SEEJ Books for Review - Google Drive


2	The new editor of the book review section for SEEJ is Nicole Monnier. She can be contacted at MonnierN@missouri.edu
3		Title	Author	Press and Publication	Description
4		Crime and Punishment	Fyodor Dostoevsky; translated and edited by Michael R. Katz	Norton Critical Edition, W.W. Norton, 2019	Michael Katz's "superb" (Time Literary Supplement) new translation of the world's most-read Russian novel accompanied by his preface and detailed explanatory footnotes. A list of names of principal characters, a note on characters' names, and a map of St. Petersburg. Key excerpts from Dostoevsky's notebooks, letters, and his early draft of Part II, Chapter 2.
5		Perceptions of Society in Communist Europe: Regime Archives and Popular Opinion	edited by Muriel Blaive	Bloomsbury Academic, 2019	Drawing on archival sources from Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, Romania and Bulgaria, Perceptions of Society in Communist Europe considers whether and to what extent communist regimes cared about popular opinion, how they obtained their information, and how it helped them implement and mainain their rule.
6		The Man who Couldn't Die: The Tale of an Authentic Human Being	Olga Slavnikova; translated by Marian Schwartz	Columbia University Press, 2019	In the chaos of early 1990s Russia, the wife and stepdaughter of a paralyzed veteran conceal the Soviet Union's collapse from him in order to keep him--and his pension--alive. After her stepfather's stroke, Marina hangs Brezhnev's portrait on the wall, edits the Pravda articles read to him, and uses her media connections to cobble together entire newscasts of events that never happened. Meanwhile, her mother, Nina Alexandrovna, can barely navigate the bewildering new work outside. As Marina is caught up in a local election campaign that gets out of hand, Nina discovers that her husband is conspiring as well--to kill himself and put an end to the charade. Olga Slavnikova's The Man Who Couldn't Die tells the story of how two women try to prolong a life--and the means and meaning of their own lives--by creating a world that doesn't change. It is a darkly playful vision of the lost Soviet past and the madness of the post-Soviet world and an inquiry into larger metaphysical questions.
7		Wassili Rosanow: Ein russisches Leben vom Zarenreich bis zur Oktoberrevolution	Rainer Georg Grubel	Aschendorff Verlag, 2019; Vol. I	Rosanov (1856-1919) was a conservative Russian philosopher, influential journalist and innovative writer. He becomes fuzzy, called "Russian Nietzsche" and "Russian Freud," because he subjected the Orthodox Church to radical criticism and advocated the joie de vivre.Based first on Judaism, later on the ancient Egyptian culture, he has designed a personal religion that places man on equal terms with God. In addition to this is his temporary, critically lit anti-Semitism. Many of his time-advanced thoughts on the poetics of life, on the meaning of feeling and tenderness in the coexistence of human beings, on the closeness of man and beast, on the importance of northeastern Africa (Egypt) for European cultures, are also present in the center of Europe attention.
8		Wassili Rosanow: Ein Russisches Leben vom Zarenreich bis zur Oktoberrevolution	Rainer Georg Grubel	Aschendorf Verlag, 2019; Vol. II	Rosanov (1856-1919) was a conservative Russian philosopher, influential journalist and innovative writer. He becomes fuzzy, called "Russian Nietzsche" and "Russian Freud," because he subjected the Orthodox Church to radical criticism and advocated the joie de vivre.Based first on Judaism, later on the ancient Egyptian culture, he has designed a personal religion that places man on equal terms with God. In addition to this is his temporary, critically lit anti-Semitism. Many of his time-advanced thoughts on the poetics of life, on the meaning of feeling and tenderness in the coexistence of human beings, on the closeness of man and beast, on the importance of northeastern Africa (Egypt) for European cultures, are also present in the center of Europe attention. Since Rosanov worked in various professions (as a teacher, official in the Reichskontrollamt, newspaper editor), the biography offers a variety of insight into Russian culture from 1860 to 1920. In essence, it also contains a Russian cultural history of the time, the image of Russian history in the "Mainstream" opposes an alternative: In the sense of a conservative modernity, Rosanov's example also seems to make possible a variant of Russia other than the totalitarian one with Lenin and Stalin.Until the October Revolution very influential, ostracized in the Soviet Union, Rosanow since Glasnost and perestroika in today's Russia is an effective author. In particular, as an advocate of dissent, he is harshly opposed to contemporary authoritarian Putinism.
9		Aviaries	Zuzana Brabcova; translated from the Czech by Tereza Novicka	Twisted Spoon Press, 2019	Aviaries is a novella composed of random diary entries, vignettes, dreams, observations, interior monologues, meditations, short anecdotes, newspaper headlines, and excerpts from poetry and prose, central among which is a passage from C.G. Jung's essay on the Kore.
10		My Dear Boy:A World War II Story of Escape, Exile, and Revelation	Joanie Holzer Schirm	Potomac Books, 2019	After the death of Joanie Holzer Schirm's parents in 2000, she found hundreds of letters, held together by rusted paperclips and stamped with censor marks, sent from Czechoslovakia, Great Britain, China and South and North America, along with journals, vintage film, taped interviews, and photographs. In working through these various materials documenting the life of her father Oswald "Valdik" Holzer, she learned of her family history through his remarkable experiences of exile and loss, resilience and hope. In this posthumous memoir, Schirm elegantly re-creates her father's youthful voice as he comes of age as a Jew in interwar Prague, escapes from a Nazi-held army unit, practices medicine in China's war-ravaged interior, and settles in the United States to start a family. Introducing us to a diverse cast of characters ranging from humorous to the menacing. Holzer's life story is an inspirational account of survival during wartime, a cinematic epic spanning multiple continents, and ultimately a tale with a twist--a book that will move readers for generations to come.
11		Ukraine and the Art of Strategy	Lawrence Freedman	Oxford University Press, 2019	Provides an account of the origins and course of the Russia-Ukraine conflict through the lens of strategy. Freedman describes the development of President Putin's anxieties that former Soviet countries were being drawn towards the European Union, the effective pressure he put on President Yanukovych of Ukraine during 2013 to turn away from the EU and the resulting 'EuroMaidan Revolution' which led to Yanukovych fleeing.
12		Sun-Tzu's Life in the Holy City of Vilnius	Ricardas Gavelis; translated by Elizabeth Novickas	PicaPica Press, 2019	The novel takes the form of the autobiography of a man we know only as the Sun-Tzu of Vilnius, a child prodigy, then revolutionary, and later government puppet master, who retreats to an underground compound to wage war on the cockles of the earth. Be prepared for the Gavelis rollercoaster, as he weaves together a story of great loves and great hates, the mundane and the strange, the hunter and the hunted, the horror and the humor that starlingly erupts out of the blackest of situations. As Gavelis himself wrote about the book, "when good and evil intersect within a single person's heart, expect hideous results."
13		Second World, Second Sex: Socialist Women's Activism and Global Solidarity during the Cold War	Kristen Ghodsee	Duke University Press, 2019	Women from the state socialist countries in Eastern Europe--What used to be called the Second World--once dominated women's activism at the United Nations, but their contributions have been largely forgotten or deemed insignificant in comparison with those of Western feminists. In Second World, Second Sex Kristen Ghodsee rescues some of this lost history by tracing the activism of Eastern European and African women during the 1975 United Nations International Year of Women and the subsequent Decade for Women (1976-1985). Focusing on case studies of state socialist Bulgaria and non-aligned but socialist-leaning Zambia, Ghodsee examines the feminist networks that developed between the Second and Third Worlds and shows how alliances between socialist women challenged American women's leadership of the global women's movement.
14		Life Histories of Etnos Theory in Russia and Beyond	David G. Anderson, Dmitry V. Arzyutov and Sergei S. Alymov (eds.)	Open Book Publishers, 2019	The idea of etnos came into being over a hundred years ago as a way of understanding the collective identities of people with a common language and shared traditions. In the twentieth century, the concept came to be associated with Soviet state-building, and it fell sharply out of favour. Yet outside the academy, etnos-style arguments not only persist, but are a vibrant part of regional anthropological traditions. Life Histories of Etnos Theory in Russia and Beyond makes a powerful argument for reconsidering the importance of etnos in our understanding of ethnicity and national identity across Eurasia. The collection brings to life a rich archive of previously unpublished letters, fieldnotes, and photographic collections of the theory’s early proponents. Using contemporary fieldwork and case studies, the volume shows how the ideas of these ethnographers continue to impact and shape identities in various regional theatres from Ukraine to the Russian North to the Manchurian steppes of what is now China. Through writing a life history of these collectivist concepts, the contributors to this volume unveil a world where the assumptions of liberal individualism do not hold. In doing so, they demonstrate how notions of belonging are not fleeting but persistent, multi-generational, and bio-social.
15		Developments in Russian Politics 9	Richard Sakwa, Henry E. Hale, and Stephen White	Duke University Press, 2019	In Developments in Russian Politics 9 an international team of experts provides a clearly written and comprehensive account of the country's most recent developments, offering critical discussions of key areas in contemporary domestic and foreign Russian politics. All essays are either new or comprehensively rewritten for this volume and examine topics ranging from executive leadership, political parties, and elections to newer issues of national identity, protest, and Russian and greater Eurasia.
16		Miscommunicating Social Change: Lessons from Russia and Ukraine	Olga Baysha	Lexington Books, 2019	Analyzes the discourses of three social movements in Ukraine and Russia and the alternative media associated with them, revealing that the enlightenment narrative, though widely critiqued in academia, remains the dominant way of conceptualizing social change in the name of democratization in the post-Soviet terrain.
17		Vladimir Lenin: How to Become a Leader	Vladlen Loginov, translated from the Russian by Lewis White	Glagoslav Publications, 2019	One of Russia's leading authorities on Vladimir Lenin, Mr. Loginov discusses the revolutionary leader's early years, his family, his political awakenin and subsequent activities. He reveals the beginnings of the creator of the world's first socialist country, as well as the sources of the future statesman's incredible willpower, his ability to influence people, his drive to succeed and his leadership qualities. All of these, the book demonstrates, were intrinsic to Lenin's character from a young age. In his research, Loginov uses new sources and previously unknown documents and memoirs, as well as archives of Russians in exile.
18		The 12 Apostles of Russian Law: Lawyers who changed Law, State and Society	Pavel Krasheninnikov; translated from the Russian by Christopher Culver	Glagoslav Publications, 2019	His book first saw publication in Russia in 2016 and is dedicated to the great legal minds who, through their scholarship and legislative activity, changed Russia's law, government, and society over two centuries. For over thirty years Krasheninnikov has studied their lives and work of the men depicted in this book, and he was fortunate to personally work with four of them.
19		Unlikely Heroes: The Place of Holocaust Rescuers in Research and Teaching	Ari Kohen and Gerald J. Steinacher	University of Nebraska Press, 2019	Classes and bookson the Holocaust often center on the experiences of victims, perpetrators, and bystanders, but rescuers also occupy a prominent space in Holocaust courses and literature even though incidents of rescue were relatively few and rescuers constituted less than 1 percent of the population in Nazi-occupied Europe. As inspiring figures and role models, rescuers challenge us to consider how we would act if we found ourselves in similarly perilous situations of grave moral import. Their stories speak to us and move us. Yet this was not always the case. Seventy years ago these brave men and women, today regarded as the Righteous Among the Nations, went largely unrecognized; indeed, sometimes they were even singled out for abuse from their co-nationals for the selfess actions.
20		Empire of Friends: Soviet Power and Socialist Internationalism in Cold War Czechoslovakia	Rachel Applebaum	Cornell University Press, 2019	The familiar story of Soviet power in Cold War Eastern Europe focuses on political repression and military force. But in Empire of Friends, Rachel Applebaum shows how the Soviet Union simultaneously promoted a policy of transnational friendship with its Eastern Bloc satellites to create a cohesive socialist world. This friendship project resulted in a new type of imperial control based on cross-border contacts between ordinary citizens. In a new and fascinating story of cultural diplomacy, interpersonal relations, and the trade of consumer-goods, Applebaum tracks the rise and fall of the friendship project in Czechoslovakia, as the country evolved after World War II from the Soviet Union's most loyal satellite to its most rebellious.
21		New York Elegies: Ukrainian Poems on the City	Edited and with an introduction by Ostap Kin	Academic Studies Press, Boston, 2019	Demonstrates how descriptions and evocations of New York City are connected to various stylistic modes and topical questions urgent to Ukrainian poetry throughout its development. The collection thus gives readers the opportunity to view New York through various poetic and stylistic lenses. Ukrainian poets connected themselves to a powerful myth of New York, the myth of urban modernity and problematic vitality. The city of exiles and outsiders see itself reflected in the mirror that newcomers and exiles created. By adding new voices and layers to this amalgam, it is possible to observe the expanded picture of this worldly poetic city.
22		Paul Celan: The Romanian Dimension	Petre Solomon; translated from the Romanian by Emanuela Tegla with an Introduction by J.M. Coetzee	Syracuse University Press, 2019	In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Paul Celan moved to Bucharest, where he spent more than two years working as a translator at Carta Rusa publishing house. During that time he was introduced to poet and translator Petre Solomon and began a close friendship that would endure many years, despite the distances that separated them and the turbulent times in which they lived. In this poignant memoir, Solomon recalls the experiences he shared with Celan and capture the ways in which Bucharest profoundly influenced Celan's evolution as a poet.
23		Empire and Belonging in the Eurasian Borderlands	Edited by Krista A. Goff and Lewis H. Siegelbaum	Cornell University Press, 2019	Engages with the evolving historiography around the concept of belonging in the Russian and Ottoman empires. The contributors to this book argue that the popular notion that empires do not care about belonging is simplistic and wrong. Chapters address numerous and varied dimensions of belonging in multiethnic territories of the Ottoman Empire, Imperial Russia, and the Soviet Union, from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. They illustrate both the mutability and the durability of imperial belonging in Eurasian borderlands.
24		Russia's Crony Capitalism: The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy	Anders Aslund	Yale University Press, 2019	Author Anders Aslund shows how the economic system Vladimir Putin has developed in Russia works to consolidate control over the country. By appointing his close associates as heads of state enterprises and by giving authority over the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the judiciary to his friends from the KGB, Putin has enriched his business friends from Saint Petersburg with preferential government deals. Thus, Putin has created a super wealthy and extremely loyal plutocracy that owes its existence to authoritarianism. This is just the first layer in a corrosive, entrenched system. Aslund reveals these corruptions, as well as many others that allow companies with anonymous owners and black money transfers to thrive. Though beneficial to a select few, this system has left Russia's economy in untenable stagnation, which Putin has tried to mask through military distraction and might.
25		Studies in Polish Jewry, Vol. 31 Polin: Poland and Hungary: Jewish Realities Compared	edited by: Francois Guesnet, Howard Lupovitch and Antony Polonsky	The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in association with Liverpool University Press, 2019	At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Jewish communities of Poland and Hungary were the largest in the world and arguably the most culturally vibrant, yet they have rarely been studied comparatively. Despite the obvious similarities, historians have mainly preferred to highlight the differences and emphasize instead the central European character of Hungarian Jewry. Speakers at this conference will reflect on the usefulness of historical comparisons thinking about the different social and cultural trajectory of Hungarian and Polish Jews, the Holocaust, historical consciousness, and the role of Jews in the respective entertainment industries. Author Barry Cohen joins us at the conclusion of the conference, with his reflections on conversations with Poles who discovered their Jewish origins late in life.
26		Explorations in Baltic Medical History: 1850-2015	Edited by Nils Hansson and Jonatan Wistrand	University of Rochester Press, 2019	This book explores the history of medicine in the Baltic Sea region and provides different answers to one central question: How has the circulation of knowledge in the Baltic Sea region influenced medicine as a discipline, and illness as an experience, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? The anthology consists of ten chapters that shed new light on how medical ideas and devices were developed in different contexts. Illuminating currents of traditions, contact zones, and areas of conflict, essays in this collection discuss technological, social and economic aspects relevant for the exchange of medical knowledge across the Baltic Sea. The contributing authors are historians, physicians, geographers, ethnologists, and scholars of literature.
27		From Russia with Code: Programming Migrations in Post-Soviet Times	Mario Biagioli and Vincent Antonin Lepinay	Duke University Press, 2019	While Russian computer scientists are notorious for their interference in the 2016 US presidential election, they are ubiquitous on Wall Street and coveted by international IT firms and often perceive themselves as the present manifestation of the past glory of Soviet scientific prowess. Drawing on over three hundred in-depth interviews, the contributors to From Russia with Code trace the practices, education, careers, networks, migrations, and lives of Russian IT professionals at home and abroad, showing how they function as key figures in the tense political and ideological environment of technological innovation in post-Soviet Russia.
28		How Russia Lost Bulgaria, 1878-1886: Empire Unguided	Mikhail S. Rekun	Lexington Books, 2019	Looks at the rapid breakdown in Russo-Bulgarian relations in the years following the Russian liberation of Bulgaria in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. Initially, the Russian Empire and the Principality of Bulgaria were close allies, bound together by sentiment, geopolitical reality, and strong administrative links--the Bulgarian Minister of War was a Russian general on detached duty from the Imperial Army, to name just one example. Yet by 1886, only eight years later, relations degenerated to such a point that a Russian-backed coup overthrew the Bulgarian monarch. The two countries cut diplomatic relations for years.
29		International Studies in Social History, Vol. 32- Planning Labour: Time and the Foundations of Industrial Socialism in Romania	Alina-Sandra Cucu	Berghahn Books, 2019	Impoverished, indebted and underdeveloped at the close of the Second World War, Romania underwent dramatic changes as part of its transition to a centrally planned economy. As with the Soviet experience, it pursued a policy of 'primitive socialist accumulation' whereby the state appropriated agricultural surplus and restricted works' consumption in support of industrial growth. Focusing on the daily operations of planning in the ethnically mixed city of Cluj from 1945 to 1955, this book argues that socialist accumulation was deeply contradictory; it not only inherited some of the classical tensions of capital accumulation, but also generated its own, which derived from the multivocal nature of the state socialist worker as a creator of value, as living labour and as a subject of emancipatory politics.
30		Moscow Has Ears Everywhere: New Investigations on Pasternak and Ivinskaya	Paolo Mancosu	Hoover Institution Press, 2019	Boris Pasternak's conflict with the Soviet regime over the publication of Doctor Zhivago did not end when he won the Nobel Prize, or even when he died. Paolo Mancosu tells how Soviet pressure led Pasternak to seek out smuggled royalties for the book and how his "will" on behalf of his companion, Olga Ivinskaya, was intercepted by the KGB. After his death, she received some of the smuggled money, leading to her and her daughter being sentenced to eight and three years respectively, in a labor camp.
31		Ukrainian Epic and Historical Song: Folklore in Context	Natalie Kononenko	University of Toronto Press, 2019	Ukrainian epics, or dumy, were first recorded from blind mendicant minstrels in the nineteenth century, yet they reflect events dating back to as early as the 1300s. UEHS provides new translations in contemporary English of these songs of family strife, war, and human dignity.
32		Smokes: Poems Yuri Izdryk	translated from the Ukrainian by Roman Ivashkiv and Erin Moure	Lost Horse Press: Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry Series, Vol. 3, 2019	Explodes with existential contemplations and addresses regarding love, identity, nature, society, and the divine.
33		What We Live For, What We Die For: Selected Poems	Serhiy Zhadan; translated from the Ukrainian by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps	Yale University Press, 2019
34		Sweet Darusya: A Tale of Two Villages	Maria Matios; translated from the Ukrainian by Michael M. Naydan and Olha Tytarenko	Spuyten Duyvil, 2019	contemporary Ukrainian novel written since Ukrainian Independence in 1991. It reveals a family saga that is much more dynamic than classical sagas and at the same time is much more touching and engaging. It is an emotional history of Ukraine with a very well researched and vivid historical background that gives the reader the opportunity to understand not only the characters and their drama, but the entire drama of the country/countries in which they lived without leaving their village.
35		The Goose Fritz	Sergei Lebedev	New Vessel Press, 2019	This revelatory novel shows why Karl Ove Knausgaard has likened its celebrated Russian author to an "indomitable...animal that won'e let go of something when it gets its teeth into it." The book tells the story of a young Russian named Kirill, the sole survivor of a once numerous clan of German origin, who delves relentlessly into the unresolved past.
36		The Russian Pendulum:Autocracy-Democracy-Bolshevism	Arthur Bullard	Slavica Publishers, 2019	The Russian Pendulum is a personal and political analysis of the Russian Revolution, from the Revolution of 1905 through the beginning of the Civil War in 1918. It reflects Bullard's own perspective, as an advocate for change in Russia with American help.
37		Electoral Strategies Under Authoritarianism: Evidence from the Former Soviet Union	Megan Hauser	Lexington Books, 2019	This book explores the types of electoral strategies used in nondemocratic countries, focusing on manipulation by the government as well as efforts to push back against the regime by opposition forces. Relying on data and case studies from the former Soviet Union, it finds that these actors view elections as tools to achieve various goals, either in the short term or the long term. More specifically, parties and candidates will sometimes engage in self-defeating or unnecessary behavior in the short term if they think it will serve a long-term purpose.
38		Nikolai Nikolaevich and Camouflage: Two Novels	Yuz Aleshkovsky; translated by Duffield White, edited by Susanne Fusso	Columbia University Press, Russian Library, 2019	Nikolai Nikolaevich begins when its titular hero, a pickpocket by trade, is released from prison after World War II and finds a job in a Moscow biological laboratory. Starting out as a kind of janitor, he is soon recruited to provide sperm for strange experiments intended to create life in the Andromeda galaxy. The hero finds himself at the center of the 1948 purge of biological science in the Soviet Union, in a transgressive tale that joins science fiction (and science fact) with gulag slang and a love story. Camouflage is an alcoholic who claims that he and his gang of friends are just one part of a vast camouflaging operation organized by the Party to hide the Soviet Union's underground military-industrial complex from the CIA's spy satellites.
39		Dissent Histories in the Soviet Union: From De-Stalinization to Perestroika	Barbara Martin	Bloomsbury Academic, 2019	Based on extensive archival research and interviews (with some of the authors themselves, as well as those close to them), the result is a nuanced and very necessary history of Soviet dissident history writing, from the relative liberalization of de-Stanilization through increading repression and persecution in the Brezhnev era to liberation once more during Perestroika. In the process, Martin sheds light on late Soviet society and its relationship with the state, as well as the ways in which this dissidence participated in weakening the Soviet regime during Perestroika.
40		Making the Most of Tomorrow: A North Bohemian Laboratory of Socialist Modernism	Matej Spurny; translated by Derek Patton	Karolinum Press, Charles University, Prague, 2019	In this book, Matej Spurny explores the historical city of Most from the nineteenth century into the years following World War II, investigating the decision to destroy it as well as the negotiations concerning the spirit of the proposed new city.
41		Marketing Hope: Get-Rich-Quick Schemes in Siberia	Leonie Schiffauer	Berghahn Books, 2019	Multilevel marketing and pyramid schemes promote the idea that participants can easily become rich. These popular economies turn ordinary people into advocates of their interests and missionaries of the American Dream. Marketing Hope looks at how different types of get-rich-quick schemes manifest themselves in a Siberian town. By focusing on their social dynamics, Leonie Schiffauer provides insights into how capitalist logic is learned and negotiated, and how it affects local realities in a post-Soviet environment.
42		From Corsets to Communism: The Life and Times of Zofia Nalkowska	Jenny Robertson	Scotland Street Press Edinburgh with support from the Polish Cultural Institute in London, 2019	Born in 1884, Zofia Nalkowska's life spans seventy explosive years of Polish history; from Tsarist government in Warsaw to the iron fist of Communism. From her teens, she chafed at the repressive conventions society dictated to women. Her novels show a keen and visionary observer of beauty and elevate hitherto parely voiced issues of femininity to the highest level of literature. Her life is an adventure that takes us all over Europe through extreme times.
43		Romania's Strategic Culture 1990-2014: Continuity and Change in a Post-Communist Country's Evolution of National Interests and Security Policies	Iulia-Sabina Joja. Foreword by Heiko Biehl	Columbia University Press, 2019	Analysis of strategic culture facilitates a comprehensive understanding of a nation's security identity and patterns of policty conduct. Though strategic culture changes over time, why and how these mutations take place has not been researched much so far. This book sheds lights on the reasons why specific features of a country's strategic thinking remain rigid while others transform.
44		Travels from Dostoevsky's Siberia: Encounters with Polish Literary Exiles	Elizabeth A. Blake	Academic Studies Press, 2019	Translations in Travels from Dostoevsky's Siberia, gathered from archives and appearing in English for the first time, offer a fresh look at Dostevsky's House of the Dead from the perspective of his fellow inmates and Siberians who were imprisoned, tortured, and exiled by the regime of Nicholas I. Drawing on archival resources and illustrations, introductory essays immerse the reader in the experience of the political prisoners who must navigate the criminal environment of verbal, physical, and sexual abuse by negotiating with inmates and authorities alike.
45		Avant Garde Art in Ukraine: 1910-1930 Contested Memory	Myroslav Shkandrij	Academic Studies Press, 2019	Many of the greatest avant-garde artists of the early twentieth century were Ukrainians or came from Ukraine. Whether living in Paris, St. Petersburg or Kyiv, they made major contributions to painting, sculpture, theatre, and film-making. Because their connection to the Ukraine has seldom been explored, English-language readers are often unaware that figures such as Archipendo, Burliuk, Malevich, and Exter were inspired both by their country of origin and their links to compatriots.
46		A Double Life: Karolina Pavlova	translated by Barbara Heldt	Columbia University Press, 2019	An unsung classic of nineteenth-century Russian literature, Karolina Pavlova's A Double Life alternates prose and poetry to offer a wry picture of Russian aristocratic society and vivid dreams of escaping its strictures. Pavlova combines rich narrative prose that details balls, tea parties, and horseback rides with poetic interludes that depict her protagonist's inner world-and biting irony that pervades a seemingly romantic description of a young woman who has everything.
47		Lyric Complicity: Poetry and Readers in the Golden Age of Russian Literature	Daria Khitrova	University of Wisconsin Press, 2019	Lyric Complicity helps modern readers recover Russian poetry's former uses and functions--life situations that moved people to quote or perform a specific passage from a poem or a forgotten occasion that created unforgettable verse.
48		From Cotton and Smoke: Lodz-Industrial City and Discourses of Asynchronous Modernity, 1897-1994	Agata Zysiak, Kamil Smiechowski, Kamil Piskala, Wiktor Marzec, Kaja Kazmierska, Jacek Burski	Columbia University Press, 2019	This book considers Lodz as the capital of the Polish nineteenth century, and the history of the former textile hub, which now finds itself in central Poland, as one of the struggle with modern change in Eastern Europe. The authors boldly challenge the romantic and noble-based Polish cultural imaginary, offering instead a revolutionary path to understanding confrontation with modernity in the region.
49		A History of the Hungarian Constitution: Law, Government and Political Culture in Central Europe	Ferenc Horcher and Thomas Lorman	Bloomsbury, I.B. Tauris, 2019	This book brings together a group of leading historians, political scientists and legal scholars to produce a comprehensive history of Hungarian consitutional thought.
50		Russia, the EU, and the Eastern Partnership: Building Bridges or Digging Trenches?	Vasile Rotaru	Columbia University Press, 2019	Even before the Ukrainian crisis, neither Russia nor the EU were content with their relationship. Despite economic interdependence, strategic partnership, official declarations of belonging culturally and historically to the same "European family" and in spite of Russia's stated interest in establishing an economic community stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok, the two actors found it difficult to agree on important issues.
51		Mirrorlands: Russia, China, and Journey in Between	Ed Pulford	Hurst Publishers; Oxford University Press, 2019	Mirrorlands is a journey through space and time to the meeting points of Russia and China, the world's largest and most populous countries. Charting an unconventional course southeast through Siberia, Inner Mongolia, the Russian Far East and Manchuria, anthropologist and linguist Ed Pulford sketches a rich series of encounters with people and places unknown not only to outsiders, but also to most residents of the capital cities where his journey begins and ends.
52		The Development and Challenges of Russian Corporate Governance I: The Roles and Functions of Boards of Directors	Oksana Kim; foreword by Sheila M. Puffer	ibidem Press, 2019; SPPS, Vol. 198	Despite increasing attention toward Russia's economy and capital market, corporate governance norms of Russian public firms are rarely analyzed. This project presents and interprets evidence regarding various governance practices followed by Russian firms covering almost the entire period of the existence of the Russian stock market. Its findings run counter to some widely held beliefs according to which Russia is a country with high resistance to corporate innovations due to socialist legacies.
53		Viktor Shklovsky's Heritage in Literature, Arts, and Philosophy	edited by Slav N. Gratchev and Howard Mancing; Introduction by Irina Evdokimova	Lexington Books, 2019	This book examines the heritage of Viktor Shklovsky in a variety of disciplines. To achieve this end, Slav N. Gratchev and Howard Mancing draw upon colleagues from eight different countries across the world--the United States, Canada, Russia, England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Norway, and China--in order to bring the widest variety of points of view on the subject.
54		We are Building Capitalism!: Moscow in Transition 1992-1997	Robert Stephenson	Glagoslav Publications, 2019	This book focuses on Moscow following the collapse of the USSR and provides a unique pictorial view of daily life in Russia's capital city during the turbulent early years of transition to market capitalism. This was a time of promise and protest, revolution and reaction, with Moscow at the centre of the changes.
55		Russian Studies of International Relations: From the Soviet Past to the Post-Cold-War Present	Marina M. Lebedeva; forword by Andrei P. Tsygankov	Columbia University Press, 2019	The current state of Russian studies of International Relations to a large degree reflects the history and development of IR research during Soviet times. However, over the past 25 years, one could also observe a number of new developments--both substantive and institutional--which are important not only for properly assessing the new state of this academic discipline in Russia, but also for better comprehending Russian foreign policy as well as various international activities of Russia's regions, businesses, media, etc.
56		A War of Songs: Popular Music and Recent Russia-Ukraine Relations	Arve Hansen, Andrei Rogatchevski, Yngvar Steinholt, and David-Emil Wickstrom	Columbia University Press, 2019	This multi-authored monograph consists of the sections: "Pop Rock, Ethno-Chaos, Battle Drums, and a Requiem: The Sounds of the Ukrainian Revolution," "The Euromaidan's Aftermath and the Genre of Answer Song: A Musical Dialogue Between the Antagonists?", "Exposing the Fault Lines beneath the Kremlin's Restorative Geopolitics: Russian and Ukrainian Parodies of the Russian National Anthem," and "Lasha Tumbai', or 'Russia, Goodbye'? The Eurovision Song Contest as a Post-Soviet Geopolitical Battleground."
57		Language Conflicts in Contemporary Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine: A Comparative Exploration of Discourses in Post-Soviet Russian-Language Digital Media	Ksenia Maksimovtsova	Columbia University Press, 2019	Language policy and usuage in the postcommunist region have continually attracted wide political, media, and expert attention since the disintegration of the USSR in 1991. How are these issues politicized in contemporary Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine? This study presents a cross-cultural qualitative and quantitative analysis of publications in leading Russian-language blogs and news websites of these three post-Soviet states during the period of 2004-2017.
58		International Law and the Post-Soviet Space I: Essays on Chechnya and the Baltic States	Thomas D. Grant	Columbia University Press, 2019	The regions that once comprised the Soviet Union have been the scene of crises with serious implications for international law. Some of these, like the separatist conflict in Chechnya, date to the time of the dissolution of the USSR. Others, like Russia's forcible annexation of Crimea and intervention in Ukraine's Donbas, erupted years later.
59		International Law and the Post-Soviet Space II: Essays on Ukraine, Intervention, and Non-Proliferation	Thomas D. Grant	Columbia University Press, 2019	This volume deals with legal issues concerning Russia's annexation of Crimea and intervention in the Donbas, so-called 'frozen conflicts' and 'hybrid warfare', the use of courts and tribunals to address armed aggression, and the implications of recent events for the security guarantees connected to nuclear nonproliferation.
60		The Hemingway Game	Evgeny Grishkovets; translated from the Russian by Steven Volynets	Glagoslav Publications, 2019	An urban romance which depicts the life of a shirt over the course of one day (worn in the morning and taken off late a night); revealing a lot about the main character, who subsequently moved to Moscow some time ago. He, just like all of us, wakes up in the morning, goes to work, meets his friends and has his daily routine; that is until love changes everything. Written in a similar style to the Grishkovets plays, this short novel depicts the same type of unity of time, place and action, as well as psychological subtlety.
61		A Flame out at Sea	Dmitry Novikov; translated from the Russian by Christopher Culver	Glagoslav Publications, 2019	This book is about going beyond the boundaries of the big city, about overcoming the fetters of one's private and family past, leaving aside one's resentment, squashing one's pride, unclenching one's fists and turning one's life around. It is about a journey to the origins of speech, personality, courage and love made by a modern man in the harsh, sacred, nourishing and draining circumstances of the Russian North.
62		Selling the Story: Transaction and Narrative Value in Balzac, Dostoevsky, and Zola	Jonathan Paine	Harvard University Press, 2019	An unusual literary scholar with a background in finance, Paine mines stories for evidence of the conditions of their production. Through his wholly origianl reading, Balzac's The Splendors and Miseries of Courtesans becomes a secret diary of its author's struggles to cope with the commercializing influence of serial publication in newspapers. The Brother Karamazov transforms into a story of Dostoevsky's sequential bets with his readers, present and future, about how to write a novel. Zola's Money documents the rise of big business and is itself a product of Zola's own big business, his factory of novels.
63		Age of Fear: The Cold War and Its Influence on Czechoslovakia 1945-1968	Slavomir Michalek and Michal Stefansky	Columbia University Press, 2019	This monograph blends historical analysis of the superpowers' foreign policies with an assessment of their impact on Czechoslovakia and its position within the Soviet bloc. The books thereby places Czechoslovakia on the map of Cold War history, i.e. the era of "mutually assured destruction" that lasted almost half a century. It provides a lucid introduction to some milestones in international Cold War history in their relation to Czecho-Slovak history. The book's novel contribution is to explain Czechoslovakia's domestic situation during the Cold War from the "outside." Drawing on extensive source materials of Slovak, Czech, American, and Russian provenance, it provides a more comprehensive understanding of postwar Czecho-Slovak history while also contributing to general knowledge about the nature and impact of the Cold War.
64		The Nuclear Spies: America's Atomic Intelligence Operation against Hitler and Stalin	Vince Houghton	Cornell University Press, 2019	Houghton's riveting retelling of this fascinating case of American spy ineffectiveness in the then new field of scientific intelligence provides us with a new look at the early years of the Cold War. During that time, scientific intelligence quickly grew to become a significant portion of the CIA budget as it struggled to contend with the incredible advance in weapons and other scientific discoveries immediately after World War II.
65		David Bergelson's Strange New World: Untimeliness and Futurity	Harriet Murav	Indiana University Press, 2019	David Bergelson (1884-1952) emerged as a major literary figure who wrote in Yiddish before WWI. He was one of the founders of the Kiev Kultur-Lige, and his work was at the center of the Yiddish-speaking world of the time. He was well known for creating characters who often felt the painful aftereffects of the past and the clumsiness of bodies stumbling through the actions of daily life as their familiar worlds crumbled around them. In this contemporary assessment of Bergelson and his fiction, Harriet Murav focuses on untimeliness, anachronism, and warped temporality as an emotional, sensory, existential, and historical background to Bergleson's work and world.
66		Polin-Studies in Polish Jewry; Vol. 31: Poland and Hungary Jewish Realities Compared	edited by Francois Guesnet, Howard Lupovitch and Antony Polonsky	The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in association with Liverpool University Press, 2019	At the beginning of the twentieth century the Jewish communities of Poland and Hungary were the largest in the world and arguably among the most culturally vibrant, yet they have rarely been studied comparatively. Despitw the obvious similarities, historians have mainly preferred to highlight the differences and emphasize instead the central European character of Hungarian Jewry. The focus is squarely on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, although the introduction provides a survey of interesting comparisons with the earlier history of Jews in the two countries.
67		Planning Labour: Time and the Foundations of Industrial Socialism in Romania	Alina-Sandra Cucu	Berghahn Books, 2019	Impoverished, indebted and underdeveloped at the close of the Second World War, Romania underwent dramatic changes as part of its transition to a centrally planned economy. As with the Soviet experience, it pursued a policy of 'primitive socialist accumulation' whereby the state appropriated agricultural surplus and restricted workers' consumption in support of industrial growth. Focusing on the daily operations of planning in the ethnically mixed city of Cluj from 1945 to 1955, this book argues that socialist accumulation was deeply contradictory: it not only inherited some of the classical tensions of capital accumulation, but also generated itw own, which derived from the multivocal nature of the state socialist worker as a creator of value, as living labour and as a subject of emancipatory politics.
68		Extremism and Violent Extremism in Serbia: 21st Century Manifestations of an Historical Challenge	edited by Valery Perry	Ibidem Press, 2019	This volume explores the issues of extremism and violent extremism in Serbia through research from a multitude of different interdisciplinary perspectives. The topic of violent extremism and radicalization leading to terror (VERLT) has grown as a field of policy and donor aid support, globally and in the western Balkans. This new focus has been manifest through both increased counterterrorism support as well as efforts to present and counter violent extremsim (P-CVE)--activities which are often peacebuilding as well as democratization initiatives.
69		Ukraine's Maidan, Russia's War: A Chronicle and Analysis of the Revolution of Dignity	Mychailo Wynnyskyj	Ibidem Press, 2019	This book provides a chronicle of Ukraine's Maidan and Russia's ongoing war, and puts forth an analysis of the Revolution of Disnity from the perspective of a participant observer.
70		Literarische und kulturelle Beziehungen zwischen Russland und dem Westen: A Festschrift for Fedor B. Poljakov	edited by Lazar Fleishman, Stefan Michael Newerkla, and Michael Wachtel	Stanford Slavic Studies 49; Peter Lang, 2019	This book brings together scholars from leading universities in the United States, Europe and the Russian Federation. Thirty-six essays discuss a broad array of themes ranging from early-modern Muscovy and Slavia Orthodoxa to Russia's contacts with the West from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries to modernist literature to early Soviet poetry and post-revolutionary emigration. The articles present unknown archival documents and offer new perspectives on the study of Russian literature in a comparative context.
71		Alfred Schnittke's Concerto Grosso No. 1	Peter J. Schmelz	Oxford University Press, 2019	This book represents the first accessible and comprehensive study of this composition. The novel structure of the book engages with the piece conceptually, historically, musically, and phenomenologically, with the six movements of the composition framing the six chapters. Augmenting and complicating the insights of existing English, Russian, and German publications on the Concerto Grosso no. 1, the books adds new information from underused primary sources, including Schnittke's unpublished correspondence and his many published interviews.
72		Black Earth: A Journey through Ukraine	Jens Muhling	Haus Publishing, 2019	Writing in a simple and vivid way, Jens Muhling narrates his encounters with nationalists and old Communists, Crimean Tatars and Cossacks, smugglers, archaeologists and soldiers, all of who views could hardly be more different. Black Earth connects all these stories to convey an unconventional and unfiltered view of Ukraine--a country at the crossroads of Europe and Asia and the centre of countless conflicts of opinion.
73		Direction:Future; 25 Years of Freedom and Roma People	Slawomir Kapralski, Malgorzata Kolaczek, and Joanna Talewicz-Kwiatkowska	Columbia University Press, 2019	Over the past two decades, in the wake of the postcommunist transition, the emergence of Romani activism has been an important development accompanying political changes in Central and Eastern Europe. Alongside the emergence of Romani associations, international NGOs have been increasingly involved in the struggle against discrimination toward Roma. A field specializing in the so-called Roma issue has developed, comprising non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations, expert bodies, foundations, and activists. This text discusses the emergence of the transitional Roma movement and the genesis of the Roma issue in international politics. In the framework of a historical overview, the main actors speaking on behalf of Roma are presented, from the medieval Gypsy Kings to the contemporary European Roma and Traveller Forum.
74		Ambiguous Transitions: Gender, the State, and Everyday Life in Socialist and Postsocialist Romania	Jill Massino	Berghahn Books, 2019	Focusing on youth, family, work, and consumption, Ambiguous Transitions analyzes the interplay between gender and citizenship in postwar Romania. By juxtaposing official sources with oral histories and socialist policies with everyday practices, Jill Massino illuminates the genedered dimensions of socialist modernization and its complex effects on women's roles, relationships, and identities.
75		Mikhail Bulgakov: The Life and Times	Marietta Chudakova	Glagoslav Publications, 2019	Was first published in 1988 and remains the most authoritative and comprehensive study of the writer's life ever produced. It has received acclaim for the journalistic style in which it is written: the author draws on unpublished manuscripts and early drafts of Bulgakov's novels to bring the writer to life. She also explores archive documents and memoirs written by some of Bulgakov's contemporaries so as to construct a comprehensive and nuanced portrait of the writer and his life and times.
76		I Want a baby and other plays	Sergei Tretyakov; translated by Robert Leach and Stephen Holland	Glagoslav Publications, 2019	When Sergei Tretyakov's ground-breaking play, I Want a Baby, was banned by Stalin's censor in 1927, it was a signal that the radical and innovative theatre of the early Soviet years was to be brought to an end. A glittering, unblinking exploration of the realities of post-revolutionary Soviet life, I Want a Baby marks a high point in modernist experimental drama.
77		And Thus You Are Everywhere Honored: Studies dedicate by Brian D. Joseph	Edited by James J. Pennington, Victor A. Friedman, and Lenore A. Grenoble	Slavica Publishers, 2019	A collection of articles on Brian Joseph's primary research themes from his career spanning over 40 years:
78		Russia	Dmitri Trenin	Polity Books, 2019	Over the past century alone, Russia has lived through great achievement and deepest misery; mass heroism and mass crime; over-blown ambition and near-hopeless despair-always emerging with its sovereignty and its fiercely independent spirit intact. In this book, leading Russia scholar Dmitri Trenin accompanies readers on Russia's rollercoaster journey from revolution to post-war devastation, perestroika to Putin's stabilization of post-Communist Russia.
79		Der Nister's Soviet Years: Yiddish Writer as Witness to the People	Mikhail Krutikov	Indiana University Press, 2019	This book focuses on the second half of the dramatic writing career of Soviet Yiddish writer Der Nister, pen name of Pinhas Kahanovich (1884-1050). Krutikov follows Der Nister's painful but ultimately successful literary transformation from his symbolist roots to social realism under severe ideological pressure from Soviet critics and authorities. This volume reveals how profoundly Der Nister was affected by the destruction of Jewish life during World War II and his own personal misfortunes.
80		Between Rhyme and Reason	Stanislav Shvabrin; Vladimir Nabokov, Translation, and Dialogue	University of Toronto Press, 2019	In this book, Stanislav Shvabrin discloses the complexity, nuance, and contradictions behind Nabokov's theory and practice of literalism to reveal how and why translation came to matter to Nabokov so much. Drawing on familiar as well as unknown materials, Shvabrin traces the surprising and largely unknown trajectory of Nabokov's lifelong fascination with translation to demonstrate that, for Nabokov, translation was a form of intellectual communion with his peers across no fewer than six languages.
81		Pushkin's Monument and Allusion: Poem, Statue, Performance	Sidney Eric Dement	University of Toronto Press, 2019	In August 1836, Alexander Pushkin wrote a poem now popularly known simply as "Monument. In the decades following his death in January 1837, the poem "Monument" was transformed into a statue in central Moscow: The Pushkin Monument. At its dedication in 1880, the interaction between the verbal text and the visual monument established a creative dynamic that subsequent generations of writers and artists have amplified through the use of allusion, simultaneously inviting their readers and spectators into a shared cultural history and enriching the meaning of their original creations.
82		The Epistolary art of Catherine the Great	Kelsey Rubin-Detlev	Oxford University Press, 2019	The first study to analyse comprehensively the letters of Empress Catherine the Great of Russia (f.1762-1796) and to argue that they constitute a masterpiece of eighteenth-century epistolary writing.
83		The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects	Brandon M. Schechter	Cornell University Press, 2019; a volume in the series: Battlegrounds: Cornell Studies in Military History	Uses everyday objects to tell the story of the Great Patriotic War as never before. Brandon M. Schechter attends to a wide array of things--from spoons to tanks--to show how diverse citizens united as soldiers and how the provisioning of material goods separated soldiers from civilians.
84		Subverting Communism in Romania: Law and Private Property, 1945-1965	Mihaela Serban	Lexington Books, 2019	Explores the role of law in everyday life and as a mechanism for social change during early communism in Romania. Mihaela Serban focuses on the regime's attempts to extinguish private property in housing through housing nationalization and expropriation. This study of early commnist law illustrates that law is never just an instrument of state power, particularly over the long term and from a ground-up perspective.
85		21 Russian Short Prose from An Odd Century	edited by Mark Lipovetsky	Academic Studies Press, 2019	This collection of Russian short stories from the 21st century includes works by famous writers and young talents alike, representing a diversity of generational, gender, ethnic, and national identities. Their authors live not only in Russia, but also in Europe and the US. Short stories in this volume display a vast spectrum of subgenres, from grotesque absurdist tales to lyrical essays, from realistic narratives to fantastic parables.
86		Cheerful Memories/Troubled Years: A Story of a Refusenik's Family in Leningrad and their Struggle for Immigration to Israel	Aba and Ida Taratuta	Academic Studies Press, 2019	This book captures the story of the Taratuta family and their struggle to flee the hardships of the USSR and repatriate to Israel in the late twentieth century. The narrative follows the lives of three family members, Aba, his wife Ida, and their son Misha, as they endure countless struggles throughout their journey to freedom.
87		A User's Manual	Jiri Kolar; translated from the Czech by Ryan Scott	Twisted Spoon Press, 2019	Jiri Kolar composed the "action poems" in A User's Manual mostly in the 1950s before finishing them in the 1960s. Published in their complete form in 1969, they were paired with the 52 collages comprising Weekly 1967, the first of Kolar's celebrated series in which he commented visually on a major event for each week of the year. Taking the form of directives, largely absurd, the poems mock communist society's officialese while offering readers an opportunity to create their own poetics by performing actions per the given directions.
88		A Life at Noon	Talasbek Asemkulov, translated by Shelley Fairweather-Vega	Slavica Publishers, Indiana University, 2019	Based on the author's own family history, A Life at Noon provides us a glimpse into a time and place Western literature has rarely seen as the first post-Soviet novel from Kazakhstan to appear in English.
89		The Karamazov Correspondence: Letters of Vladimir S. Soloviev	edited and translated by Vladimir Wozniuk	Academic Studies Press, 2019	This book represents the first fully annotated and chronologically arranged collection of the Russian philosopher-poet's most important letters, the vast majority of which have never before been translated into English. Soloviev was widely known for his close association with Fyodor M. Dostoevsky in the final years of the novelist's life, and these letters reflect many of the qualities and contradictions that also personify the title characters of Dostoevsky's last and greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov.
90		The Vanishing Generation: Faith and Uprising in Modern Uzbekistan	Baglia Bukharbayeva	Indiana University Press, 2019	Provides unparalleled looks into life in a religious sect; the experiences of people who live for months and even years in hiding; and the fabricated evidence, torture, and kidnappings that characterize an authoritarian government. And in doing so, it tells a rare and unforgettable story of what life is like today inside the secretive and tightly controlled country of Uzbekistan.
91		Vladimir Nabokov and the Fictions of Memory	edited by Irena Ksiezopolska and Mikolaj Wisniewski	Fundacja Augusta hr. Cieszkowskiego, 2019	A collection of essays by various authors.
92		Skis in the Art of War	K.B.E.E. Eimeleus; translation and commentary by William D. Frank with additional commentary by E. John B. Allen	Northern Illinois University Press, 2019	This book gives a breakdown of the latest techniques at the time from Scandinavia and Finland. Eimeleus's work is an early and brilliant example of knowledge transfer from Scandinavia to Russia within the context of sport.
93		Living through Literature: Essays in Memory of Omry Ronen	Edited by Julie Hansen, Karen Evans-Romaine, and Herbert Eagle	Uppsala University Library, 2019	Omry Ronen was a world-renowned scholar of Russian literature and an inspiring teacher. His most influential work focused on historical and descriptive poetics, metrics, structural analysis of verse and prose, Russian Modernist poetry, and particularly the work of Osip Mandelstam. This volume honors Omry Ronen's memory and scholarly legacy with ten essays by his former students Karen Evans-Romaine, Sara Feldman, Susanne Fusso, Julie Hansen, Kelly E. Miller, Nancy Pollack, Irena Ronen, Stephanie Sandler, Timothy D. Sergay, and Michael Wachtel. The volume also contains an introduction by Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov.
94		Chronicles in Stone: Preservation, Patriotism, and Identity in Northwest Russia	Victoria Donovan	Northern Illinois University Press, 2019	A study of the powerful and pervasive myth of the Russian Northwest, its role in forming Soviet and Russian identities, and its impact on local communities. Combining detailed archival research, participant observation, and oral history work, it explores the transformation of three northwestern Russian towns from provincial backwaters into the symbolic homelands of the Soviet and Russian nations.
95		Ivan the Terrible: Free to Reward & Free to Punish	Charles J. Halperin	University of Pittsburgh, 2019	In some scholarly accounts and in popular culture, Ivan was simply a typical paranoid Russian absolute ruler. But Charles Halperin take issue with this stereotyped view of Ivan's reign. This is not to say that Ivan was not terrible, but he was also not necessarily more awful than many other early modern monarchs, all of whom were struggling, often violently, to impose their royal will upon an obstreperous society--that is, against the traditional power and independence of the nobility.
96		Illegible: A Novel	Sergey Gandlevsky; translated by Susanne Fusso	Cornell University Press, 2019	This novel has a double time focus, centering on both the immediate experiences of Lev Krivorotov, a twenty-year-old poet living in Moscow in the 1970s, as well as his retrospective meditations thirty years later after most of his hopes have foundered.
97		Stuck on Communism: Memoir of a Russian Historian	Lewis H. Siegelbaum	Northern Illinois University Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press, 2019	This memoir by one of the foremost scholars of the Soviet period spans three continents and more than half a century--from the 1950s when Lewis H. Siegelbaum's father was a victim of McCarthyism up through the implosion of the Soviet Union and beyond. Siegelbaum recreates journeys of discovery and self-discovery in the tumult of student rebellion at Columbia University during the Vietnam War, graduate study at Oxford, and Moscow at the height of detente. His story takes the reader into the Soviet archives, the coals fields of eastern Ukraine, and the newly independent Uzbehkistan.
98		The Investigator: Demons of the Balkan War	Vladimir Dzuro; foreword by Carla Del Ponte (chief prosecutor, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia)	Potomac Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press, 2019	The war that broke out in the former Ygoslavia at the end of the twentieth century unleashed unspeakable acts of violence committed against defenseless civilians, including a grizzly mass murder at an Ovcara pig farm in 1991. An international tribunal was set up to try the perpetrators of crimes such as this, and one of the accused was Slavko Dokmanovic, who at the time was the mayor of a local town. Vladimir Dzuro, a criminal detective from Prague, was one of the investigators charged with discovering what happened on that horrific night at Ovcara.
99		Life is Elsewhere: Symbolic Geography in the Russian Provinces, 1800-1917	Anne Lounsbery	Cornell University Press, 2019	Anne Lounsbery shows how nineteenth-century Russian literature created an imaginary place called "the provinces"--a place at once homogeneous, static, anonymous, and symbolically opposed to Petersburg and Moscow. Lounsbery looks at a wide range of texts, both canonical and lesser known, in order to explain why the trope has exercised such enduring power and what role is plays in the larger symbolic georgraphy that structures Russian literature's representation of the nation's space.
100		From Pugwash to Putin: A Critical History of US-Soviet Scientific Cooperation	Gerson S. Sher	Indiana University Press, 2019	For 60 years, scientists from the United State and the Soviet Union participated in state-organized programs of collaboration. But what really happened in these programs? What were the hopes of hte participants and governments? How did these program weather the bumpiest years of political turbulence? And were the programs worth the millions of dollars invested in them? From Pugwash to Putin provides accounts from 63 insiders who participated in these programs, including interviews with scientsts, program managers, and current or former government officials.
101		Russia's 20th Century: A Journey in 100 Histories	Michael Khodarkovsky	Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2019	Michael Khodarkovsky's innovative exploration of Russia's 20th century-through 100 carefully selected vignettes that span the century--offers a fascinating prism through which to view Russian history. Each chosen microhistory focuses on one particular event or individual that allows you to understand Russia not in abstract terms but in real events in the lives of ordinary people. The books covers a broad range of topics, including the economy, culture, politics, ideology, law and society.
102		Central and Southeast European Politics since 1989	Sabrina P. Ramet and Christine M. Hassenstab	Cambridge University Press, 2019, 2nd edition	The collapse of the communist monopoly across Central and Southeastern Europe in 1989/1990 initiated a process of raid political, economic, and cultural change. While Bosnia-Herzegovina, Crotia, and Serbia went on to suffer three-and-a-half years of war, all the states of the region have confronted challenges as they dismantled communist institutions and drafted new laws, in some cases ignoring their own laws.
103		Life in Stalin's Soviet Union	edited by Kees Boterbloem	Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2019	A collection of pieces by various first-rate scholars on the study of daily life in Stalinist Russia.
104		Surviving the Peace: The Struggle for Postwar Recovery in Bosnia-Herzegovina	Peter Lippman	Vanderbilt University Press, 2019	A monumental feat of ground-level reporting describing two decades of postwar life in Bosnia, specifically among those fighting for refugee rights of return. Unique in its breadth and profoundly humanitarian in its focus, Surviving the Peace situates digestible explanations of the region's bewilderingly complex recent among interviews, conversations, and tableaus from the lives of everyday Bosnians attempting to make sense of what passes for normal in a postwar society.
105		Bringing Stalin Back In: Memory Politics and the Creation of a Useable Past in Putin's Russia	Todd H. Nelson	Lexington Books, 2019	Todd H. Nelson examines the favorable portrayal of Stalin in Russia today. Putin and the political elite have co-opted the processes of discourse formulation in Russian society, using these to disseminate positive narratives about Stalin in order to further their own political agenda, while exercising control over the arenas from which any alternative narratives on Stalinism might emerge.
106		Citizen Countess: Sofia Panina and the Fate of Revolutionary Russia	Adele Lindenmeyr	University of Wisconsin Press, 2019	In Citizen Countess, Adele Lindenmeyr establishes Sofia Panina as a astute eyewitness to and passionate participant in key historical events that shaped and reshaped many lives. Panina's experiences illuminate the evolution of the European nobility, women's emancipation and political influence of the time, and the fate of Russian liberalism.
107		Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism	Jelena Subotic	Cornell University Press, 2019	Presents in-depth accounts of Holocaust remembrance practices in Serbia, Croatia, and Lithuania and extends the discussion to other Eastern European states. The book demonstrates how countries of the region used Holocaust remembrance as politcal strategy to resolve their contemporary "ontological insecurities"--insecurities about their identities, about their international status, and about their relationships with other international actors.
108		The End of Communist Rule in Albania:Political Change and the Role of the Student Movement	edited by Shinasi A. Rama	Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2020	This book provides a comprehensive examination of the Albanian Student Movement of 1990-1991. To date, there are no thorough studies of the first year of the post-Communist transition in Albania, which constitutes the most critical period of transition. The lessons to be learned are vast and of great importance to the debates on social movements, mobilization, and transition.
109		How Women Must Write: Inventing the Russian Woman Poet	Olga Peters Hasty	Northwestern University Press, 2020	In this book, Olga Peters Hasty take us from an emphatically male Romantic age to a modernist period preoccupied with women's creativity but also with its containment. In late nineteeth and early twentieth-century Russia, the woman poet was invented: by women poets themselves, by readers who projected gender biases into their poems, and by male poets who wrote posing as women.
110		The Language of Russian Peasants in the Twentieth Century: A Linguistic Analysis and Oral History	Alexander D. Nakhimovsky	Lexington Books, 2020	This book analyzes the social dialect of Russian peasants in the twentieth century through their letters and stories. The chronologically organized, annotated examples constitute an oral history of peasants' tragic Soviet past, and Alexander D. Nakhimovsky argues that, for all their variability, local peasant dialects maintained an underlying unity throughout the century.
111		The Firebird and the Fox: Russian Culture under Tsars and Bolsheviks	Jeffrey Brooks	Columbia University Press, 2019	Explores the shared traditions, mutual influences, and enduring themes that recur in these art forms.
112		Along the Trenches: A Journey through Eastern Europe to Isfahan	Navid Kermani	Polity Press, 2020	Between Germany and Russia is a region strewn with monuments to the horrors of war, genocide and disaster--the bloodlands where the murderous regimes of Hitler and Stalin unleashed the violence that scarred the twentieth century and shaped so much of the world we know today. This beautifully written travel diary, enlivened by conversations with the people Kermani meets along the way, brings to life the tragic history of these troubled lands and shows how this history leaves its traces in the present.
113		Depicting the Divine: Mikhail Bulgakov and Thomas Mann	Olga G. Voronina	Legenda Press, 2019	Two of the iconic novels of the twentieth century, Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita and Mann's Joseph and His Brothers, each engage with religious themes in the face of militant, sometimes violent, cultural opposition: Soviet communism and Nazi anti-Semitism. They have divine characters, Jesus and Yahweh, and draw upon modern developments in biblical study, emphasizing scripture as texts subject to literary criticism.
114		Social Policy, Poverty, and Inequality in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union: Agency and Institutions in Flux	Edited by Sofiya An, Tatiana Chubarova, Bob Deacon, Paul Stubbs	Ibidem Press, 2019	This volume takes stock of the diverse and divergent welfare trajectories of post-socialist countries across Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union. It traces the impacts, in terms of poverty, well-being, and inequality, of over two decades of transformation, addressing both the legacy effects of socialist welfare systems aned the installation of new social, political, and economic structures and, in many cases, new independent nation-states. Authors from different disciplines address key aspects of social protection including health care, poverty reduction measures, active labor market policies, pension systems, and child welfare systems.
115		Lectures on Dostoevsky: Joseph Frank	edited by Marina Brodskaya and Marguerite Frank with a foreword by Robin Feuer Miller	Princeton University Press, 2020	Perhaps the most important Dostoevsky biographer, scholar and critic of his time, Joseph Frank in his never-before-published Stanford lectures on the Russian novelist's major works provide an unparalleled and accessible introduction to some of literature's greatest masterpieces.
116		The Tender Barbarian: Pedagogic Texts; Bohumil Hrabal	Explosionist texts and artwork by Vladimir Boudnik; Afterword by Vladislav Merhaut; translated from the Czech by Jed Slast	Twisted Spoon Press, 2019	The Tender Barbarian is a series of texts Hrabal compiled on the one hand to pay homage to his deceased friend, experimental graphic artist Vladimir Boudnik, and on the other as a somewhat fictionalized account of their life during the 1950s in Prague-Liben, with avant-garde poet/philosopher Egon Bondy acting as Boudnik's foil and dialectical antithesis.
117		Only Among Women: Philosophies of Community in the Russian and Soviet Imagination, 1860-1940	Anne Eakin Moses	Northwestern University Press, 2020	Reveals how the idea of a community of women as a social sphere ostensibly free from the taint of money, sex, or self-interest originated in the classic Russian novel, fueled mystical notions of unity in turn-of-the-century modernism, and finally assumed a privileged place in Stalinist culture, especially cinema.
118		The Long Telegram 2.0: A Neo-Kennanite Approach to Russia	Peter Eltsov	Lexington Books, 2020	Lays out an original argument for understanding Russia that goes deep into its history, starting with the tripartite dictum "orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality," formulated in 1833 by Count Sergey Uvarov. In it, Peter Eltsov explores Uvarov's triad in the context of modern Russian, adding five more traits: exceptionalism, expansionism, historical primordialism, worship of the military, and the glorification of suffering.
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