping the post-Stalinist Soviet Union. Guest: Pietro A. Shakarian is a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union and a lecturer at the American University of Armenia in Yerevan. He’s…

It has long been assumed that there was no Holocaust memory in the Soviet Union. Official Soviet ideology lumped the 1.5 million Soviet Jews exterminated by the Nazis into the 26 million Soviet war deaths. So, the little Holocaust memory that existed was hidden away in families and communities. Recent scholarship, however, has painted a more complicated picture. Yes, official Holocaust memory was circumscribed. And, true, many privately commemorated its memory. But, as a new collection of Soviet Holocaust fiction, translated by Sasha Senderovich and Harriet Murav, shows that there was published Holocaust literature in the Soviet Union. Especially in the Yiddish language journal, Sovetish Heymland. How did Soviet authors treat the Holocaust? How did it differ from work elsewhere? And what are some of the challenges translating these works into English? To find out more, the Eurasian Knot spoke to Sasha and Harriet about their recent collection, In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers…

Many studies focus on how Russia doesn’t work and why. There’s a laundry list of reasons. Corruption. Autocracy. Imperialism. Exceptionalism. But, how, then, does Russia work? Because there are people, a state, and society. What greases the wheels? Alena Ledeneva has made this question the focus of her career. For her, it’s the informal networks and practices that allow the system, with all its deficiencies, to function. Her new book, Russian Pendulum, is a synthesis of her three books on informality. But instead of focusing on post-Soviet Russia, she examines the long duree of informality through the concept of paradox. For example, the Soviet paradox, “Shops are empty, but fridges are full.” Ledeneva says that this paradox contains a hidden informal relation that ameliorates shortage. She also takes a novel approach to this subject using sculpture and music to represent the paradoxes and practices of Russian everyday life. We at the Eurasian Knot wanted to know more. So we put the question to Ledeneva–How…

I went through my Kurt Vonnegut phase in my late teens. I read Player Piano, Cat’s Cradle, I think, Deadeye Dick, and of course, Slaughterhouse Five. I can’t say I remember much from those novels. Nor can I recall why Vonnegut connected with me. Perhaps now is a good time to revisit them. Little did I know that Vonnegut had a large readership in the Soviet Union. His books were translated by Rita Rait-Kovaleva and published in hundreds of thousands of copies. And in late Soviet fashion they were also passed around by hand to those who couldn’t secure copies. What did Soviet readers see in Kurt Vonnegut? How did the authorities regard this so-called “Anti-American American”? And what did Vonnegut think about his Soviet fans? Sarah Phillips wondered too after she participated in a project on Vonnegut. The result is her book, Kurt Vonnegut in the USSR. Sarah reached out to us, so we booked an interview. It turns out that Vonnegut has transcultural appeal. There’s even a revival in Ukraine. But what does…

The Eurasian Knot hasn’t featured many philosophers. So, when Ukrainian political philosopher, Mikhail Minakov, came to the University of Pittsburgh to give a talk, I eagerly pulled him into a studio. The result was a wide-ranging conversation on the collapse of communism, the post-Soviet human, Kantian philosophy, our current global political conjecture, and the crisis of liberalism. What is a post-Soviet human and how does s/he differ from their Soviet counterpart? What are the seeds and expressions of our political discontent? And to what extent does liberalism need a revival to meet the political creativity of the global illiberal right? Minakov has some fascinating insights. He gave me so much to chew on. I have no doubt you will too after listening to this conversation. Guest: Mikhail Minakov is a political philosopher residing in Kyiv and Milan. His primary philosophical inquiries focus on human experience, social knowledge, political systems, historical consciousness, and multiple modernities. His…

On April 12, 2026, Hungarians overwhelmingly voted Peter Magyar into office ending the sixteen-year rule of Viktor Orban. It was a stunning victory that sent voters into the streets to celebrate. Now, observers are looking to see whether Magyar will roll back Orban’s illiberal system and even prosecute Orban and his clients for corruption. Commentators will also watch now how the strongman’s defeat will reverberate in the region and what it might mean for rightwing authoritarianism throughout the world. What led to Orban’s rise and fall? Was his regime an anomaly or consistent with Hungarian political history? And who is Peter Magyar? What does he stand for? And does he have enough political will and capital to set Hungary’s ailing economy and scarred democracy right? The Eurasian Knot turned to Stefano Bottoni to make sense of what Hungary’s past and future might foretell. Is the fall of Orban akin to regime change as Bottoni suggests? Tune in and find out. Guest: Stefano Bottoni is Associate Professor at…

In August 1924, a group of rebels organized by the anti-Bolshevik Committee for the Independence of Georgia and led by the Georgian Social Democratic Party, rose up against Soviet forces in the mining town of Chiatura. The Bolshevik reaction was swift and harsh. The fear of another "Kronstadt” still haunted the Bolsheviks, especially since their control over Georgia was tenuous. The uprising failed. Thousands were killed. Its ringleaders either fled into exile or were executed by the Georgian Cheka, then led by Levrenti Beria. The uprising was the culmination of Georgian opposition to Bolshevik rule after the fall of the Menshevik-led Republic in 1921. This small but significant story about Georgian resistance and a social-democratic alternative to Bolshevism has remained in obscurity. That is, until Eric Lee came along. Eric is a passionate partisan for Georgia. Not just for the place and its people. But for the promise that early Republic and its Menshevik leaders represented for the history of social…

Spoiler alert. This episode has nothing to do with the Eurasian Knot’s usual fare. Dave Zirin was speaking at the University of Pittsburgh. Zirin is one of the few sports journalists on the political left. I’ve been a long-time fan. I’m also a sports fan, especially basketball. So, when I was offered an interview, I grabbed my digital recorder. And Dave, though exhausted, was gracious enough to talk. The result is a wide ranging discussion of key issues in the sports world–politics, labor, race, gambling, transgender athletes, this summer’s World Cup in the shadow of Trump’s ICE, and Dave’s forthcoming biography of Howard Zinn. Give it a listen even if you aren’t into sports. As Dave emphasizes, sports cannot be separated from the political, social, and economic issues of our times. Guest: Dave Zirin is the sports editor at The Nation, the author of eleven books on the politics of sports and host of The Edge of Sports podcast. His most recent book is The Kaepernick Effect: Taking a Knee, Changing the World…

What do Russians really think? The question is old and elusive. It is also somewhat of a tell–to pose it is to suggest there’s a coherent answer, and more so, that Russians’ collective opinions matter. For the most part, scholars have turned to history, media, opinion polls, and assumptions to untie this knot. Jeremy Morris is no different in this regard, except that he approaches his subjects with ethnography–long, multi-year conversations of residents of provincial Russia to gauge their engagement with politics locally and nationally. A kind of political biography that records the ebbs and flows of Russian provincial life. How have Russians responded to their government’s invasion of Ukraine? How do they regard the past, present, and possible future of Russia? What issues concern and motivate them to political action? The Eurasian Knot spoke to Jeremy about his new book, Everyday Politics in Russia: From Resentment to Resistance to get an on-the-ground view of Russian political life. Guest: Jeremy Morris…

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 Agreement. Many protesters saw the Agreement as a meaningful step for Ukraine to enter the European orbit. And the protests might have fizzled. But the massacre of over 120 people by police snipers on 20 February, 2014, inspired hundreds of thousands more to enter the streets, seize government buildings, and occupy city centers. The protests quickly spread throughout Ukraine. The Euromaidan proved a historical turning point. The Yanukovich regime fell, Russia seized Crimea, and pro-Russian forces seized Donbas city centers. What were the short and long term causes of this revolution? Was it a revolution? What were its participants' aspirations? And how did the euphoric desire for a democratic, European Ukraine devolve into a mad spiral short of civil war? Longtime friend of the pod, William Risch was in Kyiv in those initial days. Now he’s combined his…

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, usually a Westerner deemed important. Then use that encounter as blackmail. We’re all aware of this thanks to movies and television. What we know nothing about are same-sex honey traps. The KGB’s use of homosexual men to seduce other men, whether said men were gay or not. Officials, academics, businessmen and other power positions were targets. How do we know about these operations? Well, because of the intrepid research of historian Irina Roldugina. Roldugina got access to KGB files related to same-sex operations and found more information in, of all things, declassified US government documents related to the Kennedy Assassination. How did these operations work? Who did the KGB tap for same-sex seduction? What do these documents tell us? And what did the KGB think of homosexuality in general? The Eurasian Knot spoke to Irina about her recent article, “The…

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. Still, Party members were found at the top and bottom of the system. In the Kremlin and in the factories. The Party rank and file were vital to the establishment of the Soviet system, its day-to-day functioning, and the human material for campaigns whether they be for literary, industrialization, collectivization or terror. But who were these people? How engaged were they in politics? Were they a constituency for Party leaders to appeal to or was the rank and file mere material to be mobilized and directed without its own agency? There are few studies looking at the Party at the shop floor and its place in shaping Soviet socialism. Yiannis Kokosalakis’ book Building Socialism does just that. The Eurasian Knot spoke to Kokosalakis to learn more about the role of the Bolshevik rank and file in the early Soviet system. Guest: Yiannis Kokosalakis is a visiting…

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 did with Joshua Rubenstein back in 2018 about the dictator’s final days. What did Stalin focus on in the final years of his life? How did Soviet leadership react to his death? Soviet society? And internationally? Let’s revisit what Rubenstein had to tell us from his book, The Last Days of Stalin. Guest: Joshua Rubenstein is an associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. He’s the author of several books on Soviet history. His most recent is The Last Days of Stalin published by Yale University Press. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 vacant by discredited ideologies and faiths. Like the embrace of spiritualism after the mass death during the American Civil War. The growth of millenarian movements and cults for fear of the end times. Or even the embrace of conspiracy theories to explain the unimaginable. The Soviet Union was no exception. As the system broke apart and Marxism-Leninism was tossed aside, a questioning of dominant narratives took root. Soviet citizens began to seek new belief systems–astrology, gurus, alternative medicines, sects and cults, and fantastical historical narratives. Joseph Kellner was struck by this explosion of belief seeking and wanted to understand it. Why did Russian citizens gravitate to new forms of belief? What was lost with the collapse of the Soviet system and what opportunities did a new society offer? And what does this all say about the need for humans to…

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 1980 because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. And the Soviet boycott in 1984 in response to the American boycott. Who bested who was not just about national pride. It was a testament as to who had the better system: communism or capitalism. What I didn’t know then was that for Moscow, winning was everything. Losing came with consequences. Why was it so important for the Russians to win? So much so, as we saw a few years ago, at the risk of being banned for a state-run doping operation? These are just a few questions the Eurasian Knot posed to Bruce Berglund, author of The Moscow Playbook: How Russia Used, Abused, and Transformed Sports in the Hunt for Gold. I’ve never been much of an Olympic watcher (my sport is the NBA), but now I better understand why that hunt for gold is such a Kremlin obsession. Guest: Bruce Berglund is a historian of Europe, Russia,…

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 go back to the early days of the American republic. And, surprisingly, throughout most of the 19th century, the United States and Russia were amicable powers joined in their mutual suspicion of Britain. Relations only began to deteriorate as the US increasingly entered global politics beyond the western hemisphere. What was the historical nature of American and Russian encounters? How did the relationship ebb and slow between distant friends and initiate enemies? And how did this dynamic shape self and bilateral perceptions? The Eurasian Knot turned to three of the best historians on the subject, Victoria Zhuraleva, Ivan Kurilla, and David Foglesong to talk about their new book, Distant Friends and Intimate Enemies: A History of American–Russian Relations about long history of the US-Russia dance. Guest: David Foglesong is a professor of history at Rutgers…

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,” “Central Europe,” or “East Central Europe”? For Pitt historian Gregor Thum, space and how it’s delineated matters. This is especially the case for Germany and its eastern borderlands and people. Empire, war, ethnic cleansing, and shifting borders have left their marks on regional identity and memory. To the point, as Thum explains, a simple photograph he took in Poland can be interpreted with suspicion. How did the German empire regard its east? How do its shifting borders continue to live with us today? And how do we wrestle with the fractured memories that inhabit the national bricolage of Eastern Europe? The Eurasian Knot spoke to Gregor Thum to highlight his scholarship for a Pitt REEES Faculty Spotlight. Guest: Gregor Thum is an Associate Professor in the History Department at the University of Pittsburgh. He specializes in the history of empire, forced…

What is Russia? There’s no easy answer. Travelers, scholars, philosophers, and journalists have pondered the question for centuries. And though answers vary, there is one point of consensus–whatever Russia is, you won’t find it in large cities. “Russia” exists out there, deep in the countryside, in the small towns and villages. For journalist Howard Amos, Russia begins in the provincial city of Pskov. “Russia Starts Here” is its slogan, and Amos uses it to pry open the lives of the region's citizens in his first book, Russia Starts Here: Real Lives in the Ruins of Empire. Amos conducted over 30 interviews during his decade stint in Russia until he left after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. There’s the elderly couple who are the last of their village. The shattered young family whose’ father was killed in Ukraine. The oppositionist politician that risks it all to push back against Putin. And the priest, Father Tikhon Shevkunov, Putin’s supposed “spiritual father.” The Eurasian Knot spoke to Amos about his…

A decade ago, Vladimir Alexandrov published an excellent biography, The Black Russian, about an unknown historical figure–Fredrick Bruce Thomas. Thomas was a Black Mississippian who moved to Imperial Russia and became a successful Moscow nightclub owner until Revolution forced him to flee. Thomas’ life is a window into post-emancipation Black American aspiration, struggle and cosmopolitanism. Alexandrov found Thomas such an intriguing character, he couldn’t let him go. So now, Thomas is the principle in a suspense novel set in Russia’s Silver Age. The Eurasian Knot spoke to Alexandrov about Thomas’ new adventure, the challenges of writing a novel, and where can we expect Fredrick Bruce Thomas to go from here. Guest: Vladimir Alexandrov, B. E. Bensinger Professor Emeritus in the Slavic Department at Yale, is the author most recently of The Black Russian, and To Break Russia's Chains: Boris Savinkov and His Wars against the Tsar and the Bolsheviks. He is currently completing a history of Russian involvement in…

Alexander II’s Great Reforms were sweeping. They freed over 22 million serfs, overhauled the judicial, university, and municipal systems, and loosened censorship, among others. It was one of those pivot points in Russian history. If successful, Russia would have charted a more liberal path or stay on the autocratic road if a failure. Most historians have ruled them a failure. But what were the reforms trying to accomplish? What kind of Empire did it seek to create? Could they turn subjects of an autocracy into citizens of a nation? To discuss such a “big topic,” the Eurasian Knot spoke to Tatiana Borisova about her research into Alexander’s judicial reforms and their historical consequences. Can Russia’s attempt at reform in the mid-19th century provide some hope for a different Russia in the future? Guest: Tatiana Borisova is an Associate Professor of History at the Higher School of Economics St. Petersburg. Her most recent articles in English include: “Imperial legality through ‘Exception’: Gun control in…

I love street art. And I don’t care in what form. Beautifully crafted murals. Spraypainted gang tags. Scrawls on bathroom stalls. Even guerilla sticker mosaics on streetlights. I especially like how street art alters the narrative of a space. So, I was excited when I received a copy of Alexis Lerner’s book, Post-Soviet Graffiti. Post-Soviet street art has gotten little scholarly attention making the topic ripe for exploration and discussion. Post-Soviet graffiti shares a lot with its global counterparts–similar aesthetics, themes, culture, and political edginess. It also shares attempts at its co-optation by governments and corporations. But what makes political street art different in authoritarian countries like Russia? Is its power to circumvent media censorship and political control? What is street art, anyway? Who are the artists? And does graffiti have a political impact? The Eurasian Knot spoke to Alexis to get her thoughts and discuss the content and form of some of the graffiti she’s encountered…

A new youth subculture emerged in the Soviet Union in the late 1940s and early 1950s–the Stiliagi. Roughly translated as “the stylish,” these youths, the majority of whom were men, wore flashy hairstyles and bright colored clothes, danced to jazz, and were obsessed with Western aesthetics. And of course, this style broke Soviet conventions, challenged social norms, and expanded gender performance. Though the exact origin of the Stiliagi is murky, it arose alongside other Western youth subcultures–the beatniks, the mods, the rockers–of the immediate post-WWII libertinism. The Stiliagi put the Soviet Union squarely within the history of a more globalized youth culture. But, what did it mean to be a “stiliagi”? Who were they? How did the style offer alternative forms of Soviet masculinity? How did the Soviet authorities react to these youths? And how did this subculture differ from its Western counterparts? The Eurasian Knot spoke to Alla Myzelev about her new book on the subculture, Stiliagi and Soviet…

Soviet ideology called for the emancipation of women. Soviet women would be active participants in public life, unburdened by the home, children, and husbands, and serve equally in the building and defense of the Soviet state. Reality, however, was different, especially during WWII. Soviet women did serve in the Red Army and partisans. But life at war was more than the heroic tales we know today. Soviet women were often abused by their commanders and fellow soldiers or viewed as suspicious, weak, and even dangerous. Life under occupation was even worse. Many women turned to “survival prostitution” and fraternized with German soldiers to escape abuse, forced labor, and death. What strategies did Soviet women adopt to survive the war? How were they looked upon by the enemy, their neighbors, and compatriots? And what happened after the war to those who formed sexual relations with German soldiers? The Eurasian Knot spoke to Regina Kazyulina about gender, sex, and survival to get a window into this contentious…

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 to produce a student-led podcast featuring two threatened artists that are part of the Pittsburgh Network for Threatened Scholars (PiNTS). I’m proud to feature the end result, The Art of War. It features two artists, the Yemeni street artist, Haifa Subay, and the Ukrainian poet, filmmaker, and musician, Oleksandr Fraze-Frazenko, about exile, art, war, and adjusting to life in Pittsburgh. I hope Eurasian Knot listeners enjoy it because I’m really proud of having been a part of it. And especially, seeing how our students, Jojo Ellis, Kyla Parker, and Lily Acharya proved to be naturals in the audio craft. Art of War Produced by Lily Acharya, Jojo Ellis, Kyla Parker, David Greene, Shannon Reed, and Sean Guillory. Editing and sound design: Sean Guillory Mixed and mastered; Daniel Cooper, Podcuts Editing Music: Blue Dot Sessions Hosted on Acast. See…

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 Soviet Union. Found in wetlands, peat is the extracted top soil that is dried and burned for fuel. It was a marginal, but important, energy source in industrialization. Peat was also used as a localized source to produce electricity for Lenin’s Electrification campaign. Because, as the old man put it, “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.” But, Bruisch tells us, extracting peat was labor intensive, and into the Soviet period, increasingly done by women. Peat harvesting created communities and culture. It also significantly altered local ecologies. How crucial was peat in modernization? Why was it used instead of other energy sources? And can it serve as a present-day alternative? The Eurasian Knot posed these questions and more to Katja Bruisch about her book, Burning Swaps: Peat and the Forgotten Margins of Russia’s Fossil…

I’ve grown to admire historians like Catherine Merridale. You know, those historians who buck academic conventions to write for a non-academic audience. This was quite a change for me since I used to hold such work in contempt (or was it jealousy) when I was a snot-nosed, snobby grad student. So I jumped at the chance to interview Merridale and talk about the historical craft and its relationship to detective fiction in her first novel, Moscow Underground. As she explains, there’s some liberation in fiction. You can freely develop characters. Imbibe the story with emotions, the sites, the sounds, the smells. And craft a compelling and entertaining story. But creative license has its limits. Historical fiction requires you to stick to the historical record. You have to make sure the history you set your story in is believable, as Merridale does, in her crafting of Moscow of 1934. What challenges does writing fiction present to a professional historian? How does fiction and history intersect? And why a novel…

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. Founded in the 13th century by Teutonic knights, the city served as a key trading center for the Prussian Empire until the Polish corridor severed it from Germany after WWI. It is then that the history of Konigsberg takes an even more dramatic turn. Its “Germanness” became an object of debate and political exploitation. By the early 1930s, it had one of the highest votes for the Nazis in Germany. But then–WWII. Destroyed and depopulated by 1944, it became the first city to satisfy the Red Army appetite for revenge rape and pillaging. It became a Soviet possession after WWII and, like the rest of Eastern Europe, was sovietized into Kaliningrad. And even though the USSR is no more, it remains a part of the Russian Federation. The history of Konigsberg/Kaliningrad begs so many questions. Why Nazism? What was life there during the war? The Red Army violence but also…

There’s a paradox at the center of Elana Resnick’s book, Refusing Sustainability: Race and Environmentalism in a Changing Europe. EU policies of environmental sustainability in Bulgaria require the racialization of Romani into a permanent low-skilled and impoverished workforce. Waste management required teams of Romani streetsweepers and trash collectors to sort trash into waste, recyclables and compost, and bring them for processing and reuse. This labor was historically filled by Bulgaria’s Romani citizens, to the point where white Bulgarians equated them with waste. And in turn, Roma’s racial otherness allowed white Bulgarians to enter a pan-European concept of whiteness. Since race is a favorite subject on the Eurasian Knot, Sean spoke to Elana about Sofia’s Romani women as waste workers, the powerful solidarity and collective action that emerges from their labor, and the implications for Romani rights struggle in Bulgaria. Guest: Elana Resnick is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University…

There are many stereotypes about Russia. But perhaps one of the strangest is that Russians prefer a strong hand, are politically passive, even apolitical, and rebellion just isn’t in their DNA. This belief requires a hefty dose of historical amnesia. Many of Russia’s most memorable historical figures–Stenka Razin, Pugachev, the Decembrists, the People’s Will, Lenin, Sakharov, Alexei Navalny, to name a few, were rebels. Not to mention, Russia has experienced three revolutions over the last century–1905, 1917, and 1991. Rebellion, in fact, is an integral part of Russia’s history, and the rebel often leads the dance with the Tsar. What is rebellion? Who are these rebels? What makes them? And how do they shape the Russian political system? These are questions that resonate in Russia and beyond. So the Eurasian Knot invited Anna Arutunyan on the pod to discuss the figure of the rebel in her new book, Rebel Russia: Dissent and Protest from Tsars to Navalny published by Polity. Guest: Anna Arutunyan is a…

After 1917, San Francisco’s small Russian community exploded with new arrivals. Over the next decade, thousands quit Soviet Russia, often via the Far East or China, to escape revolution and civil war. Arrival in America, however, was only the beginning of new trials. In the 1920s and 1930s, American nativists saw Slavic people as low in the racial hierarchy–people who were visually white, but culturally not quite. The Russian community in San Francisco was faced with a contradictory choice: to preserve their culture, a culture that they saw was being destroyed in Soviet Russia or shed their Russianess and become more “American” i.e. more “white.” How did this first wave of Russian emigres meet the challenge of otherness and assimilation? And what about the second wave of Russians who came after WWII? How did they navigate the Red Scare where Russian was equated with communist and the notions of Americanness had become more polarized? The Eurasian Knot spoke to the historian Nina Bogdan about her new book,…