A Historian of Photographic Defacement in the USSR Faces His Own Erasure

by Olga Shevchenko

Like the human rights group Memorial, photographic historian Denis Skopin has run afoul of the Russian state for his efforts to preserve knowledge of Soviet abuses of human rights and historical memory.

Learning About Stalin from His Books: An Interview with Geoffrey Roberts

by Aaron J. Leonard

Researchers who access Stalin's books will find the dictator's library a source of insight into his political thinking and engagement with ideas (and his pithy marginalia), but not a Rosetta Stone for understanding his capacity for atrocity. 

‘State Funeral’ Review: Saying Goodbye to Stalin

Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa’s documentary shows the aftermath of Josef Stalin's death, using footage shot at the time across the Soviet Union. 

Washington History Seminar – Stalin: Passage to Revolution, Monday, April 12

Ronald Grigor Suny of the University of Michigan joins the Washington History Seminar on Monday, April 12 to discuss "Stalin: Passage to Revolution" at 

It’s time to do away with laws enforcing triumphal national histories

by Matthew Lenoe

Such ‘memory laws’ have become weapons for right-wing nationalists.

Fierce, feared and female: The WWII pilots known as the ‘Night Witches’

Their planes were rickety crop-dusters, but the Soviet women turned them into killing machines.