Podcast
New Books in Eastern European Studies
Hosted by New Books Network · EN
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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44episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Ruth Balint, "Destination Elsewhere: Displaced Persons and Their Quest to Leave Postwar Europe" (Cornell UP, 2021)
1w ago00:54:11Tap to summarizeIn this unique “history from below," Destination Elsewhere: Displaced Persons and Their Quest to Leave Postwar Europe (Cornell University Press, 2021) chronicles encounters between displaced persons in Europe and the Allied agencies who were tasked with caring for them after the Second World War. The struggle to define who was a displaced person and who was not was a subject of intense debate and deliberation among humanitarians, international law experts, immigration planners, and governments. What has not adequately been recognized is that displaced persons also actively participated in this emerging refugee conversation. Displaced persons endured war, displacement, and resettlement, but these experiences were not defined by passivity and speechlessness. Instead, they spoke back, creating a dialogue that in turn helped shape the modern idea of the refugee. As Ruth Balint shows, what made a good or convincing story at the time tells us much about the circulation of ideas about the war, the Holocaust, and the Jews. Those stories depict the emerging moral and legal distinction between economic migrants and political refugees. They tell us about the experiences of women and children in the face of new psychological and political interventions into the family. Stories from displaced persons also tell us something about the enduring myth of the new world for people who longed to leave the old. Balint focuses on those persons whose storytelling skills became a major strategy for survival and escape out of the displaced persons’ camps and out of the Europe. Their stories are brought to life in Destination Elsewhere, alongside a new history of immigration, statelessness, and the institution of the postwar family. Ruth Balint is Associate Professor of History at University of New South Wales. She is the author of Troubled Waters and coauthor of Smuggled. Geraldine Gudefin is a modern Jewish historian researching Jewish migrations, family life, and legal pluralism. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies
Transcribe →"My Heart is in the East": How Yiddish Speakers Moved to the East
2w agoTap to summarizeThe question of origins is often difficult to study because originators do not always leave a paper trail. Therefore, uncovering origins can be challenging – and the story of the background of Yiddish-speaking Jews in Eastern Europe is no exception. It is complicated by the fact that in the recent past the Jewish population of the area was in the millions and it is not obvious where they came from. It is tempting for some to see them as having come from the Rhineland in search of safety and security but there are many reasons to be dubious about this. What is much more likely, as we shall see, is that the basis for the Yiddish-speaking Jewish population of Eastern Europe was the Jewish population of what is now the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria. They came in dribs and drabs because of economic pressures. We will examine various pieces of evidence that support this picture. While not dramatic, it was pragmatic and successful. Economic changes in the Polish-Lithuanian lands offered new opportunities to Jews and this in turn, led to conditions of rapid population growth – rapid enough to create a massive population within several centuries. This lecture was originally held on July 22, 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies
Transcribe →In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust
2w agoTap to summarizeBetween 1918 and 1921, over a hundred thousand Jews were murdered in Ukraine by peasants, townsmen, and soldiers who blamed the Jews for the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. In hundreds of separate incidents, ordinary people robbed their Jewish neighbors with impunity, burned down their houses, ripped apart their Torah scrolls, sexually assaulted them, and killed them. Largely forgotten today, these pogroms—ethnic riots—dominated headlines and international affairs in their time. Aid workers warned that six million Jews were in danger of complete extermination. Twenty years later, these dire predictions would come true. Jeffrey Veidlinger’s new book In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust draws upon long-neglected archival materials, including thousands of newly discovered witness testimonies, trial records, and official orders, showing for the first time how this wave of genocidal violence created the conditions for the Holocaust. Join us for a discussion on this important new book featuring Jeffrey Veidlinger in conversation with Steven Zipperstein. This book talk originally took place on November 30, 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies
Transcribe →Radio ReOrient S14:6: The Road to Sarajevo, with Haris Tagari, hosted by Claudia Radiven and Saeed Khan
3w ago01:03:19Tap to summarizeIn this episode, Claudia Radiven and Saeed Khan spoke with Haris Tagari about his recent journey to Sarajevo in a 20 year old Toyota Yaris. Along the way he documented lost Islamic history throughout Europe, before arriving in Bosnia where he discusses genocide, solidarity and Muslim identity. Haris is a freelance journalist working as a reporter and videographer, with a degree in history from the University of Lancaster. Haris is widely known for his Instagram series, travelling to and reporting on destroyed and lost Muslim heritage across the world. He has filmed documentaries and political explainers from Syria, Iraq, Turkiye, Bosnia, Kosovo, Hungary, Serbia and Montenegro. You can follow the journeys of Haris in a Yaris on Instagram @harristory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies
Transcribe →
Szabolcs László, "Cold War Brokers: Hungarian-American Cultural Exchanges and Transnational Mobility,1956-1989" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
4w ago00:56:50Tap to summarizeIn this episode of the CEU Review of Books Podcast, I sat down with Szabolcs László to talk about his new book, Cold War Brokers: Hungarian-American Cultural Exchanges and Transnational Mobility, 1956-1989 (Bloomsbury, 2026). We discussed how during the Cold War Hungarian writers, intellectuals, and academics took part in various programmes that allowed them to spend time in the United States of America, to build networks with their western counterparts, and how grassroots effort helped in spreading Hungarian know-how, such as the Kodály method, to the US and various other parts of the world. You can purchase the book from Bloomsbury here. You can read more about Szabolcs’s research on the Kodály method in his Open Access article here. You can also watch a short video here (in Hungarian) about the Kodály method here. The CEU Review of Books Podcast Series explores the questions that affect us all through in-depth talks with researchers, policy makers, journalists, academics and others. We showcase the most current research linked to Central Europe through these discussions. At the CEU Review of Books, we encourage an open discussion that challenges conventional assumptions to foster a vibrant debate. Visit our website to read our latest reviews, long reads and interviews. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies
Transcribe →Francisco Martínez, "The Future of Hiding: Secrecy, Infrastructure, and Ecological Memory in Estonia's Siberia" (Cornell UP, 2025)
Apr 2800:54:53Tap to summarizeHow can lives and things that are rendered invisible be crucial to identity, politics, and the future? Drawing on experimental ethnographic research in northeastern Estonia, this book offers vivid answers. The Future of Hiding: Secrecy, Infrastructure, and Ecological Memory in Estonia's Siberia (Cornell UP, 2025) analyzes the territorial dimensions of secrecy and how concealment occurs in relation to energy infrastructure and identity politics in eastern Estonia. It shows that secrets and hiding places are intrinsic to human affairs, while reconsidering the possibilities of relating ethnographically to what appears to be the extraneous. Francisco Martínez highlights how basements, garages, bunkers, holes, and cottages favor alternative forms of sociality, allowing local residents to redesign the terms of their public selves. Shadow spaces in this liminal region, at the border with Russia, are created against the institutional demand to be knowable. People engage in ordinary forms of ambivalence and refusal to negotiate a sense of loss and the consequences of a century of extractive activities. The Future of Hiding invites cross-disciplinary dialogue on topics like mining, transparency, belonging and cultural landscapes, offering insights into infrastructure's reproduction and destruction, recolonizations, and the ecological memory of a sacrificed area. Francisco Martínez is an anthropologist dealing with contemporary issues of material culture through ethnographic research. His work is known for its critical insights and experimental style. He was awarded with the Early Career Prize of the European Association of Social Anthropologists and currently works as a Ramón y Cajal Senior Research Fellow at the University of Murcia, Spain. His email address is francisco.martinez14@um.es. Yadong Li is an anthropologist-in-training. He is a PhD candidate of Socio-cultural Anthropology at Tulane University. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies
Transcribe →Gennady Estraikh, "The History of Birobidzhan: Building a Soviet Jewish Homeland in Siberia" (Bloombury, 2023)
Apr 2601:00:08Tap to summarizeIn this episode, Alisa interviews Dr. Gennady Estraikh. His book titled, The History of Birobidzhan: Building a Soviet Jewish Homeland in Siberia (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023) was published as a part of the "Russian Shorts" series. Gennady Estraikh's book explores the birth, growth, demise and afterlife of the Birobidzhan Jewish Autonomous Region (JAR). The History of Birobidzhan looks at how the shtetl was widely used in Soviet propaganda as a perfect solution to the 'Jewish question', arguing that in reality, while being demographically and culturally insignificant, the JAR played a key, and essentially detrimental, role in determining Jewish rights and entitlements in the Soviet world. Estraikh brings together a broad range of Russian and Yiddish sources, including archival materials, newspaper articles, travelogues, memoirs, belles-letters, and scholarly publications, as he describes and analyses the project and its realization not in isolation, but rather in the context of developments in both domestic and international life. As well as offering an assessment of the Birobidzhan project in the contexts of Soviet and Jewish history, the book also focuses on the contemporary 'Jewish' role of the region which now has only a few thousand Jewish occupants amongst its residents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies
Transcribe →Stephen F. Jones, "The First Social Democracy: The Democratic Republic of Georgia, 1918–1921" (Harvard UP, 2026)
Apr 2101:05:19Tap to summarizeFollowing the collapse of the Russian Empire, the small nation of Georgia established its independence in May 1918. Its leaders surprised the world by creating the first social democratic state. Based on a combination of parliamentarianism and direct democracy, it was a representative government of the peasants and workers themselves, with ballots in their hands. The First Social Democracy: The Democratic Republic of Georgia, 1918–1921 (Harvard University Press, 2026) is the definitive history of a government that should inspire social democrats today. Professor Stephen F. Jones chronicles how the founders of the new state navigated myriad challenges, including territorial threats from abroad, internal ethnic conflicts, and geopolitical rivalries between the imperial Ottomans, the British, and the Germans. In the midst of these existential challenges, Georgia’s social democrats set about writing a constitution to put the country on a distinctive path of genuine self-government—protecting democratic rights, promoting political pluralism, and championing equality. Professor Jones brings to life the passionate debates that shaped Georgia’s democracy during a moment of acute global instability. The Democratic Republic of Georgia was strangled in its crib. Just four days after the constitution was ratified, the capital fell to the Red Army. Under Soviet rule, the republic was lost to history. Soviet scholars were forbidden to research this Georgian story, and Western scholars had little interest in a small and peripheral state that was independent for only three years. Recovering a forgotten experiment in democratic citizenship and statecraft, Dr. Jones reminds us of those audacious times when Georgians created and defended political freedom against the rise of Soviet communism. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies
Transcribe →Sasha Senderovich and Harriet Murav, "In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union" (Stanford UP, 2026)
Apr 2001:02:09Tap to summarizeIn their anthology, In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union (Stanford University Press, 2026), Sasha Senderovitch and Harriet Murav provide an underappreciated perspective on the Holocaust, as it was experienced and remembered in the former Soviet Union. In these works, Jewish authors from Ukraine, Lithuania, Russia, and Belarus, writing in Yiddish and Russian, tell the stories of ordinary people living on after the devastation of the Holocaust. Filled with memories, love, and loss, these narratives describe not only how people died, but also how they continued to live. Despite the official view in the Soviet Union that Jewish deaths should be subsumed under the larger tragedy of Nazi Germany's invasion, Jews in the USSR profoundly engaged with thinking about and memorializing the Holocaust, addressing it in a wide range of literary works. Interviewees: Sasha Senderovich is Associate Professor of Slavic Languages & Literatures and of International Studies at the University of Washington. Harriet Murav is Center for Advanced Study Professor Emerita at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Host: Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York, and the author of Brooklyn Odyssey: My Journey out of Hasidism and Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism. Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies
Transcribe →Kristan Stoddart, "Russia's Hybrid Warfare Offensive Against the West" (de Gruyter, 2025)
Apr 1901:20:59Tap to summarizeKristan Stoddart's Russia's Hybrid Warfare Offensive Against the West (de Gruyter, 2025) is a timely and systematic analysis of Russian hybrid warfare with a particular focus on Russian cyberespionage and cyberwarfare. It especially analyzes Russian policy from the election of President Vladmir Putin in 2000 to date. It takes a long term, long lens, view of Russian policies and actions internationally and domestically, fundamentally questioning the relationship and boundaries between active measures, espionage, cyberespionage, and hybrid warfare. The most up-to-date and systematic analysis of Russia’s hybrid warfare. Draws on a wide range of multi-disciplinary literature. Questions the boundaries between active measures, espionage, cyberespionage, and hybrid warfare. Dr. Kristan Stoddart is an Associate Professor at Swansea University where he is director of the Geopolitical Challenges Research Institute. Previously he was a Reader in the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University. From 2014 to 2017, Kristan was part of a £1.2 million project examining Cyber Security Lifecycles funded by Airbus Group and the Welsh Government. He also was a member of the UK’s Independent Digital Ethics in Policing Panel for around four years through to 2018. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is the author of eight books and many articles and book chapters.Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar with research areas spanning Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, Military History, War Studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, and Russian and East European history. He is currently the Book Review Editor for Comparative Civilizations Review. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies
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