Buddhism in Modern Russian Culture
A review of The Buddhist World in Modern Russian Culture (1873-1919): Literature and Visual Arts, by Adele Di Ruocco. Academic writing at its best should…
Category Archives: Russia/Soviet
Russian State Historical Archive of the Far East
Navigating Northeast Asia in Vladivostok: A Review of the Russian State Historical Archive of the Far East (Российский Государственный Исторический Архив Дальнего Востока), Vladivostok, Russia…
Pastoral Activism & Public Sphere in Late Imperial Russia
A review of The White Priest at Work: Orthodox Pastoral Activism and the Public Sphere in Late Imperial Russia, by Daniel Scarborough. Drunken, uneducated puppets…
Institute of Experimental Medicine, St Petersburg
A review of The Institute of Experimental Medicine (Научно–исследовательный институт экспериментальной медицины) (St. Petersburg). In November of last year, I had the opportunity to visit…
Oil, Ore & State-building in Xinjiang 1893-1964
A review of Staking Claims to China’s Borderland: Oil, Ores, and State-building in Xinjiang Province, 1893-1964, by Judd Creighton Kinzley. Staking Claims to China’s Borderland…
Dissertating, Doubting & Doing It Anyway
Dissertating, Doubting, and Doing It Anyway As anyone who has tried knows well, dissertating is a doubt-laden enterprise. Such was certainly my experience. The dissertation…
Reading Mitchell’s Carbon Democracy in the USSR
Carbon Socialism? A view from the “Second World” of Timothy Mitchell’s Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (Verso, 2011) Timothy Mitchell’s Carbon…
The Crimea as “Russian Riviera”
A Review of Our Riviera, Coast of Health: Environment, Medicine, and Resort Life in Fin-de-Siècle Crimea, by George Lywood. George Lywood’s dissertation examines how the…
Gulag & Soviet Society in Western Siberia
A review of The Gulag and Soviet Society in Western Siberia, 1929-1953, by Wilson Bell. What was life like for prisoners and camp staff in…
The Disaster of Collective Farms under Khrushchev
A review of Reform in the Time of Stalin: Nikita Khrushchev and the Fate of the Russian Peasantry, by Auri Berg. Over the last decade…