New Books in Russian and Eurasian Studies
Society & Culture
On January 21, 1924 and at the age of 53, Vladimir Lenin passed away. We’ve now had a century of a world without him, but also a century of a world undeniably changed by his imprint. In commemoration of his life, Verso has recently put out a collection of classic works both by and about this pivotal figure. One of these books, a short biographical sketch called Lenin’s Childhood, is the topic of today’s conversation, although it’s really only a jumping off point for my guest and I to talk about the book’s author, the Marxist historian and biographer Isaac Deutscher. Best known for his biographies of Stalin and his trilogy on Trotsky, Lenin’s Childhood is the only completed piece of an attempted two-volume study that would’ve completed his biographical work, and set the stage for a greater study of Russian history in general. While his untimely death in 1967 cut his work short, he still left a rich body of writing worth wrestling with. Throughout our conversation, we discuss Deutscher’s life, work and legacy, and encourage listeners to revisit his work as still relevant for contemporary readers.
Our guest today, Gonzalo Pozo, wrote the introduction to the new edition of Lenin’s Childhood, and is currently working on a biography of Isaac Deutscher.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
Bedross Der Matossian, "The Armenian Social Democrat Hnchakian Party: Politics, Ideology and Transnational History" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Curtis Fox, "Hybrid Warfare: The Russian Approach to Strategic Competition and Conventional Military Conflict" (30 Press Publishing, 2023)
Anna Reid, "A Nasty Little War: The West's Fight to Reverse the Russian Revolution" (Basic Books, 2024)
Anton Weiss-Wendt, "On the Margins: Essays on the History of Jews in Estonia" (CEU Press, 2017)
Calder Walton, "Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West" (Simon & Schuster, 2024)
Simon Shuster, "The Showman: The Inside Story of the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky" (William Morrow, 2024)
Democracy, Great Powers, and the Russia-Ukraine War. A Discussion with Stefan Wolff
Matthew Romaniello, "Enterprising Empires: Russia and Britain in Eighteenth-Century Eurasia" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
Yaroslav Trofimov, "Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence" (Penguin, 2023)
Kateryna Malaia, "Taking the Soviet Union Apart Room by Room: Domestic Architecture before and after 1991" (Northern Illinois UP, 2023)
Pavel Khazanov, "The Russia that We Have Lost: Pre-Soviet Past as Anti-Soviet Discourse" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)
Christine E. Evans, “Between Truth and Time: A History of Soviet Central Television” (Yale UP, 2016)
Scott D. Seligman, "Murder in Manchuria: The True Story of a Jewish Virtuoso, Russian Fascists, a French Diplomat, and a Japanese Spy in Occupied China" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)
Alyssa M. Park, “Sovereignty Experiments: Korean Migrants and the Building of Borders in Northeast Asia, 1860-1945" (Cornell UP, 2019)
Philip Snow, "China and Russia: Four Centuries of Conflict and Concord" (Yale UP, 2023)
Olga V. Solovieva, "The Russian Kurosawa: Transnational Cinema, Or the Art of Speaking Differently" (Oxford UP. 2023)
Christine Abely, "The Russia Sanctions: The Economic Response to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Gary Saul Morson, "Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter" (Harvard UP, 2023)
Vladyslav Besedovskyy, "Uniforms and History of the Soviet Airborne in Afghanistan" (Safar, 2023)
Jonathan Daly and Leonid Trofimov, "Seven Myths of the Russian Revolution" (Hackett, 2023)
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Modern West
New Books in Philosophy
New Books in Sociology
New Books in Psychoanalysis
New Books in Psychology
New Books in Economics