New Books in Russian and Eurasian Studies

Release Date

All Episodes

Aaron Donaghy, "The Second Cold War: Carter, Reagan, and the Politics of Foreign Policy" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

Towards the end of the Cold War, the last great struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union marked the end of détente, and escalated into the most dangerous phase of the conflict since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Aaron Donaghy examines the complex history of America's l ... Show more

. 1h 1min

Jeremy Black, "The Short History of Russia: Returning to Another Country" (Amberley, 2026)

The invasion of Ukraine in 2022 began a new episode in history and was surrounded by a miscellany of historical claims. The Short History of Russia: Returning to Another Country (Amberley, 2026) is a succinct, up-to-date guide to the histories on offer about and from Russia, one ... Show more

. 56min 22sec

Denys Gorbach, "The Making and Unmaking of the Ukrainian Working Class: Everyday Politics and Moral Economy in a Post-Soviet City" (Berghahn Books, 2024)

Industrial workers in Ukraine have a complex political lifeworld because their political action aimed at bringing radical social change coexists with a demobilizing stance that condemns all political participation as corrupt. This contradictory attitude to politics defines the ch ... Show more

. 1h 9min

Alexis Lerner, "Post-Soviet Graffiti: Free Speech in Authoritarian States" (U Toronto Press, 2025)

Post-Soviet Graffiti: Free Speech in Authoritarian States (University of Toronto Press, 2025) is an empirically grounded ethnographic study of how graffiti and street art can be used as a political tool to circumvent censorship, express grievances, and control public discourse, p ... Show more

. 46min 17sec

Colleen M. Moore, "The Peasants' War: Russia's Home Front in the First World War and the End of the Autocracy" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025)

During the First World War, Russia relied on the mass mobilization of its peasant population. In the summer of 1914, approximately four million peasants answered the state’s call to arms, while the millions who remained at home donated labour and other resources to the cause. Wit ... Show more

. 55min 58sec