New Books in Russian and Eurasian Studies

New Books in Russian and Eurasian Studies

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Episodes

Stephen F. Jones, "The First Social Democracy: The Democratic Republic of Georgia, 1918–1921" (Harvard UP, 2026)

April 21, 2026 • 65 mins
Following the collapse of the Russian Empire, the small nation of Georgia established its independence in May 1918. Its leaders surprised the world by creating the first social democratic state. Based on a combination of parliamentarianism and direct democracy, it was a representative government of the peasants and workers themselves, with ballots in their hands. The First Social Democracy: The Democratic Republic of Georgia, 1918...
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Sasha Senderovich and Harriet Murav, "In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union" (Stanford UP, 2026)

April 20, 2026 • 62 mins
In their anthology, In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union (Stanford University Press, 2026), Sasha Senderovitch and Harriet Murav provide an underappreciated perspective on the Holocaust, as it was experienced and remembered in the former Soviet Union. In these works, Jewish authors from Ukraine, Lithuania, Russia, and Belarus, writing in Yiddish and Russian, tell the stories of ordin...
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Kristan Stoddart, "Russia's Hybrid Warfare Offensive Against the West" (de Gruyter, 2025)

April 19, 2026 • 80 mins
Kristan Stoddart's Russia's Hybrid Warfare Offensive Against the West (de Gruyter, 2025) is a timely and systematic analysis of Russian hybrid warfare with a particular focus on Russian cyberespionage and cyberwarfare. It especially analyzes Russian policy from the election of President Vladmir Putin in 2000 to date. It takes a long term, long lens, view of Russian policies and actions internationally and domestically, fundamental...
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Donald Sassoon, "Revolutions: A New History" (Verso Books, 2025)

April 14, 2026 • 55 mins
Revolutions: A New History (Verso Books, 2025) is a sparkling account of political upheaval and the power of history. We think of revolutions in terms of fleeting events, such as the fall of the Bastille or the storming of the Winter Palace. In reality, they take decades to burn out, if they ever do.Historian Donald Sassoon takes the long view of some of the most famous upheavals: the English Civil War, the American War of Independ...
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Katharina Wiedlack, "Under Western Eyes: Vulnerable Minorities and the Russian State in New Cold War Cultures" (Academic Studies Press, 2025)

April 12, 2026 • 40 mins
Under Western Eyes: Vulnerable Minorities and the Russian State in New Cold War Cultures (Academic Studies Press, 2025) examines the New Cold War between Anglophone Western and Russian media, focusing on its coverage of LGBTIQ+ topics and representations of Russian femininity, masculinity, racial and gender diversity, and disability. It interrogates how the Anglophone media constructs images of vulnerable bodies and groups in Russ...
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Matthew P. Romaniello, "Europe's Laboratory: Climate and Health in Eighteenth-Century Russia" (Cornell UP, 2025)

April 11, 2026 • 70 mins
Europe's Laboratory: Climate and Health in Eighteenth-Century Russia (Cornell UP, 2025) is a history of eighteenth-century naturalists and physicians who were involved in the creation of a classification system for the people of the Russian Empire. These Enlightened scholars traveled through Russia describing its people, landscape, and customs. In an era when climate was seen as a significant factor affecting health and bodies, the...
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Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic with Mia Bennett

April 11, 2026 • 43 mins
Nowhere is the dual threat of climate change and geopolitical contest felt more strongly than in the Arctic. Sea ice is declining rapidly, wildfires are burning, and permafrost is thawing. All the while, global interest is gathering apace as the region transforms from being a frozen desert into an international waterway. In this episode, Mia Bennett—co-author with Kalus Dodds of Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic (Ya...
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Scott M. Kenworthy, "The People's Patriarch: Tikhon Bellavin and the Orthodox Church in North America and Revolutionary Russia" (Oxford UP, 2026)

April 6, 2026 • 83 mins
On October 28, 1917, just days after the Bolsheviks seized power, the great Council of the Russian Orthodox Church voted to restore the patriarchate, which had been abolished by Peter the Great two centuries earlier. The Council chose Tikhon (Bellavin), the son of a humble village parish priest, to be head of Russia's largest religious confession. At the time, the majority of Orthodox Christians were devoutly religious. Tikhon's vi...
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Kristina Jonutytė, "Between the Buddha and the New Tsar: Urban Religion and Minority Politics at the Asian Borderlands of Russia" (Cornell UP, 2026)

April 1, 2026 • 62 mins
Between the Buddha and the New Tsar: Urban Religion and Minority Politics at the Asian Borderlands of Russia (Cornell UP, 2026) by Dr. Kristina Jonutytė is an ethnography of contemporary urban Buddhism in Buryatia, a republic within the Russian Federation. Kristina Jonutytė shows how—in this ethnically and religiously diverse borderland region—Buryat Buddhists are caught between an oppressive, militant Russian regime and the tenaci...
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The Remarkable Life and Afterlife of Sholem Aleichem

March 24, 2026 • 63 mins
Novelist, playwright, journalist, essayist, and editor, Sholem Aleichem was one of the founding giants of modern Yiddish literature. The creator of a pantheon of extraordinary characters, his literature provided readers with a window into the world of Eastern European Jews as they confronted the forces of modernity that tore through Russia at the end of the 19th century. But just as compelling as the fictional lives of his characte...
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Nana Osei-Opare, "Socialist De-Colony: Black and Soviet Entanglements in Ghana's Cold War" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

March 24, 2026 • 47 mins
Led by the charismatic Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana won its political independence from the United Kingdom in 1957. It precipitated both the dying spiral of colonialism across the African continent and the world's first Black socialist state. Utilising materials from Ghanaian, Russian, English, and American archives, Nana Osei-Opare offers a provocative and new reading of this defining moment in world history through the eyes of workers, w...
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The Jews in Poland-Lithuania and Russia: 1350 to the Present Day

March 23, 2026 • 69 mins
For centuries, Poland and Russia formed the heartland of the Jewish world. Until World War II, this area was home to over forty percent of world Jewry: nearly three and a half million Jews lived in Poland, and nearly three million more lived in the Soviet Union. Although the majority of American and European Jews originate from Eastern Europe, the history of this life and civilization is not well known, or has been reduced to a sto...
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Timothy Manion, "Why Barbarossa Failed: Germany and Russia in the Second World War" (Helion, 2026)

March 20, 2026 • 112 mins
Why did Operation Barbarossa fail? For more than eight decades, historians have offered one dominant answer: Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union was doomed from the outset. Vast distances, brutal weather, weak logistics and the overwhelming industrial power of the Red Army ensured that the Wehrmacht never had a realistic chance of success. But what if this familiar verdict is too comfortable — and too simplistic? In Why Ba...
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Gudrun Persson, "Russian Military Thought: The Evolution of Strategy Since the Crimean War" (Georgetown UP, 2025)

March 15, 2026 • 82 mins
The development of the Russian military's strategic thought is an understudied and thus misunderstood subject in the West. Strategy in Russia encompasses the broader context of foreign and domestic policy as well as the military's ties to the country's leadership. The military's strategic thought is closely linked to Russia's existence as a state and explains patterns of Russian confrontation. In Russian Military Thought: The Evol...
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Jonathan Sherry, "Stalinism on Trial: Communism and Republican Justice in the Spanish Civil War" (Liverpool UP, 2025)

March 14, 2026 • 74 mins
Stalinism on Trial: Communism and Republican Justice in the Spanish Civil War (Liverpool University Press, 2025) is a history of Communism and anti-Communism in the Spanish Civil War. It uses newly available archival material to reassess Soviet intervention in Spain and reappraise the role of Premier Juan Negrín. How did the Soviet operation affect attempts to rebuild the Republican justice system that the war had shattered? How di...
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Aaron Donaghy, "The Second Cold War: Carter, Reagan, and the Politics of Foreign Policy" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

March 1, 2026 • 61 mins
Towards the end of the Cold War, the last great struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union marked the end of détente, and escalated into the most dangerous phase of the conflict since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Aaron Donaghy examines the complex history of America's largest peacetime military buildup, which was in turn challenged by the largest peacetime peace movement. Focusing on the critical period between 1977 and 1...
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Jeremy Black, "The Short History of Russia: Returning to Another Country" (Amberley, 2026)

February 21, 2026 • 56 mins
The invasion of Ukraine in 2022 began a new episode in history and was surrounded by a miscellany of historical claims. The Short History of Russia: Returning to Another Country (Amberley, 2026) is a succinct, up-to-date guide to the histories on offer about and from Russia, one that seeks to make sense of present issues and future prospects, as well as of the past. There is a heavy emphasis on war and international relations, but ...
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Denys Gorbach, "The Making and Unmaking of the Ukrainian Working Class: Everyday Politics and Moral Economy in a Post-Soviet City" (Berghahn Books, 2024)

February 19, 2026 • 69 mins
Industrial workers in Ukraine have a complex political lifeworld because their political action aimed at bringing radical social change coexists with a demobilizing stance that condemns all political participation as corrupt. This contradictory attitude to politics defines the character of populist mass mobilizations that shook Ukraine in 2004 and 2014, as well as the electoral overhaul of 2019 and the popular response to the Russi...
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Alexis Lerner, "Post-Soviet Graffiti: Free Speech in Authoritarian States" (U Toronto Press, 2025)

February 16, 2026 • 46 mins
Post-Soviet Graffiti: Free Speech in Authoritarian States (University of Toronto Press, 2025) is an empirically grounded ethnographic study of how graffiti and street art can be used as a political tool to circumvent censorship, express grievances, and control public discourse, particularly in authoritarian states. For more than a decade, Dr. Alexis M. Lerner combed the alleyways, underpasses, and public squares of cities once und...
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Colleen M. Moore, "The Peasants' War: Russia's Home Front in the First World War and the End of the Autocracy" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025)

February 14, 2026 • 55 mins
During the First World War, Russia relied on the mass mobilization of its peasant population. In the summer of 1914, approximately four million peasants answered the state’s call to arms, while the millions who remained at home donated labour and other resources to the cause. Within three short years these same peasants were refusing to pay taxes or turn over their grain, dooming the autocracy to collapse.The Peasants’ War: Russia...
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