New Books in Russian and Eurasian Studies
Interviews with Scholars of Russia and Eurasia about their New Books
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- Update frequency
- every 2 days
- Average duration
- 59 minutes
- Episodes
- 965
- Years Active
- 2008 - 2025
Craig W. H. Luther, "Guderian's Panzers: From Triumph to Defeat on the Eastern Front (1941)" (Stackpole Books, 2025)
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, the surprise invasion of the Soviet Union that opened the Eastern Front in World War II. With lightning speed and devastating success, th…
01:03:14 |
Tue 05 Aug 2025
William Marx, "Libraries of the Mind" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Erich Auerbach wrote his classic work Mimesis, a history of narrative from Homer to Proust, based largely on his memory of past reading. Having left his physical library behind when he fled to Istanb…
01:05:38 |
Mon 04 Aug 2025
Tricia Starks, "Smoking Under the Tsars: A History of Tobacco in Imperial Russia" (Cornell UP, 2018)
How and when did Russia become a country of smokers? Why did makhorka and papirosy become ubiquitous products of tobacco consumption? Tricia Starks explores these themes as well as the connections be…
01:00:09 |
Sun 03 Aug 2025
Richard W. Harrison, "The Soviet Army's High Commands in War and Peace, 1941–1992" (Casemate Academic, 2022)
Richard W. Harrison's The Soviet Army's High Commands in War and Peace, 1941-1992 (Casemate Academic, 2022) is the first full treatment of the unique phenomenon of High Commands in the Soviet Army du…
01:42:21 |
Mon 28 Jul 2025
John Givens, "The Image of Christ in Russian Literature: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Pasternak" (Northern Illinois UP, 2018)
In The Image of Christ in Russian Literature: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Pasternak (Northern Illinois University Press, 2018), Dr. John Givens of the University of Rochester discusses classics of…
01:06:36 |
Sun 27 Jul 2025
Regina Kazyulina, "Women Under Suspicion: Fraternization, Espionage, and Punishment in the Soviet Union During World War II" (U Wisconsin Press, 2025)
Officially, women in the Soviet Union enjoyed a degree of equality unknown elsewhere in Allied countries at the time. However, long-standing norms of gendered behavior and stereotypes that cast women…
00:47:04 |
Wed 23 Jul 2025
Joseph Kellner, "The Spirit of Socialism: Culture and Belief at the Soviet Collapse" (Cornell UP, 2025)
The Spirit of Socialism is a cultural history of the Soviet collapse. It examines the millions of Soviet people who, during the cascading crises of the collapse and the post-Soviet transition, embark…
00:58:22 |
Mon 21 Jul 2025
Sean McMeekin, "Stalin's War: A New History of World War II" (Basic Books, 2021)
World War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its events. But Hitler was not in power when the conflict erupted in Asia—an…
01:15:10 |
Sun 20 Jul 2025
James D.J. Brown, "Cracking the Crab: Russian Espionage Against Japan, from Peter the Great to Richard Sorge" (Hurst, 2025),
The Russians came late to Japan, arriving after the Portuguese and other European powers. But as soon as they arrived, Russia tried to use spies and espionage to learn more about their neighbor—with …
00:39:49 |
Thu 17 Jul 2025
Volha Bartash, Tomasz Kamusella, and Viktor Shapoval eds., "Papusza/Bronislawa Wajs. Tears of Blood: A Poet's Witness Account of the Nazi Genocide of Roma" (Brill, 2024)
Papusza / Bronisława Wajs. Tears of Blood: A Poet’s Witness Account of the Nazi Genocide of Roma (Brill, 2024) is nothing less of an academic, literary, and historical miracle. It is dedicated to a k…
01:05:20 |
Wed 16 Jul 2025
Anahid Matossian, "Syrian-Armenian Women Migrants in Armenia: Gender, Identity and Painful Belonging" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
After the outbreak of the 2011 Syrian War, a number Syrian-Armenians who had lived in the territory for generations, fled to the Republic of Armenia. This book traces the experiences of Syrian-Armeni…
01:11:53 |
Tue 15 Jul 2025
Juliane Fürst, "Flowers Through Concrete: Explorations in Soviet Hippieland" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Flowers Through Concrete: Explorations in Soviet Hippieland (Oxford University Press, 2021) is the first chronological history of Soviet hippies, tracing their beginnings in the 1960s through the mov…
01:20:23 |
Sun 13 Jul 2025
Felix Cowan, "The Kopeck Press: Popular Journalism in Revolutionary Russia, 1908-1918" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
In this episode, Alisa interviews Dr. Felix Cowan about his new book, The Kopeck Press Popular Journalism in Revolutionary Russia, 1908–1918 (University of Toronto Press, 2025). The Imperial Russian …
00:49:56 |
Mon 30 Jun 2025
Elana Gomel, "The Pilgrim Soul: Being a Russian in Israel" (Cambria Press, 2009)
Elana Gomel is a former senior lecturer in the Department of English and American Studies at Tel Aviv University, where she also served as department chair for two years. This book investigates the R…
01:02:01 |
Sun 29 Jun 2025
Sergey Radchenko, "To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
What would it feel like To Run the World? The Soviet rulers spent the Cold War trying desperately to find out. In To Run The World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power, Sergey Radchenko provi…
01:10:35 |
Sun 29 Jun 2025
Talin Suciyan, "Outcasting Armenians: Tanzimat of the Provinces" (Syracuse UP, 2023)
The history of Tanzimat in the Ottoman Empire has largely been narrated as a unique period of equality, reform, and progress, often framing it as the backdrop to modern Turkey. Inspired by Walter Ben…
00:44:03 |
Sat 28 Jun 2025
Andrea Graziosi and Frank E. Sysyn, "Communism and Hunger: The Ukrainian, Chinese, Kazakh, and Soviet Famines in Comparative Perspective" (CIUS Press, 2016)
In this volume, leading specialists examine the affinities and differences between the pan-Soviet famine of 1931–1933, the Ukrainian Holodomor, the Kazakh great hunger, and the famine in China in 195…
01:13:33 |
Sat 28 Jun 2025
Antonio J. Muñoz, "Hitler's War Against the Partisans During the Stalingrad Offensive: Spring 1942 to the Spring of 1943" (Frontline, 2025)
Dr. Antonio J. Muñoz's Hitler’s War Against the Partisans During The Stalingrad Offensive: Spring 1942 to the Spring of 1943 (Frontline Books, 2025) explores the brutal and widespread partisan warfar…
01:33:18 |
Fri 27 Jun 2025
Wilson T. Bell, "Stalin's Gulag at War: Forced Labour, Mass Death, and Soviet Victory in the Second World War" (University of Toronto Press, 2018)
Stalin's Gulag at War: Forced Labour, Mass Death, and Soviet Victory in the Second World War (University of Toronto Press, 2018) places the Gulag within the story of the regional wartime mobilization…
01:31:06 |
Thu 26 Jun 2025
Yaroslav Hrytsak, "Ukraine: The Forging of a Nation" (PublicAffairs, 2024)
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the world witnessed the “creative, freewheeling, darkly humorous, and deeply resilient society” that is contemporary Ukraine. In this timely and original history,…
01:18:37 |
Wed 25 Jun 2025
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