New Books In Eastern European Studies

The Russian Empire once extended from the Baltic Sea to the Sea of Japan and contained a myriad of different ethnicities and nationalities. Dr. Willard Sunderland‘s The Baron’s Cloak: A History of the Russian Empire in War and Revolution (Cornell University Press, 2014) is an engaging new take on the empire that explores the tumultuous history of its final decades through the life of a single imperial person, the Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, a Baltic German aristocrat and tsarist military officer who fought on the side of the Whites in the Russian Civil War and, briefly – and strangely – became the de facto ruler of Mongolia in 1921. Following Baron Ungern through his youth and subsequent military career, the reader is treated to an adventure across Eurasian space. The first chapters take us into the peoples and politics of Russia’s western borders and the grand imperial capital of St. Petersburg. We then shift thousands of miles eastward to Siberia and the faraway territories where Russia bumped up aga

At the close of the Second World War, the Allies expelled several million Germans from the eastern portion of the former Reich. Thanks to the work of many historians, we know quite a bit about Allied planning for the expulsion, when and how it took place, and the multitude of deaths that occurred as a result of it. We know much less about what happened to the expellees after the expulsion. Where did they go? What did they do? And, perhaps most interestingly, what did they think about their former Heimat? In The Lost German East: Forced Migration and the Politics of Memory, 1945-1970 (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Andrew Demshuk answers many of these questions and thereby sheds considerable light on post-war German history. He shows that though most of the expellees made good in West Germany, they still thought often about the “lost East.” Not surprisingly given the twists and turns of nostalgia, they created an idealized image of these territories, one without Nazis. Yet they also created a kind of coun

There is a lot of nasty mythology about Jews, but surely the most heinous and ridiculous is the bizarre notion that “they” (as if Jews were all the same) have long been in the habit of murdering Christian children, draining them of blood, and mixing said blood into Passover matzo. We know when and where the notion of “Blood Libel,” as this myth is conventionally called, appeared (12th-century England), but we don’t know why. Indeed, given the utter absurdity of the charge (Jews, of course, are forbidden to eat, drink, or consume blood in any way, shape, or form), it may be impossible for a rational mind to grasp. Even the Christian Church was vexed and, therefore, repeatedly condemned Blood Libels over the centuries that followed its appearance. Official religious disapproval–together with what might generically called “Enlightenment”–had some effect. By the late nineteenth century at the latest, clerical and civil authorities–not to mention “right-thinking people” everywhere–understood Blood Libel to be noth

What processes must take place in order for countries to radically redefine who is a citizen? Why was Russia able to finally remove ethnicity from internal passports after failing to do so during seven decades of Soviet rule? What led German leaders to finally grant guest workers from Southern and Eastern Europe the path to citizenship after nearly five decades? How was Turkey able to move beyond the assimilation-based model that had guided the Turkish republic for eight decades and move toward a multi-cultural society? In his book Regimes of Ethnicity and Nationhood in Germany, Russia, and Turkey (Cambridge University Press, 2012), which was awarded the 2013 Joseph Rothschild Prize in Nationalism and Ethnic Studies, Sener Akturk makes a carefully constructed argument for how states can redefine “regimes of ethnicity” through the confluence of three key processes – the rise of new counter-elites, the development of new discourses, and the emergence of hegemonic majorities, which together can give governments

I imagine one of the greatest compliments an author of an historical monograph can receive is to hear that his or her book changed the way a subject is taught. I will do just that after reading Mark Levene‘s new two volume work The Crisis of Genocide (2 Vols. Devastation:  The European Rimlands, 1912-1938; Annihilation and The European Rimlands, 1938-1953) (Oxford University Press, 2014).  These books, a continuation of Mark’s earlier volumes titled Genocide in the Age of the Nation State, offer a rich and thought-provoking analysis of the ways in which the changing expectations and culture of the international system interacted with local events and personalities to drive mass violence.  The work is more analytical than narrative.  It is complex and requires careful attention to argument and evidence.  But it amply repays this effort with a reading of modern European history that made me rethink how I understood the period.  I learned much from the book about the details of violence in Anatolia and the Balk

When I was in graduate school, those of us who studied World War One commented regularly on the degree to which historians concentrated their attention on the Western front at the expense of the other aspects of the war. In the years since then (I won’t say how many), historians have worked hard to remedy this neglect.  Nevertheless, we still know much less about the Eastern Front than we do about events in France or even the homefronts of Western and Central Europe. Geoffrey Wawro‘s new book A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire (Basic Books, 2014), fills in an important part of this gap.  Wawro is most interested in understanding why the Empire chose to go to war despite (or perhaps because of) its many challenges and why it failed so immediately and drastically.  Decisions made by diplomats, soldiers and politicians in Vienna played a critical role in starting the war.  And decisions made by the leaders of the Monarchy’s army’s played just as important a ro

Thirty years after a trip to the GDR, Soviet cardiologist V.I. Metelitsa still remembered mistakenly trying to buy a dress for a ten-year-old daughter in a maternity shop: ‘In our country I couldn’t even imagine that such a specialized shop could exist’.” Well-stocked shops, attractive cafes, and medieval streets were among the many discoveries that Soviet citizens made in their trips abroad. After decades of closed borders and rumors of life abroad, the 1950s ushered in a new era — an era in which Soviet citizens would be able to participate in the transnational circulation of people, ideas, and items. In All This is Your World: Soviet Tourism at Home and Abroad After Stalin (Oxford University Press, 2011), Anne Gorsuch discusses the varied experiences of Soviet citizens traveling at home, to the “near abroad” of Estonia, and to Eastern and Western Europe, in the Khrushchev era. For many, this travel was no holiday but a purposeful excursion. Tourists were to learn about other parts of the world, but most i

We’ve talked before on the show about how hard it is to enter into the field of Holocaust Studies. Just six weeks ago, for instance, I talked with Dan Stone about his thoughtful work analyzing and critiquing the current state of our knowledge of the subject. This week is a natural follow-on to that interview. Peter Hayes and John Roth have edited a remarkable compilation of essays about the Holocaust. The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies (Oxford University Press, 2010) surveys the field, but does so in a significantly different way than Stone. Hayes and Roth have recruited dozens of the brightest young researchers to offer a summary of and reflection on what we now know about many of the most important topics in Holocaust Studies. Each entry is relatively short (12-15 pages) and packed with information useful to newcomers and veterans alike. Each offers some sense of the trajectory of our knowledge and understanding of the topic. Almost all are immensely readable. If you are looking to get a comprehens

The first comprehensive biography of famed Yiddish novelist, story writer and playwright Sholem Aleichem, Jeremy Dauber‘s welcome new book The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem: The Remarkable Life and Afterlife of the Man Who Created Tevye (Schocken, 2013) offers readers an encounter with the great Yiddish author himself. Dauber writes in the rhythm of the language of Sholem Aleichem – Mr. How Do You Do – brilliantly structuring the book as a drama, with an overture, five acts, and an epilogue in ten scenes. He assumes the voice of a theater impresario, talking to his audience, just as the author Sholem Aleichem did, narrating his stories and reading them to the crowds whom he loved to entertain. The author Sholem Aleichem, most famous for his Tevye stories that became Fiddler on the Roof, was no Tevye, but rather a sophisticated and educated cosmopolitan businessman and writer.  He possessed immense curiosity about every man, a unique ear for interesting stories, and the ability to connect with his audience; these

It takes two to tango, right? Indeed it does. But it’s also true that someone has got to ask someone else to dance before any tangoing is done. Beginning in the 1960s, the American intellectual elite argued–and seemed to really believe–that the United States either started the Cold War full stop or played a very important (and knowing) role in setting it in motion. That consensus (if it was a consensus) has been destroyed by the work of a raft of historians who, having gotten fresh access to materials from the Soviet side, are now offering fresh–and revisionist–interpretations of the beginnings of the Cold War. One such historian is Robert Gellately. In his new book Stalin’s Curse: Battling for Communism in War and Cold War (Knopf, 2013), Gellately argues that Stalin saw the world in binary terms: there were capitalists and communists. ALL the capitalists were bad. This was obviously true of the Nazi Germans. But it was also true of his wartime allies, the Democratic Americans, British, and French. So when

I don’t think it’s possible anymore for someone, even an academic with a specialty in the field, let alone an interested amateur, to read even a fraction of the literature written about the Holocaust. If you do a search for the word “Holocaust” on Amazon (as I just did), you get 18,445 results. That’s just in English, and just books available right now on Amazon. Admittedly this is a poor search strategy to use if constructing a bibliography, but it gives you a decent approximation of the challenge you face in trying to learn about the Holocaust. Dan Stone, then, has done the field a great service in writing his book Histories of the Holocaust (Oxford University Press, 2010. In this work, Stone attempts to provide a critical guide to the questions and interpretations most important to the field at this moment. In doing so, he summarizes an enormous amount of reading and learning into a couple hundred pages while offering his own thoughtful interpretations. This book is one of the first places to start if you

At the end of the 20th century, it looked like history was being made. After a century that had seen Europe dissolve into an orgy of bloody conflict not once but twice, the continent seemed to have changed its ways. It had spent the second half of the century building... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Christopher Browning is one of the giants in the field of Holocaust Studies. He has contributed vitally to at least two of the basic debates in the field: the intentionalist/functionalist discussion about when, why and how the Germans decided to annihilate the Jews of Europe, and the question of why individual perpetrators killed. His new book, then, seems like something of a departure. Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave Labor Camp (W. W. Norton, 2010), examines the labor camp at Starachowice, Poland. Starting before the Nazi invasion, Browning tracks the members of the Jewish community in the region throughout the war, from their initial encounters with Nazi presence through their deportation to Auschwitz to their eventual return (or not) to their homes after the war. The book engages deeply questions of survival, resistance and community and family in the life of the Jewish captives. But, as Browning suggests during the interview, the book is really a continuation of his previous strategy of using

I was a graduate student in the 1990s when Yugoslavia dissolved into violence. Beginning a dissertation on Habsburg history, I probably knew more about the region than most people in the US about the region. Yet I was just as surprised as anyone else at the scale of the hatred and violence that erupted. With the part of the world I studied enduring atrocity after atrocity, I spent quite a bit of time wondering if graduate study in history was really the best profession to pursue. And I spent a lot of time devouring various accounts to try to understand how such violence could come out of what seemed like nowhere. Paul Mojzes‘ new book Balkan Genocides: Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the 20th Century(Rowman and Littlefield, 2011) ably addresses the second concern. A native of the region, Paul brings a deep understanding of the long-term roots of Balkan violence that many of the initial responses lacked. At the same time, he recognizes the significant changes that accompanied the twentieth century.  Moreove

Americans love Prague. They visit and have even moved there in considerable numbers. They like the place for a lot of reasons. One is that Prague is a very beautiful city. But another is that the Czech Republic has a widespread reputation in the U.S. (and more generally, I think) as a very liberal, democratic place. Czechs, we think, are different and long have been. In many ways, they are, of course. But as Mary Heimann suggests in her controversial book Czechoslovakia: The State That Failed (Yale UP, 2009; paperback, 2011), the Czechs (and Slovaks) were not as exceptional, historically speaking, as many think, and certainly not as exceptional as some historians have led us to believe. Czechoslovakia was not immune to some of the more harmful movements of the late nineteenth and twentieth century–strident nationalism, fascism, and communism among them. Sometimes Czech and Slovak leaders acted liberally and democratically; sometimes they did not. In that way, they were like all their European neighbors, that

Russians have a reputation for xenophobia, that is, it’s said they don’t much like foreigners. According to Eric Lohr‘s new book, Russian Citizenship: From Empire to Soviet Union (Harvard University Press, 2012), this reputation is at once deserved and undeserved. It’s true that at various moments in Russian history, foreigners have not been permitted to enter Russia, let alone become citizens (or, in an earlier period, “subjects”) of the state. But, intermittently, the Russian state actively recruited foreigners, and especially foreign experts and capital, to aid in economic development. In the period after the Great Reforms, for example, the Russian state actively encouraged foreign investment and immigration. Late Imperial Russia seemed to be on a kind of glide path to a modern notion of citizenship. As Eric explains, all that ended with the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 (with catastrophic economic results). Listen in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I imagine everyone who listens to this podcast knows about the Nazi effort to remake Central and Eastern Europe by expelling and murdering massive numbers of Slavs, Jews, and Gypsies. The results, of course, were catastrophic. Fewer listeners are probably well informed about the Allied effort after the War to remake Central and Eastern Europe by expelling massive numbers of Germans. The results, as R. M. Douglasdemonstrates in his well-researched, even-handed book Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War (Yale University Press, 2012), were catastrophic. As many as 14 million Germans were displaced and somewhere between 500,000 and 1.5 million parished. Of course the Nazi and Allied “ethnic cleansings” (if that’s the right word) were not equivalent, a point that Douglas goes to great pains to emphasis. But the one is well known and the other is not. Until now. I urge you to read this book and find out what happened in this largely forgotten (and very disturbing) episode in th

During the Cold War few Westerners gave much thought to Western Ukraine, and its main city, Lviv. It was what happened in Moscow and St. Petersburg that really mattered, and so if one looked on a map one found city as Lvov, the Russian transliteration, rather than the Ukrainian that was native to the region. Consequently, beyond emigre circles the way in which Lviv became a center for an alternative way of looking at the world was largely ignored until the Soviet regime was falling apart. William Risch’s fascinating book The Ukrainian West: Culture and the Fate of Empire in Soviet Lviv (Harvard UP, 2011) explores how Soviet rule was imposed in Lviv and Western Ukraine, and how despite Soviet ambitions, Lviv acquired its own identity that affected not just locals indigenous to the region but also people who moved to the city after it came under Soviet rule at the end of World War II. Drawing heavily on oral interviews, Risch tells an intriguing story of the unintended consequences of Soviet rule

The question of how “ordinary Germans” managed to commit genocide is a classic (and troubling) one in modern historiography. It’s been well studied and so it’s hard to say anything new about it. But Mary Fulbrook has done precisely that in A Small Town Near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust (Oxford University Press, 2012). In the book she examines the career of a single Nazi administrator in “the East”, Udo Klusa, in minute detail day by day, week by week, month by month while the Germans were improvising what became known as the “Holocaust.” Klausa was not a big wig; he was a functionary, a part of a (particularly awful) colonial machine. He believed in the Nazi mission to “Germanize” Poland, but he was by no means a “fanatical” Nazi. He followed orders (by our standards horrendous ones), but he did not do so mindlessly. He wanted to build a career, but he was not–apparently–willing to do anything to do so. Fullbrook investigates just how far Klausa was willing to go, what he found acceptable and

What if much of what we think we know about nationalism and the spread of the national identity over the course of the nineteenth century were wrong? This view is so widely accepted and ingrained in how we talk about the relationship between modernization and national identity that a different account is hard to imagine. Yet Pieter Judson has made a convincing case in Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Harvard University Press, 2006) that national conflict was not inexorably spreading from urban areas to the countryside. Indeed, he shows that villagers in mixed areas stubbornly resisted nationalist efforts to make them declare themselves once and for all as Germans, Czechs, Slovenes, or Italians depending on the region. The fact that we have thought otherwise stands as a triumph of nationalist propaganda, when nationalists began turning their attention to the countryside in 1880s, and made schoolhouses, rural demographic decline, and nationally oriented tourism a