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Eastern European Studies June 19, 2016

Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna?

The Geopolitical and Imaginary Borders Between the Balkans and Europe

Ana Foteva

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
Starting with Metternich's declaration that the Balkans begin at Rennweg (a street in the Third District of Vienna), Ana Foteva draws on novels, plays, librettos and travelogues from the 19th through the 21st century to explore the various forms the Balkan region has taken in Europe's political and cultural imagination. Her analysis of these literary works reveals concepts of belonging, multi-belonging and unbelonging among Serbians, Bosnians, Croatians, Slovenes and even …
Russian and Eurasian Studies March 9, 2018

Between Truth and Time

A History of Soviet Central Television

Christine E. Evans

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
In Between Truth and Time: A History of Soviet Central Television (Yale University Press, 2016), Christine E. Evans reveals that Soviet television in the Brezhnev era was anything but boring …
Russian and Eurasian Studies August 18, 2016

States of Obligation

Taxes and Citizenship in the Russian Empire and Early Soviet Republic

Yanni Kotsonis

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
I have to admit that I was quite intimidated by a book on taxation in imperial Russia. But States of Obligation: Taxes and Citizenship in the Russian Empire and Early …
Eastern European Studies March 7, 2016

Written Here, Published There

How Underground Literature Crossed the Iron Curtain

Friederike Kind-Kovacs

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
Written Here, Published There: How Underground Literature Crossed the Iron Curtain (Central European University Press, 2014) is a richly detailed description of the social practices, debates and discourses that were …
Eastern European Studies March 25, 2016

The People's Game

Football, State and Society in East Germany

Alan McDougall

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
In The People's Game: Football, State and Society (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Alan McDougall looks at football from the top-down and bottom-up: as a tool of the state, as forming …
Eastern European Studies May 23, 2016

The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism, 1906-1931

Per Anders Rudling

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
I don't often have a chance to read books that focus solely on Belarus, which is exactly why I was intrigued by The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism, 1906-193 …
Eastern European Studies September 12, 2016

After the Revolution

Youth, Democracy, and the Politics of Disappointment in Serbia

Jessica Greenberg

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
Jessica Greenberg's After the Revolution: Youth, Democracy, and the Politics of Disappointment in Serbia (Stanford University Press, 2014) explores a dual tension at work in Serbia in the early 2000s …
Eastern European Studies December 18, 2015

The Power of Song

Nonviolent National Culture in the Baltic Singing Revolution

Guntis Smidchens

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
In the late 1980s, the Baltic Soviet Social Republics seemed to explode into song as Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian national movements challenged Soviet rule. The leaders of each of these …
Eastern European Studies October 9, 2015

Kith, Kin and Neighbors

Communities and Confessions in 17th Century Wilno

David Frick

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
In 1636, King Wladyslaw IV's quartermaster surveyed the houses of Wilno in advance of the king's visit to the city. In Kith, Kin and Neighbors: Communities and Confessions in Seventeenth-Century …
Eastern European Studies January 4, 2017

The Making and Breaking of Soviet Lithuania

Memory and Modernity in the Wake of War

Violeta Davoliute

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
In The Making and Breaking of Soviet Lithuania: Memory and Modernity in the Wake of War, published by Routledge, Violeta Davoliute calls Lithuania an improbably successful and paradoxically representative case …
Eastern European Studies July 24, 2015

Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century

A Surrealist History

Derek Sayer

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
Prague, according to Derek Sayer, is the place "in which modernist dreams have time and again unraveled." In this sweeping history of surrealism centered on Prague as both a physical …
Eastern European Studies March 15, 2015

Unfinished Utopia

Nowa Huta, Stalinism and Polish Society, 1949-1956

Katherine Lebow

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
In the late 1940s, tens of thousands of people - mostly young male peasants - streamed to southeastern Poland to help build Nowa Huta, the largest and most ambitious of …
Eastern European Studies February 20, 2015

The Greengrocer and His TV

The Culture of Communism after the 1968 Prague Spring

Paulina Bren

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
Major Zeman's life is filled with action packed adventures. A young man finds his calling turning a collective farm into a shining example of agricultural efficiency. Anna embraces her role …
Eastern European Studies December 25, 2014

Priest, Politician, Collaborator

Jozef Tiso and the Making of Fascist Slovakia

James Mace Ward

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
In his biography of Jozef Tiso, Catholic priest and president of independent Slovakia (1939-1944), James Ward provides a deeper understanding of a man who has been both honored and vilified …
Eastern European Studies November 4, 2014

Balkan Smoke

Tobacco and the Making of Modern Bulgaria

Mary Neuberger

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
By the late 1960s, Bulgaria was the world's number one exporter of tobacco, perhaps the pinnacle of the place of tobacco in the economic, social and political development of modern …
Eastern European Studies November 3, 2015

Holy Legionary Youth

Roland Clark

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
Holy Legionary Youth: Fascist Activism in Interwar Romania (Cornell University Press, 2015) is an in-depth study of the Legion of the Archangel Michael, one of the largest and longest lasting …
Russian and Eurasian Studies May 23, 2016

Sex, Politics &amp

Political Legitimacy in Russia

Valerie Sperling

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
The prevalence of media that reinforces a traditional masculine image of Vladimir Putin, Russia's leader, is at the core of Valerie Sperling's analysis of gender norms and sexualization as a …
Eastern European Studies July 25, 2017

Hip Hop Ukraine

Music, Race, and African Migration

Adriana Helbig

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
In 2004, during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, Adriana Helbig saw African musicians rapping in Ukrainian and wearing embroidered Ukrainian ethnic costumes. Her curiosity about how these musicians came to …
Russian and Eurasian Studies January 4, 2017

The High Title of a Communist

Postwar Party Discipline and the Values of the Soviet Regime

Edward Cohn

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
Edward Cohn analyzes changes in Communist Party discipline in the Soviet Union from the Eighteenth Party Congress in 1939 through the 1960s in The High Title of a Communist: Postwar …
Eastern European Studies October 31, 2017

Whose Bosnia?

Nationalism and Political Imagination in the Balkans, 1840-1914

Edin Hajdarpasic

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
It seemed that everyone wanted Bosnia in the late nineteenth century: Serbian and Croatian nationalists; Ottoman, Habsburg, Muslim and Yugoslav movements. At the same time, they all felt frustration with …