Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchPrit Buttar, "To Besiege a City: Leningrad 1941-42" (Osprey, 2023)
Episode 193
The city of St. Petersburg held great significance to the Russian Empire when Peter the Great first built the city in 1703. It was intended to be Rus…
8 months, 2 weeks ago
Filip Kovacevic, "KGB Literati: Spy Fiction and State Security in the Soviet Union" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
Episode 374
KGB Literati: Spy Fiction and State Security in the Soviet Union (University of Toronto Press, 2025) offers a first-ever glimpse into the mysterious …
8 months, 3 weeks ago
Lucy Jeffery and Anna Váradi, "Replaying Communism: Trauma and Nostalgia in European Cultural Production" (CEU Press, 2025)
Episode 979
In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) sat down with Lucy Jeffery and Anna Váradi to talk about their edited volume, Replaying Communism: T…
9 months ago
Anna Zhelnina, "Private Life, Public Action: How Housing Politics Mobilized Citizens in Moscow" (Temple UP, 2025)
Episode 978
Renovation, an urban renewal plan in Moscow that was announced in the spring of 2017, proposed to demolish thousands of socialist-era apartment build…
9 months, 2 weeks ago
Anna Shadrina, "The Babushka Phenomenon: Older Women and the Political Sociology of Ageing in Russia" (UCL Press, 2025)
Episode 977
The Babushka Phenomenon: Older Women and the Political Sociology of Ageing in Russia (UCL Press, 2025) by Dr. Anna Shadrina examines the social produ…
9 months, 2 weeks ago
Jochen Hellbeck, "World Enemy No. 1: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews" (Penguin Group, 2025)
Episode 189
In the West, World War II is commonly understood as the Allies’ struggle against Nazism. Often elided, if not simply forgotten, is the Soviet Union’s…
9 months, 3 weeks ago
Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy, "Videotape" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Episode 975
Over the span of a single decade, VHS technology changed the relationship between privacy and entertainment, pried open the closed societies behind t…
9 months, 4 weeks ago
Dustin Condren, "An Imaginary Cinema: Sergei Eisenstein and the Unrealized Film" (Cornell UP, 2024)
Episode 974
An Imaginary Cinema: Sergei Eisenstein and the Unrealized Film (Cornell UP, 2024) explores the unfinished cinematic projects developed and abandoned …
10 months ago
Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov, "Our Dear Friends in Moscow: The Inside Story of a Broken Generation" (PublicAffairs, 2025)
Episode 973
1991 ushered in a new epoch of hope as Russia marched toward democracy and prosperity on the ruins of the Soviet Union. In 2025 those hopes for a thr…
10 months ago
Susanna Rabow-Edling, "The First Russian Revolution: The Decembrist Revolt Of 1825" (Reaktion Books, 2025)
Episode 972
On the 200th anniversary of the Decembrist Revolt, Susanna Rabow-Edling published The First Russian Revolution: The Decembrist Revolt Of 1825 (Reak…
10 months ago