What do the histories of currency and monetary policy tell us about societies at large, political structures, and cultures? Ekaterina Pravilova and Rebecca Spang tackle these questions, respectively, in two important books that examine the history of the Russian ruble from the time of Catherine the Great through the Soviet period, and the history of money du ... Show More
Feb 2023
Geoffrey Roberts, "Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books" (Yale UP, 2022)
In this engaging life of the twentieth century’s most self-consciously learned dictator, Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read, how he read them, and what they taught him. Stalin firmly believed in the transformative potential of words, and his voracious appetite for re ... Show More
1h 17m
Oct 31
Russian Archaism: Nationalism and the Quest for a Modernist Aesthetic with Irina Shevelenko (Cornell UP, 2024)
Irina Shevelenko's Russian Archaism: Nationalism and the Quest for a Modernist Aesthetic (Cornell University Press, 2024) discusses the late-19th and early 20th century search for an archaic Russian folk tradition that could ground Russian art in an idiom independent of “The West ... Show More
1h 15m
Oct 21
Defeat at the Dnepr: The XLVIII Panzerkorps Counterattack at Kiev, November 1943 with Simon Waring (Casemate, 2026)
In late 1943, the German Army on the Eastern Front was in dire straits. Its southern army group had been pushed out of eastern Ukraine, and on 6 November 1943, Kiev—one of the Soviet Union’s largest cities—was retaken by an increasingly capable Soviet Red Army. To prevent the tot ... Show More
1h 18m