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Russian Style: Performing Gender, Power, and Putinism (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023) provides a critical and nuanced analysis of the relationship between popular culture and politics in Russia during Vladimir Putin’s first two decades in power. It traces how the performance of Russian citizenship has been remolded according to a neoconservative agenda characterized by increasingly exaggerated gender roles. By connecting gendered and sexualized citizenship to developments in Russian popular culture, Julie Cassiday argues that heteronormativity and homophobia became a kind of politicized style under Putin’s leadership. Examining everything from memes to the Eurovision Song Contest and self-help literature, Cassiday untangles the discourse of gender to argue that drag, or travesti, became the performative trope par excellence in Putin's Russia. Provocatively, Cassiday further argues that the exaggerated expressions of gender demanded by Putin's regime are best understood as a form of cisgender drag. The book also demonstrates that while the multiple modes of gender performativity generated in Russian popular culture between 2000 and 2010 supported Putin's neoconservative agenda, they also helped citizens resist and protest the state's mandate of heteronormativity.
Russian Style: Performing Gender, Power, and Putinism has been shortlisted for the 2024 Pushkin House Book Prize.
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A Woman's Empire: Russian Women and Imperial Expansion in Asia (U Toronto Press, 2023) explores a new dimension of Russian imperialism: women actively engaged in the process of late imperial expansion. The book investigates how women writers, travellers, and scientists who journeyed to and beyond Central Asia participated in Russia's "civilizing" and colonizing mission, utilizing newly found educational opportunities while navigating powerful discourses of femininity as well as male-dominated science.
Katya Hokanson shows how these Russian women resisted domestic roles in a variety of ways. The women writers include a governor general's wife, a fiction writer who lived in Turkestan, and a famous Theosophist, among others. They make clear the perspectives of the ruling class and outline the special role of women as describers and recorders of information about local women, and as builders of "civilized" colonial Russian society with its attendant performances and social events. Although the bulk of their writings, drawings, and photography is primarily noteworthy for its cultural and historical value, A Woman's Empire demonstrates how they also add dimension and detail to the story of Russian imperial expansion and illuminates how women encountered, imagined, and depicted Russia's imperial Other during this period.
Katya Hokanson is an associate professor of Russian and Comparative Literature at the University of Oregon.
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In this episode of the CEU Press Podcast, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press/CEU Review of Books) sat down with Per Högselius and Achim Klüppelberg to discuss their new book with CEU Press entitled, The Soviet Nuclear Archipelago: A Historical Geography of Atomic-Powered Communism (CEU Press, 2023).
The book is available Open Access, click here to download.
The war in Ukraine, with the exposure of nuclear power stations and the danger of atomic warfare, has made the legacy of the Soviet nuclear sector of critical importance.
The two authors map the Soviet nuclear industry in a shifting historical context, making sense of a complex socio-technical and environmental history. Taking an innovative approach, this book explores the history of atomic power in the former Soviet Union using the spatial dimensions of the nuclear industry as a point of departure.
Per and Achim’s book is part of our new series, CEU Press Perspectives. The series offers the latest viewpoints on both new and perennial issues, these books address a wide range of topics of critical importance today. The new series, originating from an international collection of leading authors, encourages us to look at issues from a different viewpoint, to think outside the box, and to stimulate debate.
You can learn more about the series here.
The CEU Press Podcast delves into various aspects of the publishing process: from crafting a book proposal, finding a publisher, responding to peer review feedback on the manuscript, to the subsequent distribution, promotion and marketing of academic books. We will also talk to series editors and authors, who will share their experiences of getting published and talk about their series or books.
Interested in CEU Press’s publications? Click here to find out more here.
Stay tuned for future episodes and subscribe to our podcast to be the first to be notified.
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The foremost authority on modern war in the English-speaking world examines Europe's most important conflict since World War II.
More than any other modern war, the fight between Russia and Ukraine has been a tough testing ground for modern weapons and operational concepts. In Modern Warfare: Lessons from Ukraine (Penguin, 2023), Sir Lawrence Freedman assesses the contrasting strategies of the two sides. Ukraine has fought along classical lines, seeking victory through battle. Russia has adopted a more total approach, combining conventional battles with attacks on Ukraine's socio-economic structure. Freedman explains why the apparently superior Russian force has been unable to defeat and subjugate Ukraine.
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Dr. Sean Griffin's book, The Liturgical Past in Byzantium and Early Rus (Cambridge UP, 2019), takes on the question of the source materials for the Primary Chronicle, one of the most important texts for the study of medieval Russia. Griffin argues that key portions of the Chronicle have their origin in Byzantine liturgy. This thesis has broad implications for what is and can be known about the early Rus.' Griffin further argues that Rus' state power had a direct interest in liturgy, and he is carrying this interest forward into a forthcoming book on technologies of power in present-day Russia. Listeners interested in this latter topic should be interested in the present interview; the manner in which the Russian state has sacralized its power illustrates fascinating continuities, from the early Rus' to the present day.
Aaron Weinacht is Professor of History at the University of Montana Western, in Dillon, MT. He teaches courses on Russian and Soviet History, World History, and Philosophy of History. His research interests include the sociological theorist Philip Rieff and the influence of Russian nihilism on American libertarianism.
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Rustam Alexander's Gay Lives and 'Aversion Therapy' in Brezhnev's Russia, 1964-1982 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) examines the autobiographies and diaries of Soviet homosexual men who underwent psychotherapy during the period from 1970 to 1980 under the guidance of Yan Goland, a psychiatrist-sexopathologist from Gorky. The examination of these unique and little-known documents contributes to our scant knowledge about the practices that many would call a Soviet proto-type of 'aversion therapy'. It also helps us understand the way homosexual people faced "queer dilemmas" of the self and how they sought to reconcile their queer desire with being Soviet.
Tatiana Klepikova is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Regensburg, where she leads a research group on queer literatures and cultures under socialism.
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The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Volume IV (Indiana UP, 2022) examines an under-researched segment of the larger Nazi incarceration system: camps and other detention facilities under the direct control of the German military, the Wehrmacht. These include prisoner of war (POW) camps (including camps for enlisted men, camps for officers, camps for naval personnel and airmen, and transit camps), civilian internment and labor camps, work camps for Tunisian Jews, brothels in which women were forced to have sex with soldiers, and prisons and penal camps for Wehrmacht personnel. Most of these sites have not been described in detail in the existing historical literature, and a substantial number of them have never been documented at all. The volume also includes an introduction to the German prisoner of war camp system and its evolution, introductions to each of the various types of camps operated by the Wehrmacht, and entries devoted to each individual camp, representing the most comprehensive documentation to date of the Wehrmacht camp system.
Within the entries, the volume draws upon German military documents, eyewitness and survivor testimony, and postwar investigations to describe the experiences of prisoners of war and civilian prisoners held captive by the Wehrmacht. Of particular note is the detailed documentation of the Wehrmacht's crimes against Soviet prisoners of war, which have largely been neglected in the English-language literature up to this point, despite the fact that more than three million Soviet prisoners died in German captivity. The volume also provides substantial coverage of the diverse range of conditions encountered by other Allied prisoners of war, illustrating both the substantial privations faced by all prisoners of war and the stark contrast between the Germans' treatment of Soviet prisoners and those of other nationalities. The volume also details the significant involvement of the Wehrmacht in crimes against the civilian populations of occupied Europe and North Africa. As a result, this volume not only brings to light many detention sites whose existence has been little known, but also advances the decades-old process of dismantling the myth of the "clean Wehrmacht," according to which the German military had nothing to do with the Holocaust and the Nazi regime's other crimes.
Dallas Michelbacher and Alexandra Lohse are applied research scholars at USHMM.
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In 1935, two Soviet satirists, Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, undertook a 10,000-mile American road trip from New York to Hollywood and back. They immortalised their journey in a popular travelogue entitled One-storied America (published as Little Golden America in the US), a suite of newspaper articles, and a series of photographs.
In Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists: Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip (Cambridge UP, 2024), Lisa A. Kirschenbaum reconstructs this epic journey, exploring Ilf and Petrov’s encounters with a vast range of characters, from famous authors, artists, poets and filmmakers to unemployed hitchhikers and revolutionaries. Using the authors’ notes, archival material in both Russia and the US, and even FBI files, she reveals the role played by ordinary individuals in shaping foreign relations as Ilf, Petrov and the immigrants, communists, and fellow travellers who served as their hosts, guides, and translators became creative actors in cultural exchange between the two countries.
Lisa A. Kirschenbaum is Professor of History at West Chester University. In addition to her latest book Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists: Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip (2024), she is the author of Small Comrades: Revolutionizing Childhood in Soviet Russia, 1917-1932 (Routledge Falmer, 2000); The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941-1995: Myth, Memories, and Monuments (Cambridge University Press, 2006); and International Communism and the Spanish Civil War: Solidarity and Suspicion (Cambridge University Press 2015).
Iva Glisic is a historian and art historian specialising in modern Russia and the Balkans.
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The spring 2022 battle for Kyiv was "one of the most tragic – and the most bizarre – events in modern history," writes Illia Ponomarenko. "Outnumbered and outgunned, Ukraine sustained the most critical blow and unexpectedly delivered Russia the greatest and most defining defeat of this war. It spelt a stunning end to the Kremlin’s megalomaniac plans of an easy conquest of a 40-million-person nation. Ukraine did it alone, by itself, still with very little defence aid from the West, And that uneven victory altered the course of European history".
In I Will Show You How It Was: The Story of Wartime Kyiv (Bloomsbury, 2024), Ponomarenko recalls life in Ukraine's capital during the delusional, extended Christmas leading up to Russia's full-scale invasion, after the shock and awe of the first night and the fight for the northern suburbs, and amid the joy of victory.
It is the story of a nation, a city, a reporter and his friends, family, and colleagues. A founder and defence editor of the Kyiv Independent, which he left last summer to write the book, Ponomarenko mixes reporting with polemic. The mixture has turned this 32-year-old native Russian speaker from southern Donbas into one of the war’s biggest media personalities with 1.2 million Twitter followers.
*The authors' book recommendations are Babi Yar: The Story of Ukraine's Holocaust by Anatoly Kuznetsov as "A. Anatoli" (first published in Russian in 1966; in English translation by David Floyd with Vintage Classics, 2024) and Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence by Yaroslav Trofimov (Penguin, 2024).
Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the twenty4two newsletter on Substack.
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As a teenager in Shetland, Jen Stout fell in love with Russia and, later, Ukraine – their languages, cultures, and histories.Although life kept getting in the way, she eventually managed to pause her BBC career and take up a nine-month scholarship to live and work in Russia. Unfortunately, this dream only came true in November 2021, as Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s borders. Three months later, she left Russia but only got as far as Vienna before heading back into Ukraine via Romania with a rucksack and a handful of freelance contracts.In Night Train to Odesa: Covering the Cost of Russia’s War (Polygon, 2024), we experience Europe’s biggest land war since 1945 through the eyes of a war reporter, photographer, and cultural observer during tours in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Lviv, and close to the frontline in Donbas. Via railway workers, soldiers, writers, activists, and old women sleeping in bunkers, we encounter stoical resistance. Stout writes: "I was finding warmth and determination all over the place when what editors expected was fear and despair. I tried to explain that the resilience I described wasn't an individual phenomenon but society-wide. The more Russia attacked Ukrainian society; the less inclined people were to anything remotely resembling despair. They only got angrier".A freelance journalist, Jen Stout was a reporter at CommonSpace in Glasgow and for the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press before joining BBC Scotland in 2018.*The author's book recommendations are The Face of War: Writings from the Frontline 1937-1985 by Martha Gellhorn (Eland, 2016 - first published in 1959), The Letters Of Martha Gellhorn selected and edited by Caroline Moorehead (Chatto & Windus, 2006), and Island by Aldous Huxley (Vintage Classics, 2005).Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the twenty4two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
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Between the 1850s and World War I, about one million North Caucasian Muslims sought refuge in the Ottoman Empire. This resettlement of Muslim refugees from Russia changed the Ottoman state. Circassians, Chechens, Dagestanis, and others established hundreds of refugee villages throughout the Ottoman Balkans, Anatolia, and the Levant. Most villages still exist today, including what is now the city of Amman. Muslim refugee resettlement reinvigorated regional economies, but also intensified competition over land and, at times, precipitated sectarian tensions, setting in motion fundamental shifts in the borderlands of the Russian and Ottoman empires. Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky's Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State (Stanford University Press, 2024) tell this story.
The book reframes late Ottoman history through mass displacement and reveals the origins of refugee resettlement in the modern Middle East. Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky offers a historiographical corrective: the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire created a refugee regime, predating refugee systems set up by the League of Nations and the United Nations. Grounded in archival research in over twenty public and private archives across ten countries, this book contests the boundaries typically assumed between forced and voluntary migration, and refugees and immigrants, rewriting the history of Muslim migration in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Asif Siddiqi, Professor of History at Fordham University, about the arc of his career and his wide-ranging interests and work. The pair start by discussing Siddiqi's wonderful book, The Red Rockets' Glare: Spaceflight and the Russian Imagination, 1857-1957 (Cambridge University Press, 2014), a history of the social and cultural trends, including a heavy dose of science fiction and mysticism, in Russia and the Soviet Union that led to Sputnik. They then talk about Siddiqi's other projects and interests from prisons to pop songs to global histories of space infrastructures. They also discuss the promises of recent turns to global and international research projects and stories in the history of technology.
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Over thirty years, from 1890 to 1921, 2.5 million Jews, fleeing discrimination and violence in their homelands of Eastern Europe, arrived in the United States. Many sailed on steamships from Hamburg.This mass exodus was facilitated by three businessmen whose involvement in the Jewish-American narrative has been largely forgotten: Jacob Schiff, the managing partner of the investment bank Kuhn, Loeb & Company, who used his immense wealth to help Jews to leave Europe; Albert Ballin, managing director of the Hamburg-American Line, who created a transportation network of trains and steamships to carry them across continents and an ocean; and J. P. Morgan, mastermind of the International Mercantile Marine (I.M.M.) trust, who tried to monopolize the lucrative steamship business. Though their goals were often contradictory, together they made possible a migration that spared millions from persecution. Descendants of these immigrants included Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Estée Lauder, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Fanny Brice, Lauren Bacall, the Marx Brothers, David Sarnoff, Al Jolson, Sam Goldwyn, Ben Shahn, Hank Greenberg, Moses Annenberg, and many more--including Ujifusa's great grandparents. That is their legacy.Moving from the shtetls of Russia and the ports of Hamburg to the mansions of New York's Upper East Side and the picket lines outside of the notorious Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, The Last Ships from Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and the Race to Save Russia's Jews on the Eve of World War I (HarperCollins, 2023) is a history that unfolds on both an intimate and epic scale. Meticulously researched, masterfully told, Ujifusa's story offers original insight into the American experience, connecting banking, shipping, politics, immigration, nativism, and war--and delivers crucial insight into the burgeoning refugee crisis of our own time.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
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In her new book, When Left Moves Right: The Decline of the Left and the Rise of the Populist Right in Postcommunist Europe (Oxford University Press, 2024), Maria Snegovaya argues that, contrary to the view that emphasizes the sociocultural aspects (xenophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment, etc.) of the rise of the populist right, especially in postcommunist Europe, the rise of the populist right is inextricably linked to the pro-market, Neoliberal reforms of the left, which had the effect of disenfranchising working-class and other voters, and providing an natural opportunity for the right to gain power.
Jeff Adler is an ex-linguist and occasional contributor to New Books Network!
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State-Building as Lawfare: Custom, Sharia, and State Law in Postwar Chechnya (Cambridge University Press, 2023) by Dr. Egor Lazarev explores the use of state and non-state legal systems by both politicians and ordinary people in postwar Chechnya. The book addresses two interrelated puzzles: why do local rulers tolerate and even promote non-state legal systems at the expense of state law, and why do some members of repressed ethnic minorities choose to resolve their everyday disputes using state legal systems instead of non-state alternatives?
The book documents how the rulers of Chechnya promote and reinvent customary law and Sharia in order to borrow legitimacy from tradition and religion, increase autonomy from the metropole, and accommodate communal authorities and former rebels. At the same time, the book shows how prolonged armed conflict disrupted the traditional social hierarchies and pushed some Chechen women to use state law, spurring state formation from below.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
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Before Josef Stalin's death in 1953, the USSR had, at best, an ambivalent relationship with noncommunist international organisations. Although it had helped found the United Nations, it refused to join the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and other major agencies beyond the Security Council and General Assembly, casting them as foreign meddlers. Under new leadership, the USSR joined UNESCO and a slew of international organisations for the first time, including the World Health Organization and the International Labor Organization. As a result, it enabled Soviet diplomats, scholars, teachers, and even some blue-collar workers to participate in global discussions on topics ranging from their professional specialties to worldwide problems.
Reds in Blue: UNESCO, World Governance, and the Soviet Internationalist Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2023) by Dr. Louis Porter investigates Soviet relations with one of the most prominent of these organisations, UNESCO, to present a novel way of thinking about the role of the United Nations in the Soviet experience of the Cold War. Drawing on unused archival material from the former USSR and elsewhere, the book examines the forgotten stories of Soviet citizens who contributed to the nuts-and-bolts operations and lesser-known activities of world governance. These unexamined dimensions of everyday participation in the UN's bureaucracy, conferences, publications, and technical assistance show the body's importance for a group of Soviet "one-worlders," who used the UN to imagine and work for a better world amidst the realities of the Cold War. Meanwhile, the Khrushchev and early Brezhnev governments sought to use their participation as a means of spreading Soviet influence within Western-dominated international organisations but discovered that this required risk-taking and a degree of openness for which the Soviet leadership and domestic institutions were often unprepared.
Moving beyond debates over the successes and failures of UN diplomatic activities, Reds in Blue offers fresh perspectives on how Soviet citizens became citizens of the world and advocated for opening up Soviet society in ways that transcended Cold War categories without abandoning a sense of loyalty to their homeland. In doing so, it recaptures a space where East and West worked together towards a future without international conflict in the years before détente.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
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Despite the intense processes of deindustrialisation around the world, the working class continues to play an important role in post-industrial societies. However, working-class people are often stigmatised, morally judged and depicted negatively in dominant discourses.
The Urban Life of Workers in Post-Soviet Russia: Engaging in Everyday Struggle (Manchester UP, 2024) challenges stereotypical representations of workers, building on research into the everyday worlds of working-class and ordinary people in Russia’s post-industrial cities. The urban life of workers in post-Soviet Russia is centred on the stories of local communities engaged in the everyday struggles that occur in deindustrialising settings under neoliberal neo-authoritarianism.
The book suggests a novel approach to everyday life in post-industrial cities. Drawing on an ethnographic study with elements of arts-based research, the book presents a new genre of writing about workers influenced by the avant-garde documentary tradition and working-class literature.
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Since its founding in 1995, the FSB, Russia's Federal Security Service, has regained the majority of the domestic security functions of the Soviet-era KGB. Under Vladimir Putin, who served as FSB director just before becoming president, the agency has grown to be one of the most powerful and favored organizations in Russia. The FSB not only conducts internal security but also has primacy in intelligence operations in former Soviet states. Their activities include anti-dissident operations at home and abroad, counterintelligence, counterterrorism, criminal investigations of crimes against the state, and guarding Russia's borders.
In The Russian FSB: A Concise History of the Federal Security Service (Georgetown University Press, 2024), Kevin P. Riehle provides a brief history of the FSB's origins, placed within the context of Russian history, the government's power structure, and Russia's wider culture. He describes how the FSB's mindset and priorities show continuities from the tsarist regimes and the Soviet era. The book's chapters analyze origins, organizational structure, missions, leaders, international partners, and cultural representations such as the FSB in film and television.
Based on both English and Russian sources, this book is a well-researched introduction to understanding the FSB and its central role in Putin's Russia.
Kevin P. Riehle is lecturer in intelligence and security studies at Brunel University London. He also spent over 30 years in the US government as a counterintelligence analyst. He is the author of two previous books, including Soviet Defectors: Revelations of Renegade Intelligence Officers, 1924-1954 (2020).
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A vivid, thoughtful examination of how technological innovation—especially AI—is shaping the tensions between democracy and autocracy during the new Cold War.
So much of what we hear about China and Russia today likens the relationship between these two autocracies and the West to a “rivalry” or a “great-power competition.” Some might consider it alarmist to say we are in the midst of a second Cold War, but that may be the only responsible way to describe today’s state of affairs. What’s more, we have come a long way from Mao Zedong’s infamous observation that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Now we live in an age more aptly described by Vladimir Putin’s cryptic prophecy that “artificial intelligence is the future not only of Russia, but of all mankind, and whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become ruler of the world.”
George S. Takach’s incisive and meticulously researched new volume, Cold War 2.0: Artificial Intelligence in the New Battle between China, Russia, and America (Pegasus Book, 2024), is the book we need to thoroughly understand these frightening and perilous times. In the geopolitical sphere, there are no more pressing issues than the appalling mechanizations of a surveillance state in China, Russia’s brazen attempt to assert its autocratic model in Ukraine, and China’s increasingly likely plans to do the same in Taiwan. But the key here, Takach argues, is that our new Cold War is not only ideological but technological: the side that prevails in Cold War 2.0 will be the one that bests the other in mastering the greatest innovations of our time. Artificial intelligence sits in our pockets every day—but what about AI that coordinates military operations and missile defense systems? Or the highly sophisticated semiconductor chips and quantum computers that power those missiles and a host of other weapons? And, where recently we have seen remarkable feats of bio-engineering to produce vaccines at record speed, shouldn’t we be concerned how catastrophic it would be if bio-engineering were co-opted for nefarious purposes? Takach thoroughly examines how each of these innovations will shape the tension between democracy and autocracy, and how each will play a central role in this second Cold War. Finally, he crafts a precise blueprint for how Western democracies should handle these innovations to respond to the looming threat of autocracy—and ultimately prevail over it.
AJ Woodhams hosts the "War Books" podcast. You can subscribe on Apple here and on Spotify here. War Books is on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.
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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.
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