Departments

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Soviet Union

  • SOURCE: The Conversation
    7/6/2023

    In Post-Soviet Russia, Children Have Been Propaganda Instruments

    by Clementine Fujimura

    Russian regimes since the fall of Communism have inherited and created crises of mass orphanage; their policy responses to parentless children have been informed by politics and nationalism at the expense of child welfare. Removal of orphans from Ukraine to Russia is just the latest instance. 

  • 6/18/2023

    Jared McBride Sheds Light on the Darker Parts of Ukraine's History

    by James Thornton Harris

    The issue of Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi genocide has been a propaganda point in the war with Russia. Historian Jared McBride talks about the complexities of ethnic violence and the complications of archival research in Russia and eastern Europe. 

  • SOURCE: Hollywood Progressive
    3/1/2023

    "Mr. Jones" Shows Fake News Has Always Been a Weapon Against Ukraine

    by Walter G. Moss

    The new Amazon feature "Mr. Jones" details the famine imposed on Ukraine by Stalin's policies in the 1930s, and the battle among journalists to control the story. It's a timely reminder of the connection of information and power. 

  • SOURCE: New York Review of Books
    1/22/2023

    How the Russian Jews Became Soviet

    The novelist Gary Shteyngart, who emigrated from the USSR to the US as a child, reviews Sasha Senderovich's "How the Soviet Jew was Made," a work that gives short shrift to neither the "Soviet" nor "Jewish" sides of the question. 

  • 1/22/2023

    What's Hiding in Putin's Family History?

    by Chris Monday

    The details of Vladimir Putin's personal and family life are surprisingly (and by design) difficult to pin down. A historian suggests that his grandfather was more powerful, and more influential on the future Russian leader's fortunes, than Putin's common man mythology suggests. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    10/7/2022

    Look to Russia's Civil War to Explain Current Carnage in Ukraine

    by Adam Hochshild

    The brutality of the Russian war against Ukraine shows few of the linguistic, ethnic, or religious markers that have often accompanied human rights abuses by armies. Thinking of the conflict as a war to maintain empire explains the scope and nature of violence.

  • 9/11/2022

    Russians' Disapproval of Gorbachev Shouldn't Dominate How He is Remembered

    by Walter G. Moss

    The combination of post-Soviet hardship, resurgent nationalism, and the destructiveness of the Ukraine war have led many Americans to embrace Russians' dim view of Mikhail Gorbachev. A historian of Russia says the leader had his faults, but his furtherance of humane values has been underrated. 

  • SOURCE: The Editorial Board
    8/30/2022

    Gorbachev Became a Hero to the West Through Massive Failure

    by Erik Loomis

    Americans need to evaluate Gorbachev outside of their own nationalist perspective, despite feeling that the end of the Cold War was a good thing. The people he affected most see him as a failure. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    8/31/2022

    Gorbachev Never Understood What He Set in Motion

    by Anne Applebaum

    Sometimes seen as a visionary reformer, Gorbachev may have started the USSR's economic death spiral by restricting the sale of vodka to increase worker productivity. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    8/31/2022

    Gorbachev's Greatness Was in His Failure

    by Tom Nichols

    Gorbachev's personal decency made him the wrong man for his chosen task of saving Soviet Communism from collapse; today his reputation is far higher in the west than in the former USSR. 

  • SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
    8/31/2022

    Gorbachev's Vacuum: His Legacy and Russia's Wars

    by Michael Kimmage

    The last Soviet leader failed to intuit the ultimate consequences of the changes he unleashed, from the collapse of the USSR to the revival of Russian imperialsm. 

  • SOURCE: Jewish Currents
    3/28/2022

    "We Need New Stories of Post-Soviet Jews"

    A team of historians and Jewish and Russian Studies scholars introduce a project to examine the more recent history of Jews in the former Soviet Union. 

  • 3/27/2022

    Putin is Carrying on Stalin's War on Self-Determination

    by Uriel Abulof

    Before Woodrow Wilson, Lenin advanced the ideal of national self-determination as part of communist revolution. Stalin made the term a cynical tool of Russian imperialism, a move Putin's approach to Ukraine emulates. 

  • SOURCE: New Statesman
    3/9/2022

    A Tale of Two Dictators: Putin's Relationship to Stalin's Legacy

    by Simon Sebag Montefiore

    Despite their ideological incompatibility, Putin's nationalism depends on the cult of fear and repressive apparatus of the Stalinist era, which was never comprehensively demolished after the fall of Communism.