Russian history

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• 9/5/2021
  

  Nationalist Nostalgia in Russian Film Mirrors Putin's Political Bending of History

  by Walter G. Moss

  Director Nikita Mikhalkov expresses through film much of the same nostalgic nationalism that anchors Vladimir Putin's authoritiarian leadership in Russia. 

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• 7/11/2021
  

  Reflecting on the 80th Anniversary of the Nazi Invasion of Russia

  by Rick Halperin

  The Nazi invasion of Russia unleashed unprecedented brutality against civilians along the eastern front; those horrors should reinforce a commitment to human rights.

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• 5/9/2021
  

  Reflections on Russia's "Victory Day"

  by Nadya Williams

  Russia's observance of Victory Day prompts reflection on the ways Holocaust survivors and their descendants lived lives shaped by this trauma. 

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• SOURCE: Reuters
  2/16/2021
  

  Russian Court Rejects Jailed Gulag Historian's Appeal Against Long Sentence

  Yuri Dmitriev's appeal of a 13-year sentence was denied. He and his supporters contend that the charges were fabricated to punish him for writing about Stalinist atrocities in defiance of Russian nationalism. 

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• SOURCE: Jacobin
  12/5/2020
  

  Stephen F. Cohen Helped Us Understand the Russian Revolution and Nikolai Bukharin

  by Kevin Murphy

  A fellow historian of Russia and the Soviet Union praises Stephen Cohen's scholarship and willingness to question orthodoxies in examining the internal diversity of revolutionary Communism. 

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• SOURCE: New York Review of Books
  10/7/2020
  

  Yuri Dmitriev: Historian of Stalin’s Gulag, Victim of Putin’s Repression

  Amid condemnation of the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, much less attention is being paid to the case of Yuri Dmitriev, a tenacious researcher and activist who campaigned to create a memorial to the victims of Stalinist terror in Karelia, a province in Russia’s far northwest, bordering Finland.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/18/2020
  

  Stephen F. Cohen, Influential Historian of Russia, Dies at 81

  Stephen Cohen did not shy from controversy, either in his scholarly claims (made at the height of the Cold War) that the Bolshevik revolution contained true democratic potential before being corrupted, or in his criticisms of American efforts to influence post-Soviet Russia. 

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• SOURCE: BBC
  7/22/2020
  

  Russian Historian Jailed In Controversial Sex Abuse Case

  In May, more than 150 Russians, including artists, actors and writers wrote an open letter to the court in support of the historian, saying they were "sure the accusations… are unfair and should be dismissed by the court".

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• SOURCE: LA Progressive
  7/16/2020
  

  You Think You Have It Tough? Be Glad You Didn’t Live through Leningrad’s 900-Day Siege

  by Walter G. Moss

  Knowing about worse human tragedies doesn't allow us to be complacent about the current moment, but requires us to commit to acting to reduce suffering and death.

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• SOURCE: NY Times
  9/19/19
  

  Mark von Hagen, Historian of Russian History, Dies at 65

  A historian, he was asked by the paper to judge whether a correspondent’s Pulitzer Prize should be revoked because of biased reporting. He said it should be.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/1/19
  

  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.

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• 2/24/19
  

  What I’m Reading: An Interview With Russianist Historian Katherine Antonova

  by Erik Moshe

  A historian sees what happened in the past not as a set story, but as disparate bits of evidence that might or might not cohere enough to answer our questions.

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• SOURCE: Moscow Times
  1-16-14
  

  Putin Says State History Textbooks Will Not Impose Ideology

  Some analysts have accused the Kremlin of using the new textbooks to promote its ideological agenda and crack down on academic freedom.

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• SOURCE: The National Interest
  9-4-13
  

  Putin's No Stalin

  by Dimitri A. Simes

  Sure, he's a repressive autocrat, but Putin hasn't killed millions of people.

• SOURCE: NYT
  8-21-13
  

  Mark Lawrence Schrad: Boycotting Vodka Won’t Help Russia’s Gays

  Mark Lawrence Schrad, an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University, is the author of the forthcoming book “Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the Russian State.”

• SOURCE: NYT
  3-20-13
  

  Best-selling Russian writer turns from crime to history

  MOSCOW — Grigory Chkhartishvili, the best-selling Russian writer known for his detective novels set in imperial Russia (written under the name Boris Akunin), and for his foray into opposition politics directed against Vladimir V. Putin announced that from now on he would devote himself to writing a multivolume history of Russia.“Some writers dream of becoming the new Tolstoy, others the new Chekhov,” he wrote on his blog on Wednesday. “It’s come time to acknowledge that I have always dreamt of becoming the new Karamzin,” he said, referring to Nikolai Karamzin, who wrote an early-19th-century 12-volume “History of the Russian State.” “I am no longer a crime novelist,” he declared....