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Eastern European Studies
European Politics May 26, 2022

European Disunion

Democracy, Sovereignty and the Politics of Emergency

Stefan Auer

Hosted by Tim Jones
"With the eurozone crisis going back to 2010, the refugee crisis that culminated in 2015, the crisis of the EU-Russia relationship going back to the Ukrainian Maidan revolution of 2013-14 …

Eastern European Studies

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Interviews with scholars of Eastern Europe about their new books.

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Jewish Studies May 26, 2022

Unsettled Heritage

Living Next to Poland's Material Jewish Traces After the Holocaust

Yechiel Weizman

Hosted by Amber Nickell
In Unsettled Heritage: Living Next to Poland's Material Jewish Traces After the Holocaust (Cornell UP, 2022), Yechiel Weizman explores what happened to the thousands of abandoned Jewish cemeteries and places …
Jewish Studies May 25, 2022

Polish Jews in the Soviet Union (1939-1959)

History and Memory of Deportation, Exile, and Survival

Katharina Friedla and Markus Nesselrodt

Hosted by Amber Nickell
The majority of Poland’s prewar Jewish population who fled to the interior of the Soviet Union managed to survive World War II and the Holocaust. Polish Jews in the Soviet …
Arguing History May 24, 2022

Putin's War on Ukraine in Historical Perspective

Jeremy Black, Thomas Otte, David R. Stone, and Alex Watson

Hosted by Charles Coutinho
With the war in Ukraine showing no signs of stopping anytime soon, it was thought a worthwhile idea to have an informed discussion with four expert historians of 19th and …
Eastern European Studies May 20, 2022

In the Labyrinth of the KGB

Ukraine's Intelligentsia in the 1960s–1970s

Olga Bertelsen

Hosted by Anna Bisikalo
Olga Bertelsen’s timely book, In the Labyrinth of the KGB: Ukraine’s Intelligentsia in the 1960s-1970s (Lexington Books, 2022), focuses on the generation of the sixties and seventies in Kharkiv, Soviet …
Russian and Eurasian Studies May 18, 2022

The Moderate Bolshevik

Mikhail Tomsky from the Factory to the Kremlin, 1880-1936

Charters Wynn

Hosted by Samantha Lomb
Charters Wynn's book The Moderate Bolshevik: Mikhail Tomsky from the Factory to the Kremlin, 1880-1936 (Brill, 2022) is an English-language biography of Mikhail Tomsky. It reveals Tomsky's central role in all …
European Politics May 16, 2022

The Political Philosophy of the European City

From Polis, Through City-State, to Megalopolis?

Ferenc Hörcher

Hosted by Stephen Satkiewicz
To many the city might seem simply a large urban area to live within, but it actually forms an important political concept and community that has been influential throughout European …
Ukrainian Studies May 13, 2022

The Ukrainian Intelligentsia and Genocide

The Struggle for History, Language, and Culture in the 1920s and 1930s

Victoria A. Malko

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
Victoria A. Malko's book The Ukrainian Intelligentsia and Genocide: The Struggle for History, Language, and Culture in the 1920s and 1930s (Lexington Books, 2021) focuses on the first group targeted in …
Catholic Studies May 9, 2022

Catholics on the Barricades

Poland, France, and "Revolution," 1891-1956

Piotr H. Kosicki

Hosted by Brenna Moore
In Poland in the 1940s and '50s, a new kind of Catholic intended to remake European social and political life--not with guns, but French philosophy. Piotr H. Kosicki's book Catholics on …
General History May 9, 2022

Athens

City of Wisdom

Bruce Clark

Hosted by Albert Zambone
In 510 BC, an obscure Greek city located literally on a backwater revolted against its tyrant. This was not extraordinary; such things happened regularly in the many Greek city-states. What …
Jewish Studies May 6, 2022

International Jewish Humanitarianism in the Age of the Great War

Jaclyn Granick

Hosted by Amber Nickell
Today I talked to Jaclyn Granick about her book International Jewish Humanitarianism in the Age of the Great War (Cambridge UP, 2021).  In 1914, seven million Jews across Eastern Europe and the …
Eastern European Studies May 5, 2022

Free

A Child and a Country at the End of History

Lea Ypi

Hosted by Jill Massino
Lea Ypi grew up in one of the most isolated countries on earth, a place where communist ideals had officially replaced religion. Albania, the last Stalinist outpost in Europe, was …
General History May 4, 2022

Maria Theresa

The Habsburg Empress in Her Time

Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger

Hosted by Charles Coutinho
Maria Theresa (1717–1780) was once the most powerful woman in Europe. At the age of twenty-three, she ascended to the throne of the Habsburg Empire, a far-flung realm composed of …
Eastern European Studies May 4, 2022

Czesław Miłosz's Faith in the Flesh

Body, Belief, and Human Identity

Stanley Bill

Hosted by Piotr Kosicki
In Czesław Miłosz’s Faith in the Flesh: Body, Belief, and Human Identity (Oxford University Press, 2021), Cambridge professor Stanley Bill offers a profoundly original, fine-grained, and rich interpretation of the …
Russian and Eurasian Studies April 29, 2022

Ivan the Terrible in Russian Historical Memory Since 1991

Charles J. Halperin

Hosted by Aaron Weinacht
Dr. Charles Halperin's latest work on Ivan the Terrible analyzes Ivan's image in post-Soviet Russian memory. Halperin addresses a wide variety of sources: textbooks, popular histories, conspiracy theories, and scholarly …
European Politics April 22, 2022

La Hongrie sous Orban

Hélène Bienvenu,

Hosted by Tim Jones
"Who knows the name of the Czech prime minister, the name of the head of the Romanian or even the Polish executive branches? Yet, today everyone knows the name of …
Art April 21, 2022

Modern Art and the Remaking of Human Disposition

Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen

Hosted by Allison Leigh
With this book, Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen brings a new formal and conceptual rubric to the study of turn-of-the-century modernism, transforming our understanding of the era’s canonical works. Butterfield-Rosen analyzes a hitherto …
General History April 15, 2022

Black Earth, White Bread

A Technopolitical History of Russian Agriculture and Food

Susanne A. Wengle

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
In Black Earth, White Bread: A Technopolitical History of Russian Agriculture and Food (University of Wisconsin Press, 2022), Dr. Susanne A. Wengle shows how agrotechnology served—and undermined—Soviet and Russian political …
Political Science April 11, 2022

Europe's Migration Crisis

Border Deaths and Human Dignity

Vicki Squire

Hosted by Lamis Abdelaaty
Rejecting claims that migration is a crisis for Europe, Europe's Migration Crisis: Border Deaths and Human Dignity (Cambridge University Press, 2020) instead suggests that the 'migration crisis' reflects a more fundamental …
Eastern European Studies April 6, 2022

On the Edges of Whiteness

Polish Refugees in British Colonial Africa during and after the Second World War

Jochen Lingelbach

Hosted by Piotr Kosicki
As the horrors of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine unfold before our eyes, we have witnessed a massive wave of refugees absorbed by a range of Eastern European countries – …