Russia’s invasion of Ukraine highlights how reality often moves far faster than the elaborate narratives and structures common in complex societies. For instance, the intense debate about the pros and cons of Ukraine joining NATO has been going on for decades and peaked at the time of the invasion in early 2022. (See the attached Google Trends chart.) It is now utterly moot. Think about it: NATO was created to orchestrate a defense of Western Europe against a Soviet land attack, most likely through the Fulda Gap from the then East Germany. When the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, …
Category: Russian History and Current Affairs
NBN interview of Mikhail Shishkin.
One of the most intense New Books Network interviews that I’ve done: emigre writer Mikhail Shishkin discusses his just published My Russia: War or Peace (Quercus Books). It is a penetrating analysis of Russian political culture, interwoven with his family’s poignant Soviet and post-Soviet history. https://newbooksnetwork.com/my-russia-war-or-peace
Crossing the Russian Rubicon
Until now, I have held the title of last person on social media to not comment on the most recent events in Russia. I am giving up the crown. First, Prigozhin’s ploy isn’t fully understood or even over yet. The move on Moscow only made sense if he expected units of the Russian military, national guard, interior ministry or state security services to join him. Few if any did, or did not have time to do so, before the march was called off. Social media is full of explanations, many involving conspiracies, as to what was supposed to happen, and …
Who lost Russia?
If a Russian leader asked “Who lost Eastern Europe & the Baltics?” in the aftermath of the Warsaw Pact & the Soviet Union collapsing, would there be a single Western observer (other than John Mearsheimer) who wouldn’t shout out the “obvious” answer that it was the East Europeans themselves? After too many decades–in some cases, centuries–of Russian oversight, the locals wanted out. At the first chance, they fled westward, into the arms of the EU and NATO. That is, the westbound populations are given agency to play a role in their own history. But the very question “Who lost Russia?,” …
Russia’s borders after Ukraine
State boundaries move all the time. Even nation-state boundaries, those that are supposed to be ethnically contiguous and therefore more stable, move frequently. It is simply a presentist illusion to assume that today’s borders are going to be permanent. Even for observers based in the US, where the northern and southern borders have been fixed for some time, it is inaccurate. During our expansion in the 19th century (beyond the breakaway from England in the 18th century and the expansion through native American lands), we took by force, negotiation, or payment territory from Spain (Florida), France (Louisiana Purchase), Mexico (Texas), …
Biology might or might not be destiny, but demography is.
Russia is a multi-ethnic empire. The “traditional” Western empires such as Britain have well-known histories involving their often-distant possessions (though their home territories also featured a variety of ethnic groups such as the Scots, Welsh, Irish, etc.) In contrast, Russia is a solely contiguous, but very large amalgamation of numerous ethnicities. In some cases, the ethnicities have distinct geographies, but often the populations are just jumbled amidst the overall polity. Some of those ethnicities within Russia have been distinct for centuries, some were a product of 19th century nationalism, and some (ironically) were created nearly from scratch in the early …
Decision making under conditions of uncertainty….
Decision-making under conditions of uncertainty is hard, even when you have “good” information. And we necessarily assume that high-level policy-makers have at least a marketplace-range of information as an input into the process. But what if we’re wrong? What if the information available to, for instance, the leader of a country, is so poor, that the decision-making necessarily following from it is exceptionally bad? Garbage in; garbage out. That scenario would explain (but not excuse) what heretofore seems inexplicable: R’s invasion of Ukr and its subsequent decisions to double-down, triple-down, etc. In the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs Magazine, Boris …
Book review: Paul Werth’s 1837.
Just finished Paul Werth’s 1837 (https://lnkd.in/eU6gD-gj?) He is to be congratulated. It is a gem of a work. Rather than A-then-B-then-C history, Paul provides a snapshot in time, a few-year period in the late 1830s when a lot was going on in Russia. Paul’s “horizontal” approach is something only a well-tenured professor or a non-academic historian could get away with. That is, it’s readable, enjoyable, jargon-free and not trying to score points in some obscure debate among academics. Non-specialist readers will come away with a sense of time and place that narrower works of history struggle to deliver. My favorite …
Decision making in Russia.
Decision-making under conditions of uncertainty is hard, even when you have “good” information. And we necessarily assume that high-level policy-makers have at least a marketplace-range of information as an input into the process. But what if we’re wrong? What if the information available to, for instance, the leader of a country, is so poor, that the decision-making necessarily following from it is exceptionally bad? Garbage in; garbage out. That scenario would explain (but not excuse) what heretofore seems inexplicable: R’s invasion of Ukr and its subsequent decisions to double-down, triple-down, etc. In the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs Magazine, Boris …
The NBN interview of Vitaliy Katsenelson
A well-lived life closely examined. Listen in to my New Books Network interview of Vitaliy Katsenelson — a rare US public intellectual–about his “Soul in the Game: the Art of a Meaningful Life”, just out from Harriman House. https://newbooksnetwork.com/soul-in-the-game
Twitter Posts from February 7, 2022 to the present on the geo-political situation in SE Europe
One month in, got some right; got some wrong. Will continue to update, at east for a while. March 20, 2022 A forceful reminder of why, particularly now, we should be engaging Russian culture more, not less. Please read this. As Morson fans already know, Saul is incapable of dull or shallow thinking. https://quillette.com/2022/03/19/putins-russian-and-pushkins-russia/ March 20, 2022 Sadly, the death toll from WW I continues to rise, yes, the First World War. The decisions/treaties/boundaries (Sykes-Picot, Soviet “Union”, etc)/movements associated w/the “Great War” and the years immediately following (1918-1922) are still driving today’s geopolitical and military realities. The tragedies of WW …
The NBN interview with the editors of The Life Cycle of Russian Things.
This collection of articles, edited by Matthew Romaniello, Alison Smith, and Tricia Starks, takes up the history of material culture over the past several centuries of Russian history. Widely diverse objects such as maps, textiles, building materials, cigarette cases,fish guts (yes…), samovars, samizdat, and even the T-34 tank are viewed in light of their role in Russian society. Hence the collection’s striking and unusual title: The Life Cycle of Russian Things: From Fish Guts to Faberge, 1600 to the Present (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022). Tune in for my conversation with the authors: the NBN interview
A century of cultural genius: the NBN interview with Jeffrey Brooks.
Explore “a century of genius” with JHU’s Jeffrey Brooks as he delves into Russia’s period of greatest cultural intensity. The New Books Network interview about his The Firebird & the Fox (Cambridge, 2019). New Books Network | Jeffrey Brooks, “The Firebird and the Fox:…
Seeing the right Navalny.
Everyone has heard of Alexei Navalny, the leader of Russia’s opposition to Putin’s rule. But what do we really know of him? Navalny: Putin’s Nemesis, Russia’s Future? (Oxford, 2021) provides the first detailed political biography of Navalny. Most importantly, Ben Noble, Morvan Lallouet, and Jan Matti Dollbaum turn the one-dimensional, cartoon-like image of Navalny in the West into a nuanced portrait, properly situated in the context of modern Russian politics. The New Books Network interview is here.
NBN Interview with Timothy Frye on his Weak Strongman
Vladimir Putin is not the unconstrained, all-powerful boogeyman he is made out to be in the popular Western media. So says Timothy Frye, Professor of Political Science at Columbia University in his new book, Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin’s Russia (Princeton UP, 2021). Drawing on more than three decades of research, and reams of data from within Russia itself, Frye depicts a “personal autocrat”, but one subject to numerous constraints and trade offs. And the shows of force we have seen in recent years, from his treatment of opposition figures to the planning for the upcoming election, …
NBN interview with Andrei Tsygankov on his Russia & America
Putin & Biden are meeting in a few days. Get ready with an overview of the new geo-political chess board, as outlined by Andrei Tsygankov in his Russia and America: The Asymmetric Rivalry. Listen to the NBN interivew here.
A thoughtful and optimistic rebuttal to my post on Russian political culture.
A friend responded to my post of April 22….. “One thing I was concerned about with your essay is that some readers might walk away with the impression that Russia hasn’t really changed and won’t change. I’m not even sure that’s what you intended to say. There are clearly many Russians who would like things to change—and a number who are quite content with how they are. There is also a certain type of non-Russian client I’ve had before who like to take they view that Russia is fundamentally different and incapable of being more liberal—and then use this as …
Using the great 19th century realist novels to bridge what divides us….
Two very thoughtful oddfellows–a labor economist and a Russian literature scholar–take on the world’s problems in their newest collaboration, Minds Wide Shut How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us (Princeton University Press, 2021). Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro bring to bear the remarkably powerful tool of great 19th century Realist literature (and other parts of the Western canon) to define and counter the all-or-nothing fundamentalisms that have come to divide us in recent years. They touch upon politics, religion and economics, as well as great literature itself, and advocate bridging the divides with assertion and dialogue rather than the crude dismissal of opponents based upon absolute, unyielding …
Russia & the West, again…..
Making the same mistake repeatedly and expecting a different outcome is a popular definition of insanity. Can the condition apply to an entire professional group? In the most recent issue of Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasion History, I highlight how many prominent US thinkers about Russia have maintained a naivete in regard to Russia’s ultimate political development for much of the past 70 years. Even during the height of the Cold War, leading members of the US establishment assumed that Russia would ultimately adopt classical liberalism and join the Western community of nations as a fully paid-up member. It …
Nav@1ny is a master of modern media, but does it matter?
February 2, 2021 update: It’s not the crime, but the cover up… That’s what they said about Richard Nixon’s downfall. Other similar episodes abound. Given events in Russia over the past two weeks, one might assert a new corollary: It’s not the corruption, but the crackdown. A new allegation of corruption, even one on an unprecedented scale, was unlikely to move Russia. But the government’s excessive response and its treatment of the man behind the video has led to a popular reaction that the video itself did not. When is a show of government force actually a sign of great …
Price discovery, Soviet Russia, and artistry
The elevator pitch to a book editor and movie producer that never happened: “the early 1960s Soviet experiment of loosening price controls would make for a great work of historical fiction and a high-end movie drama.” No one in their right mind, right? And yet, it did. Francis Spufford’s Red Plenty came out in 2010. It is simply the best Western work of historical fiction about the post-war Soviet period. Spufford is not a trained Soviet specialist, but every professional historian of the Soviet Union secretly (and not so secretly) wants to have written that book. I know of what …
At the intersection of the Random Book Project & lockdown: War & Peace.
#6: Leo Tolstoy, War & Peace, in two volumes. (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1984, originally published in 1865). Marked 3 rubles, 70 kopeeks, but with a Beriozka sticker indicating 5.55. Exchange rate at the time was $1.26 per 1.00 ruble so the set cost $7.00 How did I get it? Bought it when I spent a semester in Moscow my junior year in 1984. Others went to London or Florence. For reasons that still elude me, I went to the Soviet Union. Who does that? Why? While the book is timeless, my copy of it is not. The mass produced, acid-paper Soviet …
Markets are everywhere, even where they are strictly forbidden….
Markets are everywhere, including where they strictly forbidden. This excellent research by Jim Heinzen on the Soviet second economy just came out in Slavic Review. The full article is behind a paywall but should be accessible via universities and libraries. Link is here. Below is the abstract from the Slavic Review site. Soviet Entrepreneurs in the Late Socialist Shadow Economy: The Case of the Kyrgyz Affair James Heinzen Supported by new archival material, this article delves deeply into one landmark criminal case to explore key aspects of the social, economic, and cultural history of illegal production and markets in the …
NBN Interview with Vadim Shneyder: Russia’s Capitalist Realism
Vadim Shneyder’s new book, Russia’s Capitalist Realism: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov (Northwestern, 2020) examines how the literary tradition that produced the great works of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Anton Chekhov responded to the dangers and possibilities posed by Russia’s industrial revolution. During Russia’s first tumultuous transition to capitalism, social problems became issues of literary form for writers trying to make sense of economic change. The new environments created by industry, such as giant factories and mills, demanded some kind of response from writers but defied all existing forms of language. Prepare yourself for an innovative perspective on Anna Karenina, The Idiot and other 19th-century …
NBN Interview with Jonathan Schneer: The Lockhart Plot
History in the making can be messy. As a tale told years later by historians, it is usually a clean narrative, with a beginning, a middle, and a mostly logical and foreordained end. Much of that messiness gets lost. Not in Jonathan Schneer’s new book, The Lockhart Plot: Love Betrayal, Assassination and Counter-Revolution in Lenin’s Russia (Oxford UP, 2020). Schneer’s recounts the story of a young British diplomat, Bruce Lockhart, sent to Soviet Russia soon after the October Revolution in 1917. Initially seeking some sort of accommodation with the Bolsheviks, Lockhart ends up plotting to overthrow the regime. The plot–set for …
NBN Interview with James Pearce: The weaponization of history in Russia.
History matters in Russia. It really matters, so much so that the state has a “historical policy” to help legitimize itself and support its policy agenda. In The Use of History in Putin’s Russia (Vernon Press, 2020), James C. Pearce examines how the past is perceived in contemporary Russia and analyses the ways in which the Russian state uses history to create a broad social consensus and forge a national identity. Listen to the NBN interview here.
Are the Generals fighting the last war?
In Dealing with the Russians (Polity, 2019), Andrew Monaghan argues that Western policy makers are using an outdated Cold War model of ideology, language and institutions, which is wholly unsuited for understanding, engaging, and countering where necessary Russia in the 21st century. One of England’s leading experts on Russia, Monaghan argues Western policy makers need to let go of the past Cold War rhetoric and come up with modern tools to manage the current stage of the three-century long “Russia and the West” policy conundrum. Listen to the New Books Network interview here.
Interviewed on HistoricallyThinking podcast
I enjoyed being a guest on Al Zambone’s HistoricallyThinking podcast. Discussed making the transition from Russian history to investment management, dividend investing, and the main arguments in Getting Back to Business. https://historicallythinking.org/episode-146-the-historically-informed-investment-portfolio-or-the-historian-as-financial-analyst/
“Go East, Mr. Douglas….”
Bill Douglas needed money. He always needed money. And now, reeling from a very expensive divorce, and with a new wife, he needed even more money. Douglas had come from a modest upbringing, the son of an itinerant preacher who had ended up in the Pacific northwest. He worked his way through a local college—after getting the first year free on a scholarship—and then crossed the country to New York, where he worked his way through law school. Douglas advanced very quickly in the legal profession, but his expenses regularly outstripped his income. He borrowed. He did one-off writing jobs. …
Crime and culture: a review of Heinzen’s The Art of the Bribe (2016)
Complex societies require rules. No rules, no complex societies. It’s that simple. Or is it? In the case of state-oriented societies, like late Tsarist Russia or the Soviet Union, a visible and important subset of those rules concern proper behavior towards and by government officials. The historical concentration of resources and power in the hands of the government created the nearly inevitable risk of people falling short of ideal impartiality or ideological rectitude. Hence the rules, particularly concerning the giving and taking of bribes by government officials. The challenge in Russia has been all the greater because for significant periods …