New Books In Eastern European Studies

Dr. Ari Joskowicz, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History at Vanderbilt University, is the author of Rain of Ash: Roma, Jews, and the Holocaust (Princeton University Press, 2023). Jews and Roma died side by side in the Holocaust, yet the world has not recognized their destruction equally. In postwar decades, the Jewish experience of genocide increasingly occupied the attention of legal experts, scholars, curators, and politicians, while the genocide of Europe’s Roma went largely ignored. Dr. Joskowicz tells the story of how Roma turned to Jewish institutions, funding sources, and professional networks as they sought to gain recognition and compensation for their wartime suffering. Rain of Ash recounts the entanglement of Jewish and Romani quests for justice, challenges us to rethink the way we remember the Holocaust, and probes the means by which historical narratives are made and transmitted. Vladislav Lilic is a doctoral candidate in Modern European History at Vanderbilt University. Learn more ab

With the annexation of Crimea in 2014 as well the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia's place in the world is a matter of fierce debate among world leaders and analysts. For decades it was regarded as irrelevant since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but Vladimir Putin came to power with the intent of improving Russian influence on the world stage. How does the Russian leadership intend to achieve this goal of relevancy on the world stage? Keir Giles addresses these issues in Russia's War on Everybody: And What it Means for You (‎Bloomsbury Academic, 2023). Keir Giles is Senior Consulting Fellow for the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House and Director of the Conflict Studies Research Centre. He has spent three decades explaining Russia, for the BBC, the UK Ministry of Defence, Chatham House, NATO and in the private sector. His previous publications include Russia's 'New' Tools for Confronting the West (2016), the Handbook of Russian Information Warfare (2016) and Moscow Rules (2019). Stephen Satkie

Wolfgang Marx's I Don't Belong Anywhere: Gyorgy Ligeti At 100 (Brepols Publishers, 2022) commemorates the centenary of Gyorgy Ligeti's birth. The volume consists of twelve contributions that consists of new investigations of many aspects of Legeti's career.  2023 marks the centenary of Ligeti's birth, an appropriate moment to take stock of the relevance this composer has in the contemporary world, to assess where he "belongs" today and how our views of his uvre and our understanding of his position in musical and cultural history have evolved. What do Ligeti and his music have to say to us in our post-postmodernist age? Why do his works still fascinate us so much? This book offers new readings of core compositions such as "Aventures", "Lontano", "Le Grand Macabre", the "Holderlin Fantasies" and "Galamb borong". It also reassesses the context and reception of Ligeti's works, including the influence of Romanian music (not least in his childhood), musical life in Hungary between 1945 and 1956, the ways in which

A courageous young woman escaping Nazi Germany, with no choice other than to leave her family behind... Roma Talasiewicz-Eibuszyc was born in Warsaw near the end of World War I, the youngest of six children. Little Roma grows up to become a striking, opinionated woman, but her life in its current form is about to change completely. The first shots in World War II are fired when Hitler and Nazi Germany invade Poland, turning all the Jews of Europe into their targets. In a decision full of resourcefulness and courage, Roma escapes Poland and leaves for Soviet Russia, in order to save her life. At first, she believes she will be reunited with her family within a few weeks, but reality proves different. As time goes by, her flight broadens Eastward. And with it, the feelings of guilt and regret that would haunt her for the rest of her life, for having left her siblings behind. Suzanna Eibuszyc's book Memory Is Our Home (Ibidem, 2022) is a powerful historical memoir and a gripping true-life story, a first-hand acc

This episode of How To Be Wrong is a conversation with Mariia Shuvalova, a lecturer at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Fulbright Scholar (Harriman Institute, Columbia University in the city of New York, 2019–2020) and co-founder and head of the non-governmental organization New Ukrainian Academic Community. Joining us from Kyiv, Mariia talks about her experiences of the Russian invasion, imperialism, and Ukrainian identity, as well as her thoughts on anger and humility in the face of war. It’s an inspiring conversation. John W. Traphagan, Ph.D. is Professor and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Fellow in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also a professor in the Program in Human Dimensions of Organizations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies

In How Patronal Networks Shape Opportunities for Local Citizen Participation in a Hybrid Regime: A Comparative Analysis of Five Cities in Ukraine (Ibidem, 2022), Oleksandra Keudel proposes a novel explanation for why some local governments in hybrid regimes enable citizen participation while others restrict it. She argues that mechanisms for citizen participation are by-products of political dynamics of informal business-political (patronal) networks that seek domination over local governments. Against the backdrop of either competition or coordination between patronal networks in their localities, municipal leaders cherry-pick citizen participation mechanisms as a tactic to sustain their own access to resources and functions of local governments. This argument is based on an in-depth comparative analysis of patronal network arrangements and the adoption of citizen participation mechanisms in five urban municipalities in Ukraine during 2015-2019: Chernivtsi, Kharkiv, Kropyvnytskyi, Lviv, and Odesa. Fifty-seve

In the fourth century AD, a new faith grew out of Palestine, overwhelming the paganism of Rome and resoundingly defeating a host of other rival belief systems. Almost a thousand years later, all of Europe was controlled by Christian rulers, and the religion, ingrained within culture and society, exercised a monolithic hold over its population. But how did a small sect of isolated and intensely committed congregations become a mass movement centrally directed from Rome? As Peter Heather shows in this illuminating new history, there was nothing inevitable about Christendom's rise and eventual dominance. From Constantine the Great's pivotal conversion to Christianity to the crisis that followed the collapse of the Roman empire--which left the religion teetering on the edge of extinction--to the astonishing revolution of the eleventh century and beyond, out of which the Papacy emerged as the head of a vast international corporation, Heather traces Christendom's chameleon-like capacity for self-reinvention, as it

Based on sources from rare book libraries in Russia and around the world, Picturing the Page: Illustrated Children’s Literature and Reading under Lenin and Stalin (U Toronto Press, 2020) offers a vivid exploration of illustrated children’s literature and reading under Lenin and Stalin – a period when mass publishing for children and universal public education became available for the first time in Russia. By analyzing the illustrations in fairy tales, classic "adult" literature reformatted for children, and war-time picture books, Megan Swift elucidates the vital and multifaceted function of illustrated children’s literature in repurposing the past. Picturing the Page demonstrates that while the texts of the past remained fixed, illustrations could slip between the pages to mediate and annotate that past, as well as connect with anti-religious, patriotic, and other campaigns that were central to Soviet children’s culture after the 1917 Revolution. Megan Swift is an associate professor of Russian Studies at th

Valeriu Gafencu was born in 1921 in the Bessarabia region of Romania. In  1941, he was arrested and imprisoned, remaining so until his death in 1952. Two years into his incarceration, Gafencu was seized by the  conviction that he had squandered God’s love and felt a fervent wish to  repent. Fr. George Calciu—who had likewise been a prisoner in Romania  and had met Gafencu on several occasions—later witnessed to his  conversion: “It was enough just to see him and to pass by him, to  immediately feel the influence of Gafencu … people who stayed with him  in the same room still pray to him as to a saint.”  White Lilies (STM Press, 2023) is a  collection of letters, writings, and poems that Gafencu composed while  in prison and are testimony not only of Gafencu’s great love but of the  power of God’s light to reach even the darkest of places. Adrian Guiu holds a PhD in History of Christianity from the University of Chicago and teaches at Wright College in Chicago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphon

Serbian Paramilitaries and the Breakup of Yugoslavia: State Connections and Patterns of Violence (Routledge, 2022) examines the nature and functions of paramilitary units throughout the 1990s and their ties to the state. The study draws on the archives of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, which conducted dozens of trials relating to paramilitary violence, as well as the records from judicial proceedings in the region. In discussing how and why certain important paramilitary units emerged, the author argues that coordinated action by a number of state institutions gave rise to paramilitaries tasked with altering borders while maintaining plausible deniability for the sponsoring regime. In addition, the outsourcing of violence by the state to paramilitaries led to a significant weakening of the very state these units and their sponsors swore to protect. Iva Vukušić is an Assistant Professor in International History at Utrecht University, and a Visiting Research Fellow a

Birds of Prey: Hitler's Luftwaffe, Ordinary Soldiers, and the Holocaust in Poland (Ibidem Press, 2021) is a microhistory of the Nazi occupation of Białowieźa Forest, Poland’s national park. The narrative stretches from Göring’s palatial lifestyle to the common soldier on the ground killing Jews, partisans, and civilians. Based entirely on previously unpublished sources, the book is the synthesis of six areas of research: Hitler’s Luftwaffe, the hunt and environmental history, military geography, Colonialism and Nazi Lebensraum, the Holocaust, and the war in the East. By weaving together a narrative about Hermann Göring, his inner circle, and ordinary soldiers, the book reveals the Nazi ambition to draw together East Prussia, the Bialystok region, and Ukraine into a common eastern frontier of the Greater German state, revealing how the Luftwaffe, the German hunt, and the state forestry were institutional perpetrators of Lebensraum and genocide. Up until now the Luftwaffe had not been identified in specific act

Today I talked to Megan Buskey about her book Ukraine Is Not Dead Yet: A Family Story of Exile and Return (Ibidem-Verlag, 2023). When Megan Buskey’s grandmother Anna dies in Cleveland in 2013, Megan is compelled in her grief to document her grandmother’s life as a native of Ukraine. A Ukrainian American, Buskey returns to her family’s homeland and enlists her relatives there to help her in her quest—and discovers much more than she expected. The result of this extraordinary journey that traces one woman’s story across Ukraine’s difficult twentieth century, from a Galician village emerging from serfdom, to the “bloodlands” of Eastern Europe during World War II, to the Siberian hinterlands where Anna spent almost two decades in exile before receiving the rare opportunity to emigrate from the Soviet Union in the 1960s. Yet Megan’s wide-ranging inquiries keep leading her back to universal questions: What does family mean? How can you forge connections between generations that span different cultures, times, and p

Spring 1944. A Jewish family is murdered in a remote Ukrainian village. Who were they? Who were the killers? Three generations later, an Israeli woman and a British man of Ukrainian origins set out to find out how their families were implicated in this crime. They also discover how this untold murder has warped their own lives. Narrated by an unnamed historian, and based on fragments of memories, testimonies, diaries, letters and confessions, The Butterfly and the Axe (Amsterdam Publishers, 2023) seeks to fill a gap in the historical record of the Holocaust by reimagining those who were murdered and erased from memory, and to shed light on the transgenerational effects of trauma. Omer Bartov was born in Israel and teaches history in the United States. His mother emigrated from Galicia to Palestine before World War II. Most of the rest of his family were murdered under unknown circumstances in the Holocaust. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium m

The Fascist Faith of the Legion "Archangel Michael" in Romania, 1927–1941 (Routledge, 2022) engages critically with recent works on fascism, totalitarianism, and religion, and advances an original theoretical and methodological approach to fascism as a political faith. On this basis, the book constructs an innovative comparative research framework for reconceptualizing the history of the Legion "Archangel Michael" in Romania, 1927–1941. It contends that the Legion put forward a palingenetic political faith of a theological type, called Legionarism. To provide a comprehensive analysis of the origins, main features, mechanisms of institutionalization, and demise of this self-proclaimed salvific political faith, the book documents the palingenetic foundations of the Legionary faith, the syncretism between fascist and Christian rites and rituals, and the intricate relationship between the Legion and the Orthodox Church and its dogma. The book documents three main sacrificial strategies employed by the Legion to "

Today I talked to historian Chris Web about two books detailing the workings of the Nazi extermination camps:  Chris Webb, The Sobibor Death Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance (Ibidem Verlag, 2017) Chris Webb and Michael Chocholaty, The Treblinka Death Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance (Ibidem Verlag, 2021) You can hear Webb discuss his work on the Belzec Death Camp here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies

The extraordinary array of images included in The Middle Ages in 50 Objects (Cambridge UP, 2018) reveals the full and rich history of the Middle Ages. Exploring material objects from the European, Byzantine and Islamic worlds, the book casts a new light on the cultures that formed them, each culture illuminated by its treasures. The objects are divided among four topics: The Holy and the Faithful; The Sinful and the Spectral; Daily Life and Its Fictions, and Death and Its Aftermath. Each section is organized chronologically, and every object is accompanied by a penetrating essay that focuses on its visual and cultural significance within the wider context in which the object was made and used. Spot maps add yet another way to visualize and consider the significance of the objects and the history that they reveal. Lavishly illustrated, this is an appealing and original guide to the cultural history of the Middle Ages. Elina Gertsman is a professor of Art History at Case Reserve Western University. She speciali

Fear pervades dictatorial regimes. Citizens fear leaders, the regime's agents fear superiors, and leaders fear the masses. The ubiquity of fear in such regimes gives rise to the "dictator's dilemma," where autocrats do not know the level of opposition they face and cannot effectively neutralize domestic threats to their rule. The dilemma has led scholars to believe that autocracies are likely to be short-lived. Yet, some autocracies have found ways to mitigate the dictator's dilemma. As Martin K. Dimitrov shows in Dictatorship and Information: Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Communist Europe and China (Oxford UP, 2023), substantial variability exists in the survival of nondemocratic regimes, with single-party polities having the longest average duration. Offering a systematic theory of the institutional solutions to the dictator's dilemma, Dimitrov argues that single-party autocracies have fostered channels that allow for the confidential vertical transmission of information, while also solving the problem

Clare Griffin's book Mixing Medicines: The Global Drug Trade and Early Modern Russia (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022) introduces the reader to the dynamic and complex world of early modern Russian medical drugs, from the enthusiasm for newly imported American botanicals to the disgust at Western European medicines made from human corpses. Based on a unique set of previously unused sources, this book is the first study of how the Russian Empire took part in the early modern global trade in medical drugs. The extensive and detailed records kept by the Moscow court show how ingredients produced elsewhere and passed through the massive, long-distance trade network of the early modern world were finally consumed. Looking at medicine as materia medica gives us a different perspective than when looking at practitioners, texts, and ideas. Erika Monahan is the author of The Merchants of Siberia: Trade in Early Modern Eurasia (Cornell UP, 2016) and a 2023-2024 Alexander von Humboldt Fellow Learn more about your ad choices. Vi

Everyday War: The Conflict Over Donbas, Ukraine (Cornell UP, 2023) provides an accessible lens through which to understand what noncombatant civilians go through in a country at war.  What goes through the mind of a mother who must send her child to school across a minefield or the men who belong to groups of volunteer body collectors? In Ukraine, such questions have been part of the daily calculus of life. Greta Uehling engages with the lives of ordinary people living in and around the armed conflict over Donbas that began in 2014 and shows how conventional understandings of war are incomplete. In Ukraine, landscapes filled with death and destruction prompted attentiveness to human vulnerabilities and the cultivation of everyday, interpersonal peace. Uehling explores a constellation of social practices where ethics of care were in operation. People were also drawn into the conflict in an everyday form of war that included provisioning fighters with military equipment they purchased themselves, smuggling insu

In Communism’s Public Sphere: Culture as Politics in Cold War Poland and East Germany (Cornell University Press, 2022), historian Kyrill Kunakhovich explores communist Poland and East Germany as laboratories of a transnational “cultural public sphere.” Under regimes that banned free speech, political expression shifted to spaces of art: theaters, galleries, concert halls, and youth clubs. Kyrill Kunakhovich shows how these venues turned into sites of dialogue and contestation. While officials used them to spread the communist message, artists and audiences often flouted state policy and championed alternative visions. Focusing on Kraków in Poland and Leipzig in East Germany, Communism’s Public Sphere sheds new light on state-society interactions in the Eastern Bloc. In place of the familiar trope of domination and resistance, it highlights unexpected symbioses like state-sponsored rock and roll, socialist consumerism, and sanctioned dissent. Piotr H. Kosicki is Associate Professor of History at the University