New Books in Russian and Eurasian Studies
Society & Culture
In the current context, where Vladimir Putin justifies his war against Ukraine by insisting on an inevitable, unbroken teleology that binds Kyiv to Moscow, he need to critically reexamine such interpretations is painfully evident.
Christian Raffensperger and Donald Ostrowski's book The Ruling Families of Rus: Clan, Family and Kingdom (Reaktion Books, 2023) takes a brave and important step in that direction by charting a history of Kyivan Rus’ through the framework of a history of families. The Ruling Families of Rus is not polemical; rather, through an erudite and trenchant exploration of the region’s history through local families and the marriages that manifested their priorities and strategies, this book reveals a fascinating history that brings us much closer to how ruling elites at the time approached and understood their world while also including women in histories that have often been told by “reading past” the roles women played. In short, this fascinating examination of the development of Rus, Lithuania, Muscovy, and Tver and their relationships with the Mongols, Byzantines, and others reveals a history close to the sources and quite different from the one Vladimir Putin tells.
The Ruling Families of Rus will appeal to scholars interested in the medieval history of eastern Europe. It contains beautifully produced illustrations and contextualized stories that will be a treasured resource for those who teach about this region and period. Have a listen to this conversation to get a sense of why.
Erika Monahan is the author of The Merchants of Siberia: Trade in Early Modern Eurasia (Cornell UP, 2016) and a 2023-2024 Alexander von Humboldt Fellow
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Tracey German, "Russia and the Changing Character of Conflict" (Cambria Press, 2023)
Yaroslav Trofimov, "Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence" (Penguin, 2024)
Choi Chatterjee, "Russia in World History: A Transnational Approach" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Julia A. Cassiday, "Russian Style: Performing Gender, Power, and Putinism" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)
Katya Hokanson, "A Woman's Empire: Russian Women and Imperial Expansion in Asia" (U Toronto Press, 2023)
Per Högselius and Achim Klüppelberg, "The Soviet Nuclear Archipelago: A Historical Geography of Atomic-Powered Communism" (CEU Press, 2023)
Lawrence Freedman, "Modern Warfare: Lessons from Ukraine" (Penguin, 2023)
Sean Griffin, "The Liturgical Past in Byzantium and Early Rus" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
Rustam Alexander, "Gay Lives and ‘Aversion Therapy’ in Brezhnev’s Russia, 1964–1982" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)
"The US Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Volume IV" (Indiana UP, 2022)
Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, "Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists: Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Illia Ponomarenko, "I Will Show You How It Was: The Story of Wartime Kyiv" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
Jen Stout, "Night Train to Odesa: Covering the Human Cost of Russia's War" (Polygon, 2024)
Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky, "Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State" (Stanford UP, 2024)
Asif Siddiqi on Rockets, Prisons, Pop Songs, and So Much More
Steven Ujifusa, "The Last Ships from Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and the Race to Save Russia's Jews on the Eve of World War I" (HarperCollins, 2023)
Egor Lazarev, "State-Building as Lawfare: Custom, Sharia, and State Law in Postwar Chechnya" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Maria Snegovaya, "When Left Moves Right: The Decline of the Left and the Rise of the Populist Right in Postcommunist Europe" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Louis Howard Porter, "Reds in Blue: UNESCO, World Governance, and the Soviet Internationalist Imagination" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Alexandrina Vanke, "The Urban Life of Workers in Post-Soviet Russia: Engaging in Everyday Struggle" (Manchester UP, 2024)
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