The Eurasian Knot

Guest:

Jeremy Morris is an Associate Professor in the School of Culture and Society at Aarhus University where he researches and writes about the informal economy, class, precarity and post-socialism. His most recent book is Everyday Postsocialism: Working-class Communities in the Russian Margins published by Palgrave.

Jeremy has written up an addendum to this interview providing more detail. I highly recommend it.

Music:

The Clash, “Career Opportunities,” The Clash, 1977.

Guest:

Peter Whitewood is a Lecturer in History at York St. John University where he specializes in Soviet history, military history, and the aftermath of war. He’s the author of The Red Army and the Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Soviet Military published by University Press of Kansas.

Music:

Einsturzende Neubauten, “The Willy-Nicky Telegrams,” Lament, 2014.

Guest:

Marc Bennetts is a British journalist who has been living in Russia for almost two decades. He writes for Newsweek, The Times (of London), and Politico, as well as other US and British newspapers and magazines. He’s the author of I’m Going to Ruin Their Lives: Inside Putin’s War on Russia’s Opposition published by Oneworld. You can follow him @marcbennetts1.

Music:

Cows, “Sexy Pee Story,” Sexy Pee Story, 1993.

Guest:

James Heinzen is a professor of History at Rowan University where he specializes in modern Russian History. His new book is The Art of the Bribe: Corruption under Stalin, 1943-1953 published by Yale University Press.

Music:

Coil, “Tainted Love,” Panic, 1985.

Guest:

Brian Milakovsky has been living in Ukraine and Russia since 2009. He has worked on both ecological and humanitarian issues. Today he lives in Luhansk Oblast in the Donbass region, where he works in an aid organization. He occasionally writes about his impressions in the Donbas. His most recent article is “The Church: Caught Between Russia and Ukraine” for the Fair Observer.

Listen to my June 2015 interview with Brian Milakovsky on Donbas refugees.

Music:

John Lennon, “Happy Xmas (War is Over),” Lennon, 1990.

Guest:

Sophie Pinkham is a writer on Russian and Ukrainian culture and politics. Her articles have appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, n+1, the London Review of Books, and Foreign Affairs, among other publications. Her new book is Black Square: Adventures in Post-Soviet Ukraine published by Norton.

Listen to the April 2015 interview with Sophie Pinkham.

Music:

Echo and the Bunnymen, “The Killing Moon,” Ocean Rain, 1984.

Guest:

Steve Crowley is a Professor of Politics at Oberlin College where he researches transitions to democracy and capitalism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. His current work focuses on how post-Communist unions face the challenges from past institutional and ideological legacies, current political conditions, and the constraints placed by the global economy. He’s co-editor with Teri Caraway and Maria Lorena Cook of Working Through the Past: Labor and Authoritarian Legacies in Comparative Perspective published by Cornell University Press. His most recent article is “Russian Labor Protest in Challenging Economic Times” in the Russian Analytical Digest No. 182.

Music:

Bruce Springsteen, “Born in the U. S. A.,” Born in the U. S. A., 1984.

 

Guest:

Arch Getty is a Distinguished Professor of History at UCLA where he seeks to understand how the greatest experiment of the 20th century, led by a movement that grew out of rational, enlightened, egalitarian, and democratic traditions resulted in dictatorship and the deaths of millions of its own people. He’s the author of several books and articles on the Great Terror, political violence, and Stalinism. His most recent book is Practicing Stalinism: Bolsheviks, Boyars, and the Persistence of Tradition published by Yale University Press.

Music:

Muddy Waters, “I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man,” Gold Collection, 1992.

Guest:

Johan Engvall is a research fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs and a non-resident research fellow at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program. He’s the author of The State as Investment Market: Kyrgyzstan in Comparative Perspective published by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Music:

The Specials, “Gangsters,” The Best of the Specials, 2008.

Guest:

Christine Evans is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her research interests include Modern Eurasian mass culture and communications and play, leisure, and consumption. She’s the author of Between Truth and Time: A History of Soviet Central Television published by Yale University Press.

Watch some Soviet TV!

KVN Final, 1964

Vremya news broadcast, 1977

Chto? Gde? Kogda? (What? Where? When?), 1982

Music:

Dramarama, “70s Tv,” Stuck in Wonderamaland, 1989.