Andrey Vinogradov: In Still Waters Industrial Pollution and the Birth of Russian Environmental Policy (1871–1931)

Андрей Виноградов: В тихих омутах Промышленное загрязнение и рождение российской экологической политики (1871–1931). Новое литературное обозрение 2026 // Andrey Vinogradov: In Still Waters Industrial Pollution and the Birth of Russian Environmental Policy (1871–1931). NLO, 2026.

История пореформенной России в «долгом» XIX веке была тесно связана с бурной индустриализацией — именно тогда общество впервые задумалось о последствиях влияния экономического роста на природную среду. В этом исследовании Андрей Виноградов прослеживает появление и развитие в публичном пространстве экологической проблематики и дискуссий, вызванных промышленным загрязнением и техногенными катастрофами. Он ищет ответы на важные вопросы: как «порча воды» — смутное, малопонятное явление для тех времен — превратилась в вопрос государственной важности? Как нефтяные пятна на Волге, ядовитые стоки текстильных мануфактур Морозовых, отходы сахарных заводов меняли не только законодательство, но и взгляды чиновников и общества на допустимые пределы промышленного роста? Как показывает автор, вокруг проблем, связанных с водной инфраструктурой и загрязнением, сталкивались интересы фабрикантов и крестьян, городских дум и министерских чиновников, появлялись новые общественные институты и горизонтальные структуры. Земства и думы искали способы защитить права местных жителей, а эксперты-гигиенисты впервые определяли нормы допустимых концентраций вредных веществ, сохранившие актуальность и в условиях форсированной советской индустриализации. Эта книга — рассказ о том, как в конфликтах вокруг заводских стоков и загрязненных рек в России зарождалась экологическая политика. Андрей Виноградов — историк, PhD, постдокторант Лейбниц-института истории и культуры Восточной Европы (Германия).

Андрей Виноградов — историк экологии, PhD, постдокторант Лейбниц-института истории и культуры Восточной Европы.

Dana Hašková: Ruská bílá emigrace v Československu

 Dana Hašková: Ruská bílá emigrace v Československu: Představitelé technických, přírodních a zemědělských věd [Russian White Emigration in Czechoslovakia: Representatives of Technical, Natural and Agricultural Sciences]. Praha: Academia, Slovanský ústav 2026. ISBN: 978-80-200-3697-1

Po revoluci v roce 1917 a následné občanské válce emigrovaly z území bývalé Ruské říše statisíce lidí. Přibližně třicet tisíc žilo i v meziválečném Československu.

Zvláštní skupinu této emigrace tvořila ruská vědecká a kulturní elita. V Československu tak působily stovky profesorů, pracovníků vysokých škol a vědců z nejrůznějších oborů.

Své odborné práce emigranti vydávali v českém i slovenském jazyce, publikovali v českém a slovenském periodickém tisku a zapojovali se do zdejšího vědeckého života. Badatelé věnující se tématu ruské emigrace se dosud zaměřovali především na představitele humanitních či uměleckých oborů. Činnost představitelů technických, přírodních a zemědělských věd zatím není podrobněji zdokumentována. V populárně-naučných publikacích a odborných článcích jsou zmiňováni pouze jednotlivci v souvislosti s výsledky své práce. Monografie Ruská bílá emigrace v Československu je tak prvním pokusem zmapovat činnost těchto techniků a přírodovědců během jejich pobytu v Československu. Uplatnili se zde jako pedagogové, v praxi i ve výzkumu a ve svých oborech mnohdy patřili ke špičkovým odborníkům. Předkládaná publikace z velké části vychází z dobového tisku, nekrologů, archivních materiálů, rodinných archivů a databáze udělených patentů. Citované dokumenty rovněž podávají svědectví o životě v emigraci a těžkostech, s nimiž se emigranti museli v běžném životě vyrovnávat.

Asiya Bulatova: Viktor Shklovsky’s Involuntary Modernism: Writing and Other Bodily Functions

Asiya Bulatova: Viktor Shklovsky’s Involuntary Modernism: Writing and Other Bodily Functions. Bloomsbury 2026. ISBN 9781350422612

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/viktor-shklovskys-involuntary-modernism-9781350422612/

The Ambiguities of Indoctrination in Russian Universities and Schools

 Russian Analytical Digest (RAD), No. 341: The Ambiguities of Indoctrination in Russian Universities and Schools

Author(s): Ivan Fomin, Julia Khairova, Egor Kozhevnikov, Ella Rossman, Nina Zakharkina-Berezner

Editor(s): Fabian Burkhardt, Vassily Klimentov, Robert Orttung, Jeronim Perović, Heiko Pleines, Hans-Henning Schröder

Series: Russian Analytical Digest (RAD)

Issue: 341

Publisher(s): Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zürich; Research Centre for East European Studies (FSO), University of Bremen; Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES); Center for Eastern European Studies (CEES), University of Zurich

Publication Year: 2026

This issue examines state ideologisation and its implementation in contemporary Russian education and society. First, Ivan Fomin et al. analyse the “Foundations of Russian Statehood” university course, arguing that Putinism relies on a “thin statism” rather than a coherent doctrine. Next, Ella Rossman explores the strategic incoherence of Russia’s “traditional values” ideology, showing how its ambiguous mix of Orthodox neoconservatism and Soviet legacies struggles with direct youth indoctrination. Finally, Nina Zakharkina-Berezner investigates the militarisation of Russian schools, detailing how some teachers employ adaptive strategies to maintain professional autonomy amid ideological pressure.

Download:

https://css.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/cis/center-for-securities-studies/pdfs/russiananalyticaldigest-341.pdf

Alexander Herzen: Past and Thoughts. An Annotated Critical Edition

 Alexander Herzen: Past and Thoughts. An Annotated Critical Edition. Translated by Kathleen F. Parthé, Edited and translated by Robert N. Harris. Harvard University Press 2025.

An annotated translation of Alexander Herzen’s monumental memoir Past and Thoughts—the first new English-language edition in a century—captures the tumultuous life and penetrating cultural and political insights of the writer widely regarded as the founder of Russian socialism.

Isaiah Berlin called Alexander Herzen’s magnum opus, Past and Thoughts, “a literary masterpiece worthy to be placed by the side of the novels of . . . Tolstoy, Turgenev, Dostoevsky.” It was the most influential memoir published in nineteenth-century Russia, and its impact extended far beyond the tsarist era and the empire’s borders, inspiring generations of thinkers, leaders, and dissidents struggling against authoritarian regimes. The first English-language translation in a century, thoroughly annotated with a new introduction, this volume shows why Past and Thoughts is considered a great classic.

Against a dramatic backdrop of war, revolution, and exile, Herzen tells a stirring story of political agitation, marital scandal, betrayal, and despair. Past and Thoughts begins with Napoleon’s invasion of Moscow during Herzen’s infancy, then follows the author’s central role in Russia’s emerging intelligentsia, his imprisonment and exile in the frozen north, his adventures across a mid-century Europe undergoing the turbulence of revolution and unification, and his founding of the first uncensored Russian-language press. We see the Paris revolts of 1848 and the flamboyant swashbucklers of Italy’s Risorgimento through Herzen’s sharp eyes, alongside his bold journalism, which reached both the tsar’s prisoners and the Winter Palace.

This edition restores a key section on the tragic denouement of Herzen’s marriage—omitted from previous abridged versions—and includes notes offering critical insight into Herzen’s historical sketches, travelogues, satire, poetry, philosophical excursions, and polemics. Tolstoy remarked that “Herzen awaits his readers in the future.” A piercing investigation of the human spirit and its enemies, Past and Thoughts is indeed a work for our time.

Reviews

„Past and Thoughts is perhaps the greatest autobiography in Russian literature, a classic worth placing in company with Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy. This new translation captures, as never before, Herzen’s anecdotal brilliance, wit, and inimitable essayistic style, with its layers of irony on irony.“ – Gary Saul Morson, Northwestern University

„This magnificent exercise in self-writing founded the art of political witnessing for nineteenth-century Russia. At last, Herzen’s acclaimed mega-text receives the critical English edition it deserves, expertly pruning out and eloquently filling in this world for today’s readers.“ – Caryl Emerson, Princeton University

About the Authors

Robert N. Harris specializes in nineteenth-century Russian intellectual history at the University of Oxford. He has lectured at numerous universities, including Barcelona, Cambridge, and LMU Munich.

Kathleen F. Parthé is Professor Emeritus of Russian at the University of Rochester. She is the author of A Herzen Reader, Russian Village Prose, and, with James H. Billington, The Search for a New Russian National Identity.

Philipp Kohl: Ferne Enden. Tiefenzeit in Literatur und Wissenschaft vom Russischen Imperium bis zur Sowjetunion

 Philipp Kohl: Ferne Enden. Tiefenzeit in Literatur und Wissenschaft vom Russischen Imperium bis zur Sowjetunion. Konstanz University Press 2025. ISBN 978-3-8353-9192-5

Ferne Enden vermisst das Spannungsfeld von Wissenschaftsgeschichte und Literatur in Russland von etwa 1870 bis 1930. Das Buch rekonstruiert die unermesslichen Zeiträume der Geologie ebenso wie die Imaginationen eines menschenleeren Planeten in ferner Zukunft.

Man schätzt die russische Literatur für die Schilderungen eines gewaltigen geographischen Raums. Weniger bekannt ist hingegen ihre Beschäftigung mit der ungeheuren Länge der Zeit. Literatur wie Wissenschaft im Russischen Imperium und in der Sowjetunion verorteten die sogenannte Tiefenzeit nicht nur in den Diskursen von Geologie und Paläontologie, sondern auch in der Anthropologie und Thermodynamik, in denen der Mensch seine fernen Anfänge und Enden erkennt.

Philipp Kohls Buch zeigt, auf welche Weise Literatur und Wissenschaft sich der Fiktion bedienen, um abstrakte naturgeschichtliche Zeiträume zu veranschaulichen. Es geht den radikal politischen Imaginationen des Menschheitsalters unter dem Eindruck Darwins nach und zeigt anhand einer Neulektüre klassischer Werke von Gončarov, Dostoevskij und Čechov, wie sich das 19. Jahrhundert das Erkalten der Erde in ferner Zukunft ausmalt. Phantastik, Abenteuerliteratur und Populärwissenschaft führen tief ins Innere der Erde und ihrer Vergangenheit. Anhand der sowjetischen Gattung des Produktionsromans um 1930 demonstriert Ferne Enden schließlich, wie die Literatur des sozialistischen Aufbaus die Erdgeschichte umschreibt – und ihr »Geooptimismus« (Gor’kij) jenes vom Menschen geprägte Zeitalter vorbereitet, das heute Anthropozän genannt wird.

CfP: Russia and the appropriation of the Arctic. Interests, instruments and identities from the late Tsarist period to the present day

 CfP: Russia and the appropriation of the Arctic. Interests, instruments and identities from the late Tsarist period to the present day

International Workshop, Chair of Russian-Asian Studies, Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich

12–14 March 2026, Deadline: 30 November 2025

More than any other country, Russia has colonised and industrialised the Arctic—including its coasts—and has utilised the ocean as a strategic sea route. Today, the Russian Far North serves as a projection screen for national interests and identities; its history legitimises the supposedly “natural” privileges of the largest Arctic state. Central to these narratives is the concept of “appropriation” (osvoenie)—a buzzword originating in the Stalin era that has, in recent years, regained significant prominence as an ideological tool in Russian Arctic discourse. Researchers often translate it too narrowly as “conquest”, yet the term encapsulates a multifaceted complex of processes. It serves as a euphemism describing diverse practices and dynamics: exploration and scientific surveying, resource exploitation, the “Sovietisation” and transformation of indigenous populations, the migration and settlement of groups from the Russian sub-Arctic, and their mental, ideological, and physical adaptation to the environment. This complex also encompassed the assertion of economic and legal claims in the Arctic Ocean, alongside a militarisation that has accelerated since 2022. At an ideological level, appropriation transforms the Arctic into a core realm of Russian history—an emotionally charged counter-image, the ‘Russian North’, contrasted both with a supposedly declining West and with subarctic Asia.

The workshop foregrounds a comprehensive analysis of Russian and Soviet “appropriation” in the Arctic up to the 2020s. While osvoenie serves as a conceptual probe, the scope extends beyond conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte). Contributions may examine actors and objectives, images and ideologies, methods and epistemologies, interests and achievements, as well as costs, failures, resistance and collaboration. As strategies varied by region, the project deliberately refrains from imposing rigid boundaries. However, particular emphasis will be placed on the formative connection between ocean and coastal regions: the Arctic Ocean is no longer regarded as a distant, impenetrable ice sheet north of Siberia, but instead has provided a strategic sea route to Siberia and is now considered one of Moscow’s most important geopolitical focal points. The timeframe spans from the late nineteenth century, when St Petersburg asserted claims over the Arctic Ocean and technological advances made the icy seas more accessible, through to the present, as the Arctic rises ever higher on the economic and security agenda of the Russian Federation. The workshop and the planned volume aim to analyse these developments through a historically grounded framework that brings together disciplinary perspectives from political science, anthropology, literary studies, law and economics, amongst others.

We invite contributions from scholars at all career levels whose research explores one or more of the following aspects of Russian/Soviet Arctic history:State and empire building

Oceanic and maritime history

Science, technology and medicine

Modernity and indigenous cultures

Heroes and heroines

Human and non-human actors

Built environments and imagined geographies

Historiography and master narratives

Geopolitical concepts and economic interests

Local experiences and perspectives

The workshop aims to lay the groundwork for a joint publication. Rather than producing another anthology of specialised research or a handbook with survey articles, its goal is to assemble a coherent collection of previously unpublished papers that address a shared, cross-cutting theme from multiple disciplinary perspectives. The resulting volume is intended to be finalised by the end of 2027 and to foster ongoing scholarly collaboration.

Proposals should include a concise outline of a specific chapter (approximately 500–750 words) that demonstrates a clear connection to the overarching theme of ‘Appropriation’ and formulates a research question, as well as a one-page cv. Please send your submission to Andreas Renner at andreas.renner@lmu.de by 30 November 2025.

Authors whose proposals are accepted will be invited to a workshop at the Chair of Russian-Asian Studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, 12–14 March 2026. The workshop is intended to take place on site, but hybrid participation can be arranged if required.

The conference will be supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG), which enables us to reimburse participants’ travel expenses up to a specified limit.

[Image — The Russian nuclear icebreaker Yamal cutting through the Arctic Ocean ice at the North Pole. Photo credit: Peter Guttman/Getty Images.]

Anna Mazanik: Sanitizing Moscow: Waste, Animals, and Urban Health in Late Imperial Russia

 Anna Mazanik: Sanitizing Moscow: Waste, Animals, and Urban Health in Late Imperial Russia. University of Pittsburgh Press 2025. isbn : 9780822967729

Sanitizing Moscow presents an environmental history of public health reforms in late imperial Moscow between 1870 and 1917. It explores the relationship between Russia’s urban modernization and the more-than-human environment in the context of the major social and political changes, triggered by the liberal reforms of the 1860s and 1870s, and the transnational rise of scientific medicine and sanitary technologies. Mazanik is the first to combine environmental history and the history of urban public health in the context of imperial Russia.

about the author

Anna Mazanik is an environmental and medical historian of Russia and a research fellow at the Max Weber Network Eastern Europe in Germany. Born in Moscow, she has studied in Russia, Hungary, Germany, and the United States and holds a PhD in history from Central European University. She lives in Munich.

More Praise

  Sanitizing Moscow is a superb book that focuses on efforts in late imperial Russia to improve public health in complex and sometimes contradictory ways. It deftly shows how social, political, and cultural factors influenced the establishment of a sewage system, the regulation of a public abattoir, and the imposition of a health regime on children. 

Andy Bruno, Indiana University Bloomington

A deeply researched, creatively argued, and well-written book that will appeal to several different audiences, Sanitizing Moscow offers at the same time fascinating granular detail about everyday life in turn-of-the century Moscow and contributes to larger arguments around Europe’s influence on Russia as well as about the global impacts of the revolutions in scientific thinking on disease and sanitation. 

Ryan Jones, University of Oregon

Katja Bruisch: Burning Swamps: Peat and the Forgotten Margins of Russia’s Fossil Economy

 Katja Bruisch: Burning Swamps: Peat and the Forgotten Margins of Russia’s Fossil Economy (Cambridge University Press 2025). ISBN: 9781009603089 

Book description

This groundbreaking environmental history recounts the story of Russia's fossil economy from its margins. Unpacking the forgotten history of how peat fuelled manufacturing industries and power plants in late Imperial and Soviet Russia, Katja Bruisch provides a corrective to more familiar historical narratives dominated by coal, oil, and gas. Attentive to the intertwined histories of matter and labor during a century of industrial peat extraction, she offers a fresh perspective on the modern Russian economy that moves beyond the socialism/capitalism binary. By identifying peat extraction in modern Russia as a crucial chapter in the degradation of the world's peatlands, Bruisch makes a compelling case for paying attention to seemingly marginal places, people, and resources as we tell the histories of the planetary emergency.

Reviews

‘Burning Swamps offers remarkable insights on the social, economic, and environmental life of the Soviet Union by recasting the global history of fossil fuels from the standpoint of peat extraction. Bruisch brilliantly foregrounds unanticipated ecologies, labor and gender inequities, regional and seasonal dependencies, and widespread irritations.'

Andy Bruno - Indiana University Bloomington

‘By recovering the history of Russia's reliance on peat as an industrial fuel from imperial through Soviet times, Katja Bruisch's Burning Swamps helps us appreciate just how central the margins can be to the rise of the fossil economy. A wonderful study relevant to all interested in energy, environment, and the endurance of extractivist states.'

Victor Seow - author of Carbon Technocracy

Crossing Boundaries: Human-Animal Relationships in Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union

 The January 2025 special issue of SEER on "Crossing Boundaries: Human-Animal Relationships in Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union" is now online: https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/55301. 

Guest edited by Helena Holzberger and Timm Schönfelder, it features 8 articles on human-animal relations in tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union by Andreas Renner, Anton Kotenko, Matthew Adams, Vera Smirnova, Kristýna Kaucká, Anke Hilbrenner and Tatyana Bakhmetyeva. Its coverage ranges from polar bears to dogs, insects, zoo animals and wild boar.

Екатерина Жарова: Биология в фокусе. Естественные отделения университетов Российской империи (1830–1900).

 Екатерина Жарова: Биология в фокусе. Естественные отделения университетов Российской империи (1830–1900). Новое литературное обозрение 2025. ISBN 978-5-4448-2646-1 // Еkaterina Zharova: Biology in Focus. Natural Sciences Departments at Universities in the Russian Empire (1830–1900). New Literary Review 2025. ISBN 978-5-4448-2646-1

Аннотация: Изучение истории высшего образования в России не только дает возможность проследить генеалогию его актуальных проблем, но и позволяет взглянуть на российское общество в микрокосме. В своей монографии Екатерина Жарова рассматривает историю естественных отделений физико-математических факультетов университетов Российской империи с момента их появления в середине 1830 х годов и до начала XX века. Автора интересуют важнейшие аспекты научной жизни: организация обучения (лекции, практические занятия, экзамены), формирование профессорско-преподавательского корпуса и лабораторной базы, специализация и профессионализация. Отдельный важный аспект исследования — попытка проследить роль государства в развитии естественных наук. Анализируя влияние государственной политики на изучение и преподавание биологии, автор показывает, как на университетской жизни отразились исторические трансформации, вызванные сменой эпох — от Александра I до Николая II. Екатерина Жарова — доктор исторических наук, старший научный сотрудник СПбФ ИИЕТ РАН.

Н. С. Калинин (ed..) Математики Санкт-Петербурга и их открытия.

 Н. С. Калинин (ed..) Математики Санкт-Петербурга и их открытия. Сборник статей [St. Petersburg Mathematicians and their Discoveries. Collection of Articles]. МЦНМО 2025. ISBN: 978-5-4439-1917-1

В книге рассказаны биографии 45 математиков, чья жизнь и/или работа была тесно связана с Санкт-Петербургом-Петроградом-Ленинградом. Большая часть биографий снабжена рассказами о научных достижениях их героев. Для широкого круга читателей.

CHORUS colloquium, dedicated to the legacy of the “dean of the history of Russian science” Loren R. Graham (1933-2024)

 Dear colleagues,

 

On Thursday, February 20, you are cordially invited to our next CHORUS online colloquium, dedicated to the legacy of the “dean of the history of Russian science” Loren R. Graham (1933-2024). The session will feature four of Loren’s major books, presented by his students and collaborators:

 

• Michael Gordin (Princeton University), on What Have We Learned about Science and Technology from the Russian Experience? (Stanford, 1998)
• Paul Josephson (Colby College), on The Ghost of the Executed Engineer (Harvard, 1993)
• Irina Dezhina (Gaidar Institute), on Science in the New Russia: Crisis, Aid, Reform (co-authored with Irina Dezhina, Johns Hopkins, 2008)
• Douglas Weiner (University of Arizona), on Lonely Ideas: Can Russia Compete? (MIT, 2013)

 

Each 15-min talk will be followed by a 15-min. discussion.

The meeting will be held on Thursday, February 20, at 8 am (Los Angeles) / 11 аm (New York) / 17:00 (CET) / 18:00 (Kyiv). For access please email Slava Gerovitch (https://math.mit.edu/directory/profile.html?pid=1160) 

About the speakers:

 

Michael D. Gordin is Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History and Dean of the College at Princeton University. As a graduate student at Harvard, he studied under Loren Graham. Dr. Gordin specializes in the history of the modern physical sciences and Russian, European, and American history. He is the author of A Well-Ordered Thing: Dmitrii Mendeleev and the Shadow of the Periodic Table (2004), Five Days in August: How World War II Became a Nuclear War (2007), Red Cloud at Dawn: Truman, Stalin, and the End of the Atomic Monopoly (2009), The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe (2012), Scientific Babel: How Science Was Done Before and After Global English (2015), Einstein in Bohemia (2020), On the Fringe: Where Science Meets Pseudoscience (2021), a co-author of How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind: The Strange Career of Cold War Rationality (2013), and a co-editor of the four-volume Routledge History of the Modern Physical Sciences (2001), Intelligentsia Science: The Russian Century, 1860-1960 (2008), Utopia/Dystopia: Conditions of Historical Possibility (2010), and The Age of Hiroshima (2020). He is currently working on a history of the impact of the collapse of the Soviet Union on science inside and outside of Russia.

https://history.princeton.edu/people/michael-d-gordin

 

Paul Josephson is Professor Emeritus of History at Colby College. As a graduate student at MIT, he studied under Loren Graham. Dr. Josephson is a specialist in the history of twentieth century science and technology.  He became interested in this subject through study of the Soviet philosophy of science, dialectical materialism, and its impact on the development of relativity theory and quantum mechanics within Soviet borders. He is the author of Physics and Politics in Revolutionary Russia (1991), New Atlantis Revisited: The Siberian City of Science (1997), Industrialized Nature (2002), Red Atom (2005), Resources Under Regimes (2005), Totalitarian Science and Technology (2005), Motorized Obsessions: Life, Liberty and the Small Bore Engine (2007); Would Trotsky Wear a Bluetooth? Technological Utopianism Under Socialism (2009), Lenin’s Laureate: A Life in Communist Science (2010), An Environmental History of Russia (2013), Fish Sticks, Sports Bras, and Aluminum Cans: The Politics of Everyday Technologies  (2015); Traffic (2017); Chicken (2020); Nuclear Russia: The Atom in Russian Politics and Culture (2022), and Hero Projects: The Russian Empire and Big Technology from Lenin to Putin (2024). He is currently working on two books, one on race, gender and technology in the internet age, the other a global environmental history of the nuclear age. He lives in Barcelona, Spain.

 

Irina Dezhina is a leading researcher at the Gaidar Institute of Economic Policy. She was a Fulbright Scholar at MIT (1997), a Fellow at the Kennan Institute (1994 and 2013), and a visiting scholar at Stanford (2024). She has published several books and more than 350 articles on the development of science and technology in Russia and the world. Her major monographs include Government Regulation of Science in Russia (2008), Science in the New Russia: Crisis, Aid, Reform (co-authored with Loren Graham, 2008), and Transformational Research: New Priority of the State After the Pandemic (2020). Since 1995 she has been the author of the chapter “State of Science and Innovation” in the annual edition “Russian Economy: Trends and Prospects” by the Gaidar Institute. In 2016, she was awarded a title Chevalier, The Ordre des Palmes académiques (Order of Academic Palms, France) for works on Russian science and technology policy.

https://www.iep.ru/en/person/dezhina-irina-g.html

 

Douglas Weiner is Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona in Tuscon. He earned his PhD at Columbia University under Loren Graham. According to the Russian newspaper ZAVTRA, Dr. Weiner was one of the people chiefly responsible for the downfall of the Soviet Union. His research has focused on examining and explaining environmental policies and the nature of environmental activism in the Soviet Union; see Models of Nature: Ecology, Conservation, and Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia (1988) and A Little Corner of Freedom: Russian Nature Protection from Stalin to Gorbachev (1999). Paradoxically, in light of the above, he has also written critiques of "environment" and "environmental history" as fuzzy concepts.  See esp. "A Death-defying Attempt to Articulate a Coherent Definition of Environmental History," Environmental History 10:3 (July 2005). He is currently working on a book, "Curiosity for its Own Sake," about the conflict between progressive education and its tsarist and Stalinist opponents, both of whom sought to "teach to the test." He loves bowling, cats, and high culture.

https://history.arizona.edu/person/douglas-weiner

 

 

New Literary Review, No. 185 (1/2024): FREE UNIVERSITY OF LENINGRAD (1988 - 1991) (Russian with English abstracts)

 Новое литературное обозрение, No. 185 (1/2024): СВОБОДНЫЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ В ЛЕНИНГРАДЕ (1988 — 1991)//

New Literary Review, No. 185 (1/2024): FREE UNIVERSITY OF LENINGRAD (1988 - 1991) (Russian with English abstracts)

(open access: https://www.nlobooks.ru/magazines/novoe_literaturnoe_obozrenie/185_nlo_1_2024/)

СВОБОДНЫЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ В ЛЕНИНГРАДЕ (1988 — 1991)

Дмитрий Бреслер. От составителя

Дмитрий Бреслер, Дарья Переплетова. Свободный университет в Ленинграде (1988—1991): институциональная и метапоэтическая форма «новой литературы»

Дарья Переплетова. Как вспахать поле литературы: мастерская критической прозы Ольги Хрусталевой в Свободном университете в Ленинграде

Дмитрий Бреслер. Как вспахать зеркало: поэтическая мастерская Бориса Останина в Свободном университете в Ленинграде

Валерий Артамонов, Глеб Денисов, Дмитрий Голынко. Из неопубликованного номера журнала «Часы» (публикация Руслана Миронова)

Denis J. B. Shaw. Reconnoitring Russia: Mapping, Exploring and Describing Early Modern Russia, 1613–1825.

Denis J. B. Shaw. Reconnoitring Russia: Mapping, Exploring and Describing Early Modern Russia, 1613–1825. London: UCL Press, 2024. ISBN: 9781800085923

open access: https://uclpress.co.uk/book/reconnoitring-russia/

Like many European countries during the Great Age of Discovery and Exploration, Russia embarked on policies of state building, exploration and imperial expansion. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, the territory under Moscow’s control was about twenty thousand square kilometres. By 1800 Russia’s empire had expanded to some eighteen million square kilometres. Russia had thus become one of the world’s greatest empires.

By focusing on such geographical practices as exploring, observing, describing, mapping and similar activities, Reconnoitring Russia seeks to explain how Russia’s rulers and its educated public came to know and understand the territory of their expanding state and empire, especially as a result of the modernizing policies of such sovereigns as Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. It places the Russian experience into a comparative context, showing how that experience compares with those of other European countries over the same period. The book adopts a broad chronological framework, exploring the age between 1613 when the Romanov dynasty assumed power and 1825, the conclusion of Alexander I’s reign, or what is often termed the end of the ‘long eighteenth century’.

Praise for Reconnoitring Russia

Reconnoitring Russia is an original contribution to two fields of scholarship: history of geography as a science and practices of exploration, and the history of the Russian Empire. The author was one of the most devoted historians of the geography of Russia and this is the first comprehensive analysis of the development of geographical knowledge in the period under study to be published either in English or in Russian.’

Julia Lajus, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in Social Sciences and Humanities (NIAS) in Amsterdam

Luděk Brož: Evil Spirits and Rocket Debris: In Search of Lost Souls in Siberia

 Luděk Brož: Evil Spirits and Rocket Debris: In Search of Lost Souls in Siberia. New York, Oxford: Berghahn 2024. ISBN  978-1-80539-260-6 

Description

The Altai Republic in southern Siberia is renowned for excavations of frozen mummies from high-altitude burial sites. Less well-known is the fact that it hosts fallout zones for the second stages of rockets launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome. Local inhabitants blame ‘evil spirits’ released by archaeological work and toxic fuel from rocket debris for their misfortunes. This book explores the divergent fates of such claims when confronted with state-fostered ‘rationalisms’ of science and governance.

Ludek Broz is Head of the Department of Ecological Anthropology at the Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences. He co-edited the volume Suicide and Agency: Anthropological Perspectives on Self-destruction, Personhood and Power (Routledge, 2016) with Daniel Muenster.

ETHNOGRAPHIC REVIEW • 2024 • No. 2 - Special issue: Domestic ethnography and world science in the 20th century

 ETHNOGRAPHIC REVIEW • 2024 • No. 2 - Special issue: Domestic ethnography and world science in the 20th century: contacts, influences and confrontations (editor-in-chief – S.S. Alymov) (Russian, English abstracts)

URL: https://eo.iea.ras.ru/issue/23310/

ЭТНОГРАФИЧЕСКОЕ ОБОЗРЕНИЕ • 2024 • № 2

Специальная тема номера: Отечественная этнография и мировая наука в XX в.: контакты, влияния и противостояния (отв. ред. – С.С. Алымов)

И.В. Кузнецов. “Диалог” российской антропологии с (пост/анти)боасовской

А.В. Туторский. Параллели в развитии концепций “культурных ареалов” и “хозяйственно-технических ареалов” в 1920–1930-е годы

Д.В. Верховцев. Этническая история и ethnohistory: внешние сходства и внутренние отличия

С.С. Петряшин. Советская музейная этнография на VII Международном конгрессе антропологических и этнографических наук: реставрация и консервация дисциплинарного наследия под “взглядом” Запада

С.С. Алымов. Как Москва не стала мировым центром марксистской антропологии: историк Л.В. Данилова, теоретические дискуссии 1960-х годов и международные

контакты советских ученых

hps.cesee article alert

Gal, Susan. “Language Ideology and Observation: Nineteenth-Century Scholars in Northwestern Siberia.” Chapter. In Multilingualism and History, edited by Aneta Pavlenko, 170–86. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009236287.009

Андрей Ильин, Александр Дмитриев: Свободное плаванье: Российские гуманитарные и социальные науки в идейных контекстах 1990-х, Препринт // Andrei Ilyin, Aleksandr Dmitrev: Free Floating: Russian Humanitarian and Social Sciences in the Ideological Contexts of the 1990s, Preprint: https://history90.ru/texts/preprints/ or https://history90.ru/upload/iblock/df9/df927b8e9887d8f2617fc1d54f684762.pdf

Ольга Елина. Картинки с выставки: наука и технологии в раннем СССР (по материалам Всероссийской выставки 1923 года) [Pictures from the exhibition: science and technology in the early USSR (based on the materials of the All-Russian Exhibition of 1923).].

 Ольга Елина. Картинки с выставки: наука и технологии в раннем СССР (по материалам Всероссийской выставки 1923 года) [Pictures from the exhibition: science and technology in the early USSR (based on the materials of the All-Russian Exhibition of 1923).]. Издательство "Рутения" 2024. ISBN 978-5-907876-00-2

Содержание: https://gorky.media/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Elina_Pictures_2024_Blok_WEB-dragged.pdf

Фрагменты: https://gorky.media/fragments/vospitanie-vmesto-kollektivizatsii/

Книга посвящена истории Первой Всероссийской (Всесоюзной) сельскохозяйственной и кустарно-промышленной выставки с иностранным отделом 1923 г. В фокусе внимания автора научно-просветительская и технико-технологическая составляющие выставки. С опорой на широкий комплекс архивных источников исследованы разнообразные сюжеты смотра: задачи, намеченные его организаторами; роль ученых как экспертов и экспонентов выставки; взаимодействие научной и художественной групп при формировании экспозиций; назначение, содержание и облик самих экспозиций; «трудовые будни» и праздники выставки. Вместе с тем выставка представлена как репрезентация образа власти, инструмент «научной дипломатии», агитационно-пропагандистская кампания, рассчитанная на крестьянство. Через документальное описание локального исторического события охарактеризована общая научно-техническая и социокультурная панорама раннесоветской модернизации с доминантой техники, созданием «науки для крестьянства», поиском новых форм организации исследовательской деятельности.Книга адресована широкому кругу читателей, интересующихся историей отечественной науки и техники, историей искусства, социально-политической историей России.

Nikolaj Plotnikov: Konzepte der 'Person' in der russischen Ideengeschichte. Studien zum interkulturellen Begriffstransfer.

Nikolaj Plotnikov: Konzepte der 'Person' in der russischen Ideengeschichte. Studien zum interkulturellen Begriffstransfer. (=Wiener Slawistischer Almanach - Sonderbände) Peter Lang 2024. ISBN 978-3-631-89629-7

Die russischen Debatten seit der Romantik über die Problematik der Person manifestieren Deutungsmuster in der Auffassung von Personalität und Subjektivität, die sich deutlich von ihren westeuropäischen Vorbildern unterscheiden. Diese Studie betont die Rolle des Ideentransfers und zeigt, wie philosophische Begriffe der Person aus anderen kulturellen Kontexten in Russland in den letzten zwei Jahrhunderten aufgenommen und transformiert werden. Untersuchungen lassen erkennen, welche Unterschiede und Gemeinsamkeiten zwischen den philosophischen Diskursen in Russland und Westeuropa bestehen, die immer wieder zu Interpretationskonflikten führen. Dieses Buch unterstreicht die Bedeutung interkultureller Verständigung und zeigt zugleich, wie historische Debatten und Konflikte die heutige Welt prägen.