New Books in Russian and Eurasian Studies

Mar 05 2025 897 ep. 59 mins 1.9k
New Books in Russian and Eurasian Studies Podcast artwork

Interviews with Scholars of Russia and Eurasia about their New Books

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Tamizdat under Putin: A Discussion with Publisher Feliks Sandalov

Mar 05 2025 60 mins  
Russia has a long history of publishers operating from abroad, producing books and periodicals for a Russian-speaking audience. One notable example is The Bell (Kolokol), published by Alexander Herzen, the Russian writer and thinker who emigrated in the mid-19th century. The waves of Russian emigration in the 20th century—beginning with those fleeing the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution

László Borhi, "Survival under Dictatorships: Life and Death in Nazi and Communist Regimes" (Central European UP, 2024)

Mar 03 2025 47 mins  
A complex array of individual responses to the abuse of power by the state is represented in this book in three horrific episodes in the history of East-Central Europe. The three events followed each other within a span of about ten years: the deportation and murder of Hungarian Jews in Nazi death and labor camps; the Arrow Cross terrorist rule in Budapest; and finally the Stalinis

Victoria Khiterer, "Jewish Pogroms in Kiev During the Russian Civil War, 1918-1920" (Edwin Mellen, 2015)

Mar 01 2025 83 mins  
Jewish Pogroms in Kiev During the Russian Civil War discusses how anti-Jewish violence began during the revolution and civil war 1917-1920 raising questions of responsibility of civil and military authorities and the antisemitic propaganda spread by official mass media as well as deliberate exploitation of antisemitism for political purposes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit

Irina Rebrova, "Re-Constructing Grassroots Holocaust Memory: The Case of the North Caucasus" (de Gruyter, 2020)

Feb 27 2025 55 mins  
The main objective of Re-Constructing Grassroots Holocaust Memory: The Case of the North Caucasus (de Gruyter, 2020) is to locate the grass roots initiatives of remembering the Holocaust victims in a particular region of Russia which has a very diverse ethnic structure and little presence of Jews at the same time. It aims to find out how such individual initiatives correspond to th

Christina Kiaer, "Collective Body: Aleksandr Deineka at the Limit of Socialist Realism" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

Feb 26 2025 108 mins  
Dislodging the avant-garde from its central position in the narrative of Soviet art, Collective Body: Aleksandr Deineka at the Limit of Socialist Realism (U Chicago Press, 2024) presents painter Aleksandr Deineka’s haptic and corporeal version of Socialist Realist figuration as an alternate experimental aesthetic that, at its best, activates and organizes affective forces for col

Shay A. Pilnik, "The Ravine of Memory: Babyn Yar Between the Holocaust and the Great Patriotic War" (Purdue UP, 2025)

Feb 22 2025 90 mins  
The Nazis and their collaborators buried over 100,000 victims at Babyn Yar, a ravine in modern-day Ukraine. Most of the individuals were Jewish, making this area one of the most infamous mass murder sites in history. The Ravine of Memory: Babyn Yar Between the Holocaust and the Great Patriotic War (Purdue UP, 2025) starts when the travesty ends, telling the story of the ravine’s

Trevor Wilson, "Alexandre Kojève and the Specters of Russian Philosophy" (Northwestern UP, 2024)

Feb 15 2025 47 mins  
In this episode, Alisa interviews Dr. Trevor Wilson about his new book, Alexandre Kojève and the Specters of Russian Philosophy (Northwestern University Press, 2024). Their conversation delves into the intellectual currents of interwar Europe, placing the enigmatic figure of Alexandre Kojève into this unique cultural landscape. The conversation touches on how key philosophical co

Canada and Eastern Europe, 1945–1991: Meeting in the Middle

Feb 10 2025 33 mins  
In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) sat down with Andrea Chandler to talk about her new book with CEU Press, Canada and Eastern Europe, 1945–1991: Meeting in the Middle. In the podcast we talked about why the relations between Canada and the countries of the Eastern bloc have so far been underreseached, about the large Central and Eastern European diaspora in Canada

Laurel Victoria Gray, "Women’s Dance Traditions of Uzbekistan: Legacy of the Silk Road" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

Feb 10 2025 34 mins  
Women’s Dance Traditions of Uzbekistan: Legacy of the Silk Road (Bloomsbury, 2024) is the first comprehensive work in English on the three major regional styles of Uzbek women's dance – Ferghana, Khiva and Bukhara – and their broader Silk Road cultural connections, from folklore roots to contemporary stage dance. The book surveys the remarkable development from the earliest m

Peter Whitewood, "The Red Army and the Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Soviet Military" (UP of Kansas, 2015)

Feb 07 2025 81 mins  
On June 11, 1937, a closed military court ordered the execution of a group of the Soviet Union's most talented and experienced army officers, including Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevskii; all were charged with participating in a Nazi plot to overthrow the regime of Joseph Stalin. There followed a massive military purge, from the officer corps through the rank-and-file, that many conside