Departments

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Russian history

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    3/12/2023

    Oscar Documentary Winner "Navalny" Part of Long Protest Tradition

    by Lynne Hartnett

    Without traditional or legal support for dissent and free speech, Russian activists have long turned to martydom as the way to dramatize injustice and criticize power. The recent Best Documentary winner is part of this tradition. 

  • SOURCE: The New Yorker
    2/17/2023

    Stephen Kotkin on How the Ukraine War Could End

    The historian of Russia and the USSR argues that Putin's invasion will ultimately be seen as a disaster for Russia. Its unclear, however, if that view is sufficiently widespread in Russia to change Putin's strategic outlook or the regime. 

  • 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. 

  • 1/15/2023

    Revisiting Kropotkin 180 Years After His Birth

    by Sam Ben-Meir

    The rise of automation and the concurrent squeeze of workers in the name of profit offer an opportunity to revisit the ideas of Russian anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin as a forward-looking critique of power. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    11/21/2022

    What Will Russia Look Like Without Putin?

    by Joy Neumayer

    A transformation of Russia after the end of Putin's leadership will require unwinding the countless institutions that have been molded and warped around his power for decades, so that another authoritarian can't step right in to use them. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    10/29/2022

    Russia's Memorial Forced to Downsize its Tribute to Stalinist Victims

    “The point in returning the names is that we’re naming the victims,” said Yan Rachinsky, the chairman of Memorial’s board. “But the question inevitably arises: If there are victims of crime, then there are criminals, and there are reasons for the crime. These are no longer things that our authorities are ready to discuss.”

  • 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 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. 

  • 8/7/2022

    On Putin's Vacant Moral Imagination

    by Walter G. Moss

    Russia's stances toward Ukraine and the west in general reflect its leaders' inability, perhaps nurtured by the Soviet system, to view world affairs through another's perspective. 

  • SOURCE: The Conversation
    6/14/2022

    Where Witches Were Men: Magic in Early Modern Russia

    by Valerie Kivelson

    In Orthodox Russia, unlike Catholic and Protestant western Europe, the nature of hierarchy and power meant that the majority of people accused of witchcraft were men, and the popular image of a witch was male.