Eastern Europe 
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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: Psychology Today
3/11/2022
The Winter War Ghost Haunts Putin's War Today
by David P. Barash
Stalin's ill-conceived invasion of Finland gave Russia a small part of Finnish territory as a ransom for a face-saving end to stalemate and gave the world the term "Molotov Cocktail" – a sarcastic rebuke to the USSR's claims to be dropping food relief instead of bombs.
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SOURCE: Boston Review
3/4/2022
Ukraine Beyond the Post-Soviet Frame
by Ileana Nachescu
Framing the Russian invasion of Ukraine as an extension of grievances that festered during the Soviet era ignores the drastic changes wrought in Eastern Europe by neoliberal capitalism, racism, sexism, migration and patriarchal religion, and sustains an impoverished view of what peace and freedom in Ukraine can be.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
3/4/2022
American Pundits Can't Resist "Westsplaining" Ukraine
by Jan Smoleński and Jan Dutkiewicz
"For Eastern European scholars like us, it’s galling to watch the unending stream of Western scholars and pundits condescend to explain the situation in Ukraine and Eastern Europe."
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SOURCE: The Bulwark
3/3/2022
Despite US Missteps, Nothing about NATO Since 1991 Justifies Putin's Invasion
by Cathy Young
Attempts to blame Putin's aggression on the post-Cold War growth of NATO have traction on the left and right, but they simplify the history of the Russian federation and ignore the expansionist moves that made Russia's neighbors draw closer to western Europe.
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SOURCE: The Guardian
2/26/2022
The Antisemitism Underlying Putin's Claim to "Denazify" Ukraine
by Jason Stanley
"Putin, the leader of Russian Christian nationalism, has come to view himself as the global leader of Christian nationalism, and is increasingly regarded as such by Christian nationalists around the world."
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SOURCE: Jewish Telegraphic Agency
2/27/2022
What Putin Means by Claiming to "Denazify" Ukraine
Putin's claims to be protecting Ukrainians from domestic fascism will fail as propaganda, says Jason Stanley, who calls Russian Christian nationalism the real threat to Jews in Ukraine.
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SOURCE: Vox
3/1/2022
Ukraine Shows Limits of US Power
Historians and diplomats including Stephen Wertheim and Joseph Nye offer insight on the limits of what American power can achieve toward stopping Russian aggression in Ukraine.
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SOURCE: Salon
3/1/2022
Too Much Reality: Putin's Invasion Inevitably Surfaces Europe's Dark Past
by Jim Sleeper
Responses to the Russian invasion of Ukraine can't turn away from the possibility of mass atrocity like those visited on Eastern European Jews and resistance fighters by Nazis and Stalinists.
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SOURCE: Financial Times
2/23/2022
Putin's Denial of Ukrainian Statehood Carries Dark Echoes
by Timothy Snyder
"History cannot stop a war. But it can help us, at least, to understand how one begins, which is with arrogance and lies."
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
2/9/2022
Putin is a Product of Modernity (Not a Throwback to the Past)
"All the bad things we see around us are like ghosts from the past whose deathly grip on progress might frustrate it for a while, and with potentially terrible consequences, but cannot stop its wheels from eventually grinding on. This is, of course, total nonsense."
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2/22/2022
Historians on the Ukraine Invasion
Historians weigh in on the unfolding crisis as evidence of widespread attacks on civilians emerges.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
2/21/2022
Putin Chooses Forever War
by Tom Nichols
Putin's invocation of history reflects a belief that only the Russian state is a legitimate actor in the territory of the former Soviet Union. This could be a justification for all manner of aggressive actions.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
2/15/2022
The Ukraine Crisis Represents Kleptocracy Coming Home to Roost
Western powers have precipitated the possible war over Ukraine not by seeking to expand NATO but by allowing the unchecked reign of kleptocrats since the end of the Cold War.
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
2/8/2022
How Did We Get Here?
by Rajan Menon
The roots of the Ukraine crisis lie with American decisions in the 1990s to kick post-Soviet Russia while it was down, promoting neoliberal policies that led to oligarchy, and isolating the Kremlin from the post-Cold War European order instead of integrating it.
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SOURCE: Commonweal
2/2/2022
A Mournful Legacy: Ukraine and the Recovery of Moral Realism
by Andrew Bacevich
Joe Biden should revisit David Halberstam's classic "The Best and the Brightest" to remember what happens when people mistake their own ideological preferences for savvy and realistic pragmatism as he contemplates intervention in Ukraine.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
1/23/2022
Only Putin Knows What's Next
by Tom Nichols
Vladimir Putin's intentions – be they territorial, symbolic, or psychological – remain a wild card for any U.S.-led response to the Ukraine situation.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
12/7/2021
History Helps Discern Putin's Ukraine Agenda
by Kathryn David
Russia today uses the ideological work of Soviet-era historians that claims a fundamental unity between Russian and Ukrainian people to justify its expansionist aims.
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4/11/2021
Holocaust Remembrance 80 Years After the Beginning of Hitler's Campaign of Genocide
by Rick Halperin
We must see our lives as inextricably linked to both the past and future, so that all peoples, individually or collectively, do not have to know of a world with genocide.
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SOURCE: NBC News
4/4/2021
How a Chicago Teacher Sparked a 'Memory War,' Forcing Lithuania to Confront its Nazi Past
Siliva Foti's family history project became a book that challeged Lithuania's official narrative about its role in the Holocaust, and exposed her grandfather's active role in the extermination of thousands of Lithuanian Jews.
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