Soviet Union 
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
6/13/2022
Ukraine's Struggle for Independence is a Century Old, Despite Putin's Claims
by Joshua D. Zimmerman
Ukrainian nationalists have worked for independence since the upheaval of the first world war.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
4/4/2022
A Soviet Retreat from a Danish Island after World War II Suggests how Putin Could Find an "Off Ramp"
by Caroline Kennedy Pipe and James Rogers
Red Army troops remained on the strategically significant island of Bornholm until 1946, when Stalin negotiated a withdrawal in exchange for a pledge that foreign troops would not be stationed on the island. It's likely that a similar concession will be needed to end fighting in Ukraine.
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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.
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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.
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SOURCE: Puck
3/8/2022
The Anniversary of Stalin's Death Shows Authoritarianism is Bigger than One Authoritarian
by Julia Ioffe
Liberal Russians reflect on Stalin's death 69 years later and observe parallels with Putin's approach to internal dissent.
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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.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
3/2/2022
The Long History of Russian Empire Behind Putin's Territorial Goals
by Lynne Hartnett
"Putin understands the post-Soviet global order through the prism of Russia’s long history. And that history is inextricably tied to Russia’s dynamic imperial mission both in the past and today."
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
1/25/2022
Will Putin Learn from Stalin's Mistakes over Korea?
by Gregory Mitrovich
Stalin's support for the North Korean invasion of the south galvanized Western opposition and ensured that the Cold War would be militarized, instead of remaining a diplomatic and economic conflict. In the long run, the Soviets lost.
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SOURCE: The Baffler
8/19/2021
How Empires Fall
by Matt Wehmeier
"Decisive political moments are rarely expected, and even more rarely planned. Governments change all the time. But every once in a while, empires fall."
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
8/18/2021
The US Repeated Mistakes of the Past in Afghanistan
by Ali A. Olomi
"By flooding Afghanistan with payoffs, bribes and aid, the British created a system of endemic corruption in which local chieftains and favorable bureaucrats would enrich themselves while the rest of the country remained relatively poor."
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6/27/2021
Ambitious for War: How German-Soviet Collaboration Set the Course for WWII
by Ian Ona Johnson
After the Treaty of Versailles and the Bolshevik Revolution, Germany and the Soviet Union forged a partnership of pariah governments to industrialize and arm their nations, and making inevitable the slaughter that unfolded in the eastern front of the second world war.
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SOURCE: New York Times
5/6/2021
‘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.
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SOURCE: Woodrow Wilson Center and National History Center
4/9/2021
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
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3/28/2021
Red Flags on the Map: What Soviet Kids Learned about the United States
by David Mould
One of the author's souvenirs from a research trip to Asia – a Soviet-era classroom map – prompts reflection on the pervasiveness of ideological education.
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2/28/2021
History and Film: Reflections on Konchalovsky’s “Dear Comrades!”
by Walter G. Moss
Andrei Konchalovsky's film "Dear Comrades" examines the struggles of ordinary people in the Soviet Union to find truth amid ideology and fear.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
2/25/2021
The Republican Party Is Now in Its End Stages
by Tom Nichols
"The Republican Party has become, in form if not in content, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of the late 1970s."
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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: Made By History at The Washington Post
10/9/2020
The Political History of Concealing Illness, from Brezhnev to Trump
by Joy Neumeyer
Like his Communist counterparts, Trump’s predilection for pageantry offers a hollow illusion of vitality while letting potentially fatal problems fester.
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SOURCE: New York Times
10/6/2020
Did the US Try to Assassinate Lenin in 1918?
A new book demonstrates that the United States and western allies attempted to thwart the Bolshevik revolution and actually started the Cold War with an ill-fated 1918 invasion of Russia, but is on more speculative ground tracing an assassination attempt against Lenin to the US.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
9/20/2020
Donald Kendall, Who Built Pepsico into a Soda and Snack-Food Giant, Dies at 99
The late president of Pepsi-Cola was a leader in bringing American products to the Soviet bloc and Communist China during the cold war and was influential in pushing Richard Nixon to support the CIA's coup against democratically-elected socialist Salvador Allende in Chile.
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