We tend to think of the 1990s when it comes to Protestantism in Russia. It was then that evangelicals descended on Russia to shine Jesus’ light into the post-Soviet void. Yet, the Soviet Union, despite its best efforts, was a multiconfessional state. And though officially atheist, religious belief persisted, including among the Union’s small pockets of Protestants. Like with other faiths, the state’s relations with Protestants vacillated between repression, accommodation, and control. As Miriam Dobson says in her new book, The Unorthodox, things shifted after Stalin’s death. By the 1960s, regulating religious life fell under the purview of the Council of Religious Affairs. Sure, the state still emphasized atheism, closed churches, and prosecuted Protestants. But its methods were more surgical and the Council relied more on policing the margins over mass repression. So what was life like for the USSR’s Protestant minority? How did they practice their faith and maintain community despite pressures of family, society, and the state? And how did all of this connect to the larger Cold War context where the USSR’s archenemy was a Protestant majority country? The Eurasian Knot talked to Miriam about The Unorthodox to learn more about Protestant faith and community during the Cold War. 

Guest:

Miriam Dobson is a Reader in Modern History at the University of Sheffield. She is the author of Khrushchev's Cold Summer: Gulag Returnees, Crime, and the Fate of Reform after Stalin and The Unorthodox: Soviet Protestants in Cold-War Ukraine and Russia published by Cornell University Press.

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Over the last century, tens of millions of people quit Eastern Europe for the United States. The push-pull factors were many—war, poverty, instability, persecution at home and opportunity, refuge, and liberty abroad. But manna didn’t simply fall from the sky in America. Immigrants from Eastern Europe confronted many of the same challenges migrants do everywhere—exploitation, hardship, and discrimination.

Thresholds is a REEES podcast series that will grapple with these histories through interviews with scholars and immigrants’ personal profiles. What pushed them to leave? What did they discover when they arrived? How did they change and be changed by American society? What opportunities and challenges did they face to become “American”? And what can we learn about immigration today?

Guest:

Olga immigrated to the United States from Moscow, Russia in 1990 as a child. She’s a high school teacher and lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

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Over the last century, tens of millions of people quit Eastern Europe for the United States. The push-pull factors were many—war, poverty, instability, persecution at home and opportunity, refuge, and liberty abroad. But manna didn’t simply fall from the sky in America. Immigrants from Eastern Europe confronted many of the same challenges migrants do everywhere—exploitation, hardship, and discrimination.

Thresholds is a REEES podcast series that will grapple with these histories through interviews with scholars and immigrants’ personal profiles. What pushed them to leave? What did they discover when they arrived? How did they change and be changed by American society? What opportunities and challenges did they face to become “American”? And what can we learn about immigration today?

Guest:

Yelena immigrated to the United States in 1979 as part of the wave of Soviet Jewish emigration. She’s a retired engineer and lives in Reading, Pennsylvania.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the last century, tens of millions of people quit Eastern Europe for the United States. The push-pull factors were many—war, poverty, instability, persecution at home and opportunity, refuge, and liberty abroad. But manna didn’t simply fall from the sky in America. Immigrants from Eastern Europe confronted many of the same challenges migrants do everywhere—exploitation, hardship, and discrimination.

Thresholds is a REEES podcast series that will grapple with these histories through interviews with scholars and immigrants’ personal profiles. What pushed them to leave? What did they discover when they arrived? How did they change and be changed by American society? What opportunities and challenges did they face to become “American”? And what can we learn about immigration today?

Guest:

Julia Alekseyeva immigrated to United States from Kyiv, Ukraine, in 1992. She’s Assistant Professor of English and Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She’s the author of Soviet Daughter: A Graphic Revolution and Antifascism and the Avant-Garde: Radical Documentary in the 1960s and Antifascism and the Avant-Garde: Radical Documentary in the 1960s.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the last century, tens of millions of people quit Eastern Europe for the United States. The push-pull factors were many—war, poverty, instability, persecution at home and opportunity, refuge, and liberty abroad. But manna didn’t simply fall from the sky in America. Immigrants from Eastern Europe confronted many of the same challenges migrants do everywhere—exploitation, hardship, and discrimination.

Thresholds is a REEES podcast series that will grapple with these histories through interviews with scholars and immigrants’ personal profiles. What pushed them to leave? What did they discover when they arrived? How did they change and be changed by American society? What opportunities and challenges did they face to become “American”? And what can we learn about immigration today?

Guest:

Claudia Sadowski-Smith is Professor of English at Arizona State University. She is the author of The New Immigrant Whiteness: Race, Neoliberalism, and Post-Soviet Migration to the United States published by NYU Press.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the last century, tens of millions of people quit Eastern Europe for the United States. The push-pull factors were many—war, poverty, instability, persecution at home and opportunity, refuge, and liberty abroad. But manna didn’t simply fall from the sky in America. Immigrants from Eastern Europe confronted many of the same challenges migrants do everywhere—exploitation, hardship, and discrimination.

Thresholds is a REEES podcast series that will grapple with these histories through interviews with scholars and immigrants’ personal profiles. What pushed them to leave? What did they discover when they arrived? How did they change and be changed by American society? What opportunities and challenges did they face to become “American”? And what can we learn about immigration today?

Guest:

Nina Bogdan is a historian and cultural preservationist. She recently authored the “Russian American Historic Context Statement” for the San Francisco City Planning Department as part of the Citywide Cultural Resources Survey. She’s the author of Before We Disappear into Oblivion: San Francisco’s Russian Diaspora from Revolution to Cold War published by McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the last century, tens of millions of people quit Eastern Europe for the United States. The push-pull factors were many—war, poverty, instability, persecution at home and opportunity, refuge, and liberty abroad. But manna didn’t simply fall from the sky in America. Immigrants from Eastern Europe confronted many of the same challenges migrants do everywhere—exploitation, hardship, and discrimination.

Thresholds is a REEES podcast series that will grapple with these histories through interviews with scholars and immigrants’ personal profiles. What pushed them to leave? What did they discover when they arrived? How did they change and be changed by American society? What opportunities and challenges did they face to become “American”? And what can we learn about immigration today?

Guest:

David Roediger is the Foundation Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History at the University of Kansas. He is the author of Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs published by Basic Books.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the last century, tens of millions of people quit Eastern Europe for the United States. The push-pull factors were many—war, poverty, instability, persecution at home and opportunity, refuge, and liberty abroad. But manna didn’t simply fall from the sky in America. Immigrants from Eastern Europe confronted many of the same challenges migrants do everywhere—exploitation, hardship, and discrimination.

Thresholds is a REEES podcast series that will grapple with these histories through interviews with scholars and immigrants’ personal profiles. What pushed them to leave? What did they discover when they arrived? How did they change and be changed by American society? What opportunities and challenges did they face to become “American”? And what can we learn about immigration today?

Guest:

Tara Zahra is the Hanna Holborn Gray Professor of East European History at the University of Chicago. She’s the author of The Great Departure: Mass Migration and the Making of the Free World published by W. W. Norton & Company.

Thresholds was edited and produced by Jojo Ellis and Sean Guillory.

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Theme song: "Immigration Rose" by James Doherty, 1924.

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The Georgian Democratic Republic lasted a mere three years, from 1918-1921. And though it was viewed as an oddity at the time, many European social democrats marveled at its possibilities. Here was a state committed to social democracy in a mostly backward peasant and multiethnic country. What promises did it hold for the future? Unfortunately, the world never learned because the Bolsheviks crushed it in 1921 and proceeded to sovietize Georgia. The republic was denounced as counter revolutionary and its memory faded as its founders died in exile. So what was this brief experiment in social democracy in the south Caucasus? What were its political positions and aspirations? What does it say about the history of the Russian Revolution? How and why did it fall after only three years? Stephen Jones has been researching these questions for over 40 years, and that has culminated in his opus The First Social Democracy: The Democratic Republic of Georgia, 1918-1921. The Eurasian Knot spoke to Jones about his highly anticipated book to learn more about this historical “oddity” and how it might speak to us today.

Guest:

Stephen Jones is Professor of Georgian Modern History at Ilia State University in Georgia. His books include Socialism in Georgian Colors: The European Road to Social Democracy, 1883-1917 and Georgia: A Political History Since Independence. His latest book is The First Social Democracy: The Democratic Republic of Georgia, 1918-1921 published by Harvard University Press.

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Everyone has an opinion about the late Russian historian Richard Pipes. Some loved him. Many hated him. He was a conservative and anti-communist. A hardliner on American policy toward the Soviet Union. Some would even say he was a Russophobe and cultural essentialist. But Pipes was a far more complicated figure. A Polish Jew whose family fled before the Nazis arrived, Pipes possessed a strong moral center that stood at the heart of his rejection of the USSR. He eventually applied his vision to his work as a Russian historian at Harvard. Pipes was also at the ground floor of a new academic discipline. He studied under Michael Karpovich, the founder of Russian studies in the US, and was part of a grad cohort that included Russian history Brahmins Leopold Haimson, Marc Raeff, Martian Malia, and Nicholas Raisonovsky. All these men would staff history departments at Berkeley, Harvard, and Columbia, and train a generation of scholars. Pipes knew his stuff, and eventually applied his knowledge in public debate and advice to the Reagan Administration. Pipes was a man of the 20th century, and in my opinion, one of the last serious intellectual conservatives. So who was he? How did he “know” Russia? And in what ways does his historical analysis of Russia, which spanned centuries, echo today? The Eurasian Knot spoke to Jonathan Daly, a former Pipes student, about his new biography of Pipes, The Man Who Knew Russia, and what drove this self-identified perennial outsider. 

Also, check out my article “Richard Pipes, the Historian as Essentialist” published in Jacobin in 2018.

Guest:

Jonathan Daly teaches Russian, European, and world history at the University of Illinois Chicago. He’s the author of several books, most recently he edited Pillars of the Profession: The Correspondence of Richard Pipes and Marc Raeff and wrote The Man Who Knew Russia: Richard Pipes, Humanist and Cold Warrior published by Stanford University Press.

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Marc Bennets has been reporting from Russia for over two decades. He’s covered Putin’s rise and consolidation of power, assassinations of oppositionists, mass protests, daily life, and even Russian football. It’s a storied career filled with zipping back and forth between Moscow and its regions. Marc also planted roots. He got married and became a dad. But then everything changed in February 2022 with Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine. Should he stay and keep reporting and risk arrest or worse? Or should he pick up his life and family and leave like so many of his colleagues? Marc finally settled on the latter when word came he might be arrested. Now he focuses most of his reporting on the war and Ukraine. How did this all happen? How did Russia descend into madness? Marc’s new book looks to answer that question with personal fire and passion. Is Russia really saturated with Putin? Is there any way back? It’s been a decade since the Eurasian Knot spoke with Marc. So, we caught up and discussed his new book, The Descent: Witnessing Russia's Spiral Into Madness Under Putin, and how the war has irrevocably changed his life, profession, and Russia itself.

Guest:

Marc Bennetts spent 25 years as a foreign correspondent for The Times and The Sunday Times in Russia. He left in May 2022, after the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He has since made over a dozen reporting trips to Ukraine. He’s the author of The Descent: Witnessing Russia's Spiral Into Madness Under Putin published by Bloomsbury.

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