East European History Research Articles

The Strawpeople of Russian, Eastern European, and Soviet History in English-Language TV and Film

Abstract This special issue features historical scholars of imperial Russia and the Soviet Union analyzing representations of Russian and East European characters and history in contemporary Anglophone television and films, such as The Americans, Black Widow, The Great, For All Mankind, and Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. They identify several tropes that shore up Anglosphere conceptions of progressiveness, liberalism, feminism, and even whiteness in ways that put pressure on geopolitics today, which some have characterized as a second Cold War. Gender and sexuality are dominant themes through which difference between the West and Eastern Europe is commonly staged onscreen. Debate emerges on whether this is a return to twentieth-century thinking or a new vision of Russian and East European otherness.

New Books and Old Trends in the Study of the Russian Middle Ages

Kiev Rus’ is a common “antiquity” for the East-European countries and nations. During the previous century it became one of the most popular themes for the historians, particularly, for the Soviet scholars. It is gratifying that an understanding of the significance of this epoch for the adequate perception of complex East-European history has not faded. This article analyzes new books devoted to Kiev Rus’ written by S. N. Temushev. His first work about the “formation of the state” of Ancient Rus’ is not of great scholarly interest but the second one is indicative of the current processes of the complex situation in the humanities. This author’s approach to the historical sources is very disputable — he evidently underestimates the significance of Russian chronicles. His perception of historiography is also arguable because he blurs the boundaries between different trends. There is a combination and mixture of different notions in his work. The author of the monograph puts forward some “tax-tribute system” and tries to show it role in formation of some “state and feudalism”. He does not take in account such scholarly achievement of Western historiography as identification of “chiefdom”, but at the same time does not propose any new concept. He begins with a critique of feudalism but ends up as an adherent of so called “state feudalism” — in its most artificial and meaningless sense in our historiography. His interpretation of the relationships of eastern Slavs with their neighbours, particularly, with the Lithuanians is also doubtful. In his opinion, Finno-Ugric and Baltic tribes were not the objects of foreign policy of Rus’, but some “foreign confederates”.

Dmitry Tikhobrazov: “My Immediate Goal Was to Get out of Serving Ukrainian Separatism”. Reminiscences about the Events in Ukraine in Late 1918 – Early 1919

This article introduces previously unpublished memoirs of Colonel Dmitry Nikolaevich Tikhobrazov about the events in Ukraine between late 1918 and early 1919. These memoirs are stored at the Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European History and Culture at Columbia University in New York. The published fragment describes the attempted conscription of the memoirist to serve in the army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic Directory and the refusal of this service. These memoirs give us an insight into the attitude of white-oriented offi cers to the Petliurists and into what orders were issued to the Ukrainian troops, including in matters of discipline. The memoirs contain everyday sketches of Ukrainian life during the German occupation.

С.Л. Франк о «загадке трансценден­ции»: лекционная версия «Предмета знания»

Based on archival materials, personal correspondence and Swiss periodicals, a historical and philosophical reconstruction of the circumstances of Semyon L. Franck’s lecture visit in Switzerland in 1929 have been performed. The place and significance of the report “The Secret of Transcendence” (“Das Rätsel des Transzendenz”), which was given in Zurich at the invitation of the local Philosophical Society, in the philosopher’s creative heritage was established. It was concluded that the content of Semyon L. Frank’s lecture is reflected the epistemological problems that the philosopher set out systematically in his pre-emigrant work “The Object of Knowledge” (1915), and then presented it to the Ger­man-speaking professional community in an abridged form in two articles published un­der the general title “Cognition and Being” (“Erkenntnis und Sein”) in 1928 and 1929 in the German edition of the international yearbook on the philosophy of culture “Lo­gos”. The appendix introduces the German-language synopsis of Semyon L. Frank “The Secret of Transcendence”, stored in Box 16 of the Philosopher’s Foundation in the Bakhmetev Archives of Columbia University (New York, USA) – Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European History and Culture, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Co­lumbia University, New York. S.L. Frank Papers. Box 16. S.L. Frank – Manuscript Frag­ments Notes; archival materials are provided with Russian translation and comments.

«А здесь я никому не нужен»: Послевоенные годы Николая Зарецкого в Праге [“And Here, No One Needs Me”: Nikolai Zaretsky’s Post-War Years in Prague

In his article, Prof. Fedor Poljakov of the University of Vienna focuses on the last years a Russian émigré painter, graphic artist and art collector Nikolai Zaretsky spent in the Socialist Czechoslovakia before escaping to Paris in 1950. It also contains an overview of Zaretsky’s pre-war exhibitions in Prague and tells the story of his major unfinished project — an illustrated book Risunki Russkikh Pisatelei (Russian Writers’ Drawings). KEYWORDS: 20th-Century Russian and East-European History, Nikolai Zaretsky (1876—1959), Russian Writers’ Drawings (unpublished), Life Story, Russian Emigration, Microhistory.

Serbia and Southeastern Europe between Global and East European History

Drawing on a half century of Balkan research and publication that started in Belgrade, John Lampe reviews three new Western histories of the region and their attention to Serbia from prominent Western historians. Germany’s Calic examines only Southeastern Europe, while Connelly from the US and Bideleux and Jeffries from the UK include the Balkans in their volumes on Eastern Europe.

A Path to Non-Oblivion: A Brief History of the Bakhmeteff Archive

ABSTRACT For almost seventy years the Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European History and Culture at Columbia University has been considered an outstanding resource for the study of Russian émigré life. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Bakhmeteff Archive became a critical tool in the process of rewriting twentieth-century Russian history. Unfortunately, in search of “sensational” archival “discoveries,” mythology surrounding the history of the archive blossomed. This article will highlight the most important milestones of the Bakhmeteff Archive and will hopefully inspire scholarly research based on facts rather than mythology quest.

John Connelly's Long March through East European History

John Connelly, a member of the history faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, for the last quarter century, has produced what will surely stand as a landmark among grand syntheses on the modern history of Eastern Europe. The book title uses the geographical designation favored during the Cold War, but the subject is more precisely East Central Europe, a term that Connelly uses interchangeably with Eastern Europe to designate the lands lying between Germany and Austria in the west and the former components of the Soviet Union to the east.

From People into Nations: A History of Eastern Europe by Connelly John (review)

REVIEWS 367 living conditions and peasant participation in local governance institutions (zemstvo, volost´ governments, etc.). And finally, although avowedly about the entire Russian peasantry over time, this book is mostly focused on the central industrial region between Moscow and Petersburg. This feels like a lost opportunity, as a more substantive and clearer documentation of differences across space, over time and between Russian peasants and other groups would have strengthened the contribution of this study. While wide-ranging, written in a student-friendly way, and emphasizing a novel ‘ecological’ perspective on the history of the Russian peasantry, Gorshkov’s study offers few challenges to current historical interpretations. David Moon’s The Russian Peasantry 1600–1930 (London, 1999) covers much of the same ground in a way that nicely incorporates quantitative evidence, original sources and a comparative perspective on the heterogenous nature of rural Russian life. Reading the two books together would provide a useful entry point into the large, hugely important, and still evolving historiography of the Russian peasantry. Department of Economics Steven Nafziger Williams College Connelly, John. From People into Nations: A History of Eastern Europe. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ and Woodstock, 2020. vii + 956 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Appendix. Index. £30.00: $35.00. East European history can be a daunting subject for historians and specialists let alone for those fair weather or armchair enthusiasts interested in events that shaped the region over the past decades. Writing a detailed history of Eastern Europe is an even more challenging undertaking. For this reason, John Connelly’s latest attempt at narrating and examining a considerable period of modern history set in the context of Eastern Europe is a welcome contribution to the topic’s growing historiography. The author is no stranger to the complex historical cleavages of the region at the centre of this monograph. Connelly, who specializes, among others, in topics of modern East and Central European political and social history, has previously written on the Sovietization of higher education in post-war Eastern Europe during the period of high Stalinism as well as about German occupational ethnopolitics in the east during World War Two. It is fitting that this scholar chose to tackle the project of chronologically mapping a complex 150-year period of East European development over five broad thematic sections totalling twenty-seven chapters. SEER, 99, 2, APRIL 2021 368 From the outset the author outlines what exactly he means by ‘Eastern Europe’, a term used interchangeably with ‘East Central Europe’ throughout the text. The book traces nineteenth-century anti-imperialist struggles that gave rise to twentieth-century nationalist trends before questioning the current state of nationalism in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary; the former Yugoslav Republics; Bulgaria, Romania and Germany. Absent however, are more dedicated discussions on countries many today also associate as East European — the Baltic States, Belarus and Ukraine. Whereas some aspects of their national development are mentioned in the context of the aforementioned countries, the author explains how their experiences largely under the rule of other states during much of the period examined led to the creation of ‘separate stories’, thereby suggesting they deserve distinct attention. This argument may be contested by some, especially those who maintain how nationalist movements, for example in present-day western Ukraine, were also part of greater anti-imperial struggles. For Connelly however, the Eastern Europe designation serves more than just denoting a physical space on the reader’s mental map. Rather it is synonymous with his description of shared experiences and common narratives about the past still circulating throughout the region today. Connelly’s methodology of employing accepted and new vocabulary to trace how patterns and changes reverberated throughout the region deserves appreciation. Terms familiar to even the most amateur of historians like ‘decolonization’ and ‘national self-determination’ described events throughout the region discussed in the first half of his book; that is roughly until the outbreak of World War Two. From there a series of new phrases is introduced — ludobójstwo (the Polish term for genocide coined by Polish Jew Raphael Lemkin), ‘foreign in their own land’, and ‘reform communists’ — that to specialists may seem common, but which encapsulate the wartime events and...

In Ukraine under Hetman summer — autumn 1918

This article introduces previously unpublished memoirs of General P. S. Makhrov about the events of the Civil war in the Ukraine in 1918. Makhrov’s Memoirs from the Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European History and Culture, Columbia University are an important source for the different events of the late XIX — first half of the XX century. Primarily on the history of the First world war and Civil war in Russia and Ukraine. The memoirist describes in detail the Ukraine under Hetman P. P. Skoropadski and the German occupation. P. S. Makhrov pays special attention to the behavior of officers in independent Ukraine.

Beiträge zu den Beziehungen zwischen dem Hansischen Geschichtsverein und der Hansischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft in der DDR (1955-1990)

Contributions to the relations between the “Hansischer Geschichtsverein” and “Hansische Arbeitsgemeinschaft” in the German Democratic Republic (1955–1990)In 2011 Eckhard Müller-Mertens published a book about the Hanseatic association in the German Democratic Republic (“Hansische Arbeitsgemeinschaft”=AG). This association had been founded in 1955 as a part of the Association for Hanseatic History (“Hansischer Geschichtsverein” = HGV, seat: Lübeck), responsible for the HGV-members living in East Germany. All activities of the AG were meticulously watched by the relevant authorities of the GDR. Against the background of the GDR’s efforts to gain recognition as a state according to international law, the AG was pressed to dissociate itself from the HGV and to try to become an independent member of an international association for hanseatic studies. The anniversary of the foundation of the HGV one hundred years before was used as an opportunity to break off the connection to the HGV. The anniversary was to be celebrated in Stralsund (East Germany), where the HGV had been founded in 1870. Although the mayor’s invitation to come to Stralsund was limited by authorities, the HGV accepted it. Nevertheless, the AG was compelled to cancel the conference in Stralsund and to dissolve the connection to the HGV. As a pretext for the cancellation controversial formalities in the program papers for the conference were put forward.
 The author of these contributions was in close contact with the HGV since the late 1950s, he was an assistant professor affiliated to the chair of Hanseatic (and East European) history at the university of Hamburg, he took part in editing the review “Hansische Geschichtsblätter” and was a member of the HGV-committee since 1965. Therefore he also had contacts with the AG and is now able to describe the connections between HGV and AG in crucial years, based on private papers and his own memories, as a useful addition to the statements of Müller-Mertens.
 After a general introduction to the relations between the HGV and the AG the author comments on the participation of students from Hamburg University in conferences of the AG in East Germany, arranged by him 1960 –1966. While the Berlin wall was being built, he took part in a conference of the AG in Naumburg in 1961 and was able to impart news of the AG-committee to Lübeck. Difficulties in using western credits in East Germany are verified. The impending separation of the AG from the HGV could already be seen when the author was preparing an anniversary volume of the “Hansische Geschichtsblätter”. After the AG had left the HGV in 1970 historians outside Germany, above all in the Netherlands (Johanna van Winter) and in Poland (Maria Bogucka, Henryk Samsonowicz) tried to renew co-operation between historians of West and East Germany by founding an international organization for hanseatic studies, which could contain national commissions and associations in Western and Eastern countries, as the HGV and the AG. These efforts culminated in the Warsaw conference in December 1971 concerning the history of the Baltic area, arranged by the Polish Historical Society, followed by important discussions about an international society; under the leadership of Michel Mollat, chairman of the “Commission Internationale d’Histoire Maritime”, a “Committee for Organizing a Commission of the History of Europe’s Northern seas” was appointed. – In order to maintain direct connections between HGV und AG in East Germany, the author sometimes met the chairman of the AG in East Berlin (1970/71).

Attribution of the manuscript of The Life of Peter the Great and specifics of the Slavonic-Serbian language in the works of Zaharij Orfelin

The article analyses the problem of the authorship of an anonymous manuscript on the history of Russia in the time of Peter the Great, which today is part of the library of the Institute of East European History at the University of Vienna. The hypothesis proposed is that this is the first part of the work of the famous Serbian enlightener Zaharija Orfelin, The Life and Glorious Deeds of Peter the Great, and a further assumption is given on where the second part of the manuscript may be located. The literary language in Orfelin’s work is a vivid manifestation of the so-called “Slavonic-Serbian” language. Attention is drawn to the use by Orfelin of different language systems in different literary genres - for example, The Life of Peter was written in the “Slavonic-Serbian” language, poetry was mainly in Serbian, and political treatises, such as Representation, were written in German. Orfelin paid particular attention to the development of school education and within a short time published a number of textbooks for Serbian children: in 1766, the Latin ABC Book with a short dictionary translated into the Slavonic-Serbian language was published, followed a year later by First elements of the Latin language containing Latin grammar and didactic dialogues, and in 1767 by the ABC of the “Slavonic [slavenskij] language”, which was the first Serbian alphabet and used in primary schools in Serbia until the end of the nineteenth century. Of interest are Orfelin’s less studied contacts with other representatives of the Revival among southern Slavs. The conclusion illustrates Orphelin’s attitude to the reforms of Maria Theresa in the field of religion and education.

An interview with John K. Cox

Editor’s Note An Interview with John K. Cox, PhD, Professor of East European History and department head in history at North Dakota State University, Fargo (USA) John K. Cox, PhD is a renowned specialist in Balkan history. He earned his PhD at Indiana University in 1995 with a biography of Edvard Kardelj and has published a number of articles on Serbian, Slovene, and Yugoslav history. Some of his chief publications are The History of Serbia (2002) and Slovenia: Evolving Loyalties (2005). His current work is in intellectual history and is situated at the intersection of literature and the political and social currents of nationalism, fascism, and, especially, communism. He is also a literary translator and has translated six volumes by Danilo Kis, two by Biljana Jovanovic, and other works by Ajla Terzic, Muharem Bazdulj, Jurij Koch, Joseph Roth, Stefan Heym, Miklos Radnoti, Ivan Cankar, Ivo Andric, Goran Petrovic, Vjenceslav Novak, and others. He is currently translating Biljana Jovanovic’s Dusa, jedinica moja as well as Atelanska igra by Dragana Krsenkovic Brkovic.We had the pleasure of meeting John K. Cox in Belgrade, at the conference entitled Language, Literature and Nature where he delivered a keynote lecture on practicing history and literary translation. This interview was conducted by email between Budapest, Belgrade, and Fargo.The editor would like to cordially thank Linda Kunos, Acting Director and Editor of Central European University Press, and John Cox for doing the literary interview and allowing the readers to hear their voices, ideas, opinions, and experiences.

Truth and Lies across the Iron Curtain

Truth and Lies across the Iron Curtain Rósa Magnúsdóttir Melissa Feinberg, Curtain of Lies: The Battle over Truth in Stalinist Eastern Europe. xxii + 232 pp. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. ISBN-13 978-0190644611. $74.00. Melissa Feinberg has written an excellent book about political culture in Stalinist Eastern Europe. Curtain of Lies: The Battle over Truth in Stalinist Eastern Europe is a timely book that focuses on fear, lies, and truth; themes that are all too familiar in contemporary political culture, dominated by ideological populism and fake (i.e., untrue) news. But more importantly, Curtain of Lies is also a welcome addition to the historiography on East European, Soviet, and Cold War history, as it joins a body of works that complicate the notion of resistance and demonstrate the porousness of the Iron Curtain.1 Additionally, it is transnational history at its best, with a focus on families, communities, ideologies, and regions instead of political borders, nations, policies, and states. Two opposite ideologies, communism and capitalism, dominated the political culture of the Cold War. To strengthen their propaganda, both communist regimes and the United States adopted a simple vocabulary of opposites meant to create loyalty and faith in their respective ideological projects. "Telling the truth about socialism" became a catchphrase in Soviet propaganda, at home and abroad, but even if both sides "spoke in terms of truth and lies, factual accuracy was usually not their primary concern" (xi). [End Page 649] These propaganda strategies of "truth telling," which implicitly and explicitly always relied on the concept of lying, had much to do with the fear that dominated the Cold War.2 In the war-torn regions of Eastern Europe, the regimes encouraged fear of a new war in order to create support for Soviet peace campaigns. In return, Americans painted a general picture of East Europeans as paralyzed by fear, not daring to take control of their own lives as they lived in a state of surveillance and terror.3 Both of these "fear campaigns" served the purposes of the respective superpowers; to secure and sustain support for their rule at home as well as to justify the costly propaganda campaigns in the early years of the Cold War. Feinberg's study shows how East Europeans adapted to these fears, and how they influenced the campaigns, focusing on flows of ideas rather than top-down strategies and bottom-up reactions. One example, related to the well-documented fear of a new war, shows that some people created a "fantasy of war as liberation" (127), where a war would free East Europeans from oppression.4 This kind of fantasy relied on the conviction that nuclear weapons would erase Soviet territory but not the satellite states. Interestingly, most people were convinced of a US victory in any of the imagined war scenarios, clearly not taking for granted that Soviet accomplishments in World War II could be repeated. These fantasies, as well as fantasies of a painless nuclear war, Feinberg describes as a coping strategy; as such, the war fantasies are indicative of one way in which East Europeans made sense of the available sources of information from both West and East in their everyday lives. In Feinberg's narrative, people's experiences are at the center: what was it like to live in Eastern Europe, and how did the superpowers' battle over truth inform people's way of life? Curtain of Lies provides a balanced account of how some East Europeans, while living under Stalinist control, took note of the situation in the West and "used, adapted, manipulated, and shaped political discourses from both sides of the Iron Curtain in order to make sense of their own experience" (xix). Feinberg thus challenges the prevalent [End Page 650] dichotomy of the historical literature in that agency is not an either/or question about oppression or resistance. Rather, Feinberg argues, we need to look at the sources of information available to East Europeans and understand how they informed people's approaches to their everyday lives. She finds that just as people's survival strategies were dependent on them navigating the "transnational political culture of the Cold War" (xv), East...

Front Matter

Introduction François Guesnet (bio) and Antony Polonsky (bio) O ḥevruta o metuta (Without community, there is death) Babylonian Talmud, Ta'anit 23a Since their exile in Babylon in the sixth century bce, Jews have sought to create institutions to organize community life and the practice of Judaism in the diaspora. This volume investigates the nature and functioning of the system of Jewish self-government created in the medieval Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania and in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It then examines how this system was partially abolished and transformed under Stanisław August (r. 1764–95), the last king of Poland–Lithuania, and subsequently by the governments of Prussia, Austria, and Russia which partitioned Poland at the end of the eighteenth century. Under the influence of the principles of the Enlightenment, all these rulers sought to drastically limit the operation of Jewish self-government, which was held to prevent the desired transformation of the Jews from an autonomous community into citizens or, where the concept of citizenship did not exist, into useful subjects of their respective rulers. The volume reflects on the successes and failures of Jewish communities to safeguard religious, charitable, and other institutions from state interference in the nineteenth century and their participation in organs of municipal self-government which developed first in the partitioning powers and then in independent Poland. Finally, it explores how, with the emergence at the end of the nineteenth century of new political ideas of Jewish autonomy, attempts were made to create a modernized system of self-government. While useful attempts have been made to understand forms of Jewish local organization under conditions of extreme duress, persecution, and mass murder during the German occupation of Poland and eastern Europe in the Second World War and the Holocaust, this volume does not look beyond the fateful year of 1939.1 ________ Few other features have shaped the trajectory of east European Jewish history as much as the extent and continuity of Jewish self-government. Among its most important features is the role it played in implementing the constantly changing interpretation of Jewish legal traditions and how its institutions reflected the embeddedness of the Jewish community in the administrative, political, and economic fabric of early modern states, most notably Poland–Lithuania. The differentiated and complex structure of responsibilities in the individual community—most prominently in the form of the board of governors or kahal—and the sophistication this showed in [End Page 1] shaping relations with the Crown, nobility, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Jews' neighbours, had a long-lasting impact on Jewish political culture. So too did the supracommunity structures of regional councils and the two most prominent national councils, the Council of Lithuania and the Council of Four Lands. The existence of institutions allowing the Jews to govern themselves in western Christendom was partly the result of the fact that medieval and early modern states lacked the resources to administer all aspects of society. Furthermore, Jews were both a pariah group, tolerated in an inferior position, and a corporation with the legal right to govern themselves as did all medieval corporations, whether those of an estate, like the nobility, or of a specific group, like the burghers of a particular town. In this context it should be stressed that freedom in the Middle Ages had a 'local rather than a universal character'.2 The words 'liberty' and 'freedom' generally appeared in the plural form as in the 'rights and liberties' of a town, province, or estate which were granted by the sovereign and carefully recorded in charters. The rights and obligations of an individual were derived from participation in a given community—the abstract idea of 'human rights' was alien to medieval thinking and only emerged in the eighteenth century. The Jews could thus be seen, despite their pariah status, as being in the same position as other groups in society, possessing rights which were guaranteed by charters, whether general or limited to a specific region or town or to the institutions through which Jewish self-government was exercised. In this respect, the Jews clearly emulated the 'institutional and legal patterns developed by the non...

Archaeology of a Lost World and Remembering Soviet Life

Archaeology of a Lost World and Remembering Soviet Life Igor Narskii Translated by Nicholas Seay Karl Schlögel, Das sowjetische Jahrhundert: Archäologie einer untergangenen Welt (The Soviet Century: Archaeology of a Lost World). 912 pp. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2018. ISBN-13 978-3406715112. €38.00. Among the hundreds of books on the history of the Russian Revolution and the USSR published to mark the centennial of the October Revolution, Karl Schlögel’s new work stands out. It seems likely to become an instant classic, essential reading for any specialist of East European history, at least those competent in German. This comes as no surprise. The same thing happened with the previous works of this well-known historian and publicist who has taught East European history at Universität Konstanz (1990–94) and Europa-Universität Viadrina (1995–2013).1 The book under review has a long backstory. As the author himself explains in the afterword, the book developed over a quarter-century, and his students at Konstanz were the first to learn about the project (849). Schlögel was finally able to devote his full attention to this long-term study in 2013, as a fellow at the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung Foundation in Munich. He presented his work to the foundation in May 2013, then reworked and expanded his presentation into a 120-page brochure, The Archaeology of Communism, or Russia in the 20th Century: Reconstructing the Picture, in 2014.2 This pamphlet [End Page 891] outlined the main concepts of Schlögel’s scholarly approach and offers useful insights on the history of the current book’s publication. The structure of the brochure likewise eases the task of contextualizing Schlögel’s work within the international historical literature. One factor crucial to contextualizing Schlögel’s latest monograph is the events that occurred between his presentation in Munich in May 2013 and the publication of his brochure at the end of 2014. In his own words, the “illegal annexation of Crimea in March 2014 and the events that followed (including the Russian Federation’s subsequent armed intervention in Eastern Ukraine) struck the field like a lightning bolt, illuminating it once again. As a result, the subjects of my research have newly defined, clear-cut contours. The question thus arises: is it too early to talk about the end of an era? The situation in Ukraine has become extraordinarily pressing and even dangerous for the country, not to mention the rest of Europe.”3 The Russian-Ukrainian conflict effectively transformed Schlögel’s priorities (19). Although his “major work” had been maturing for years, even decades, current events spurred him to finish it. A second important factor is Schlögel’s analytic approach to Russian and Soviet history, developed throughout his career, which became the foundation of his 2014 brochure. In this method, he approaches the Soviet past as if it were an archaeological site, digging investigatory pits, removing layers, and uncovering new objects for preservation and interpretation. As in an archaeo-logical excavation, his method lacks a concrete plan and carries the risk that he may emerge from the research empty-handed. Instead of applying limits, systems, or hierarchies in the process of gathering, selecting, and interpreting material, Schlögel states: “it is much more interesting and effective to begin working in a few different places and directions and then see where the most promising leads emerge. This is precisely how archaeological fieldwork begins; if you knew previously where the treasure was, you could skip these steps altogether.”4 But, of course, this work requires the human “touch.” It relies on the researcher’s personal experience, knowledge, temperament, and intuition and is thus riddled with subjectivity. That subjectivity is heightened if the past “dug up” is one that the researcher personally lived through: “The process of excavation simultaneously becomes a process of self-analysis, both engaged with the era and formed by it.”5 The specific points of Schlögel’s research program, as outlined in 2013 and realized in his 2017 book, allow us to place his work in the context of [End Page 892] a nearly virtual historiographical trend, the defining characteristic...

История отношений Югославии и Советского Союза в документах сербских и российских архивов

The review characterizes two collections of archival documents published in Belgrade and Moscow. They contain materials on the history of Yugoslavo-Soviet relations in 1964-1980s from the Archive of Yugoslavia and the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History. The reviewed collections continue the series of publications of the Archive of Yugoslavia (‘Documents on Yugoslavia Foreign Policy’) and of the International Fund ‘Democracy’ (‘Russia: The 20th century’). The collections contain over 100 documents, most of which are published for the first time. They address problems of international relations and domestic policy of the two countries. These problems were discussed by the leaders of Yugoslavia and the USSR at their one-on-one meetings. These discussions allow to trace the process of establishment of mutually beneficial relations. There are materials on general problems of international relations, as well as regional issues: estimation of the role of the USA in the international affaires; impact of the Non-Aligned Movement; European problems; political situation in the Near, Middle, and Far East, and in the Southeast Asia; etc. The chronological framework include events of the Second Indo-Chinese War. The 2-volume collection includes I. B. Tito’s and L. I. Brezhnev’s assessments of the operations in Vietnam and their characterization of the American policy in the region. Its name index and glossary of abbreviations simplify working with documents. The materials of these collections may be of interest to professional historians, Master Program students specializing in history and international relations, who may use them as an educational resource, and post-graduate students researching issues of World and East-European history.

The Duchy of Warsaw, 1807–1815: A Napoleonic Outpost in Central Europe. By Jarosław Czubaty. Translated by Ursula Phillips. Bloomsbury Studies in Central and East European History. Edited by Jerzy Lukowski.London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. Pp. viii+246. $112.00 (cloth); $83.99 (e-book).

<i>The Duchy of Warsaw, 1807–1815: A Napoleonic Outpost in Central Europe</i>. By Jarosław Czubaty. Translated by Ursula Phillips. Bloomsbury Studies in Central and East European History. Edited by Jerzy Lukowski.London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. Pp. viii+246. $112.00 (cloth); $83.99 (e-book).

War, Dialogue, and Overcoming the Past

Research Article| August 01 2017 War, Dialogue, and Overcoming the Past: The Second World War Museum in Gdańsk, Poland Anna Muller, Anna Muller Anna Muller is assistant professor of history at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. From 2010 to 2013, she worked a curator at the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, Poland. Her book on the life of women in prison cells in postwar Poland, titled If the Walls Could Speak, will appear in October 2017 with Oxford University Press. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Daniel Logemann Daniel Logemann Daniel Logemann studied East European history, Polish literature, and southeast Europe studies in Jena, Lublin, and Cracow from 2000 to 2007. For his dissertation on day-to-day contacts between Germans and Poles in Leipzig between 1972 and 1989 he received the 2010 Academic Promotional Prize of the Embassy of the Republic of Poland. From 2010 to 2015 he worked as a research assistant and curator at the Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk, Poland. Since February 2015 he has been managing director at the Europäisches Kolleg Jena, Germany. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar The Public Historian (2017) 39 (3): 85–95. https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2017.39.3.85 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Anna Muller, Daniel Logemann; War, Dialogue, and Overcoming the Past: The Second World War Museum in Gdańsk, Poland. The Public Historian 1 August 2017; 39 (3): 85–95. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2017.39.3.85 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentThe Public Historian Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2017 by The Regents of the University of California and the National Council on Public History2017 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Lost and Found? Jewish Historians, Jewish History, and Narrativization of Order in East European Cities

This article argues that the long-standing turn to “the Jewish community” as a central organizing principle in works dedicated to Jewish history in east European cities has helped create and institutionalize a specific communal model of Jewish urban history, one that prioritizes narratives of Jewish communal order over explorations of the chaos and fluidity that characterize many other studies of the modern city. The article begins by discussing the central place of “the community” in foundational works of Jewish history, continues by examining the critical role played by communal record books (pinkasim) in the construction of east European Jewish history, and then analyzes several works that embraced and reinforced the communal model of Jewish urban history. The article concludes by examining two key archival collections and discussing the various ways that the source material amassed in them illustrates how scholars like Jacob Shatzky and Israel Klausner used historical research and writing as a means to narrativize, domesticate, and make sense of the intersection between Jews and cities.