Category Archives: Russia
Competitive Victimology in the Bloodlands
From Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder (Basic Books, 2010), Kindle Loc. 7393-7441 (pp. 402-403): Without history, the memories become private, which today means national; and the numbers become public, which is to say an instrument in … Continue reading
Uniqueness of the Minsk Ghetto
From Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder (Basic Books, 2010), Kindle Loc. 4295-4349 (p. 231ff): Minsk was an unusual city, a place whose social structure defied the Nazi mind as well as German experience in occupied Poland. … Continue reading
Stalin’s Great Terror as Nationalist Counterrevolution
From Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder (Basic Books, 2010), Kindle Loc. 2120-2174 (pp. 107-108): In these years of the Popular Front, the Soviet killings and deportations went unnoticed in Europe. Insofar as the Great Terror was … Continue reading
Danish Hedeby’s Heyday
From The Baltic: A New History of the Region and Its People, by Alan Palmer (Overlook, 2006), pp. 28-29: Greatest of all merchant communities – and in 950 the largest town in the Baltic world – was Danish Hedeby (now … Continue reading
Filed under Baltics, economics, piracy, Russia, Scandinavia
Baruto the Giant Baltic Cowboy Ozeki
I imagine even regular readers don’t often see the giants of Japan’s sumo world profiled in the Wall Street Journal, and I’ve never, ever seen anyone compare any rikishi to Leonardo DiCaprio—until now. (Either the Titanic or the iceberg that … Continue reading
Bulgarian Macedo-Adrianopolitan Revolutionary Terrorism
From Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430-1950, by Mark Mazower (Vintage, 2006), pp. 247-252: Once an autonomous Bulgarian state emerged in 1878, Macedonia became a battle-ground for insurgent bands. Secret guerrilla units, supported from Sofia, were formed … Continue reading
The Near Eastern Crisis of 1875-78
From Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430-1950, by Mark Mazower (Vintage, 2006), pp. 167-169: Beginning with a peasant uprising in Bosnia-Hercegovina, the troubles spread in 1876 to Bulgaria and the Danubian provinces and ended with an invasion … Continue reading
Watershed Face-off: 1979 vs. 1989
While Europeans and Americans are remembering the major transformation of international relations in 1989, economic historian Niall Ferguson argues that 1979 marked a much greater watershed. The real question about Russian policy today is not whether Russia will invade Ukraine, … Continue reading
A Eurasian Crossroads Now in China
The latest issue (a year late!) of China Review International (Project MUSE subscription required) contains a review by Thomas Barfield of a book that sounds interesting: James A. Millward’s Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang (New York: Columbia University Press, … Continue reading
Filed under Central Asia, China, Mongolia, nationalism, religion, Russia, Tibet, Turkey
Russian Pacific Colony of Atuvai, Nigau, Ovagu, Mauvi?
Here’s a surprising passage from volume 7 (1973) of the Hawaiian Journal of History, whose back volumes are now online at the Oceania Digital Library Project hosted by the University of Hawai‘i Library’s digital repository. On 21 May (2 June) … Continue reading
