Episodes

When societies are in crisis, people tend to seek alternative belief systems to give them comfort, explain a complex world, or fill a space left vacant by discredited ideologies and faiths. Like the embrace of spiritualism af...

As a Cold War kid, I remember the intense rivalry between the United States and USSR during the Olympics. Of course, we remember the US’ boycott in 1980 because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. And the Soviet boycott in...

A quick scan of the hundreds of books on US-Russia relations gives the impression that the two countries only met in the 20th century. But relations go back to the early days of the American republic. And, surprisingly, throu...

The history of borders and nations in Eastern Europe is fraught. What we even call the region is a site of contestation. Is it “Eastern Europe,” “Central Europe,” or “East Central Europe”? For Pitt historian Gregor Thum, spac...

What is Russia? There’s no easy answer. Travelers, scholars, philosophers, and journalists have pondered the question for centuries. And though answers vary, there is one point of consensus–whatever Russia is, you won’t find ...

A decade ago, Vladimir Alexandrov published an excellent biography, The Black Russian , about an unknown historical figure–Fredrick Bruce Thomas. Thomas was a Black Mississippian who moved to Imperial Russia and became a succ...

Alexander II’s Great Reforms were sweeping. They freed over 22 million serfs, overhauled the judicial, university, and municipal systems, and loosened censorship, among others. It was one of those pivot points in Russian hist...

I love street art. And I don’t care in what form. Beautifully crafted murals. Spraypainted gang tags. Scrawls on bathroom stalls. Even guerilla sticker mosaics on streetlights. I especially like how street art alters the narr...

A new youth subculture emerged in the Soviet Union in the late 1940s and early 1950s–the Stiliagi. Roughly translated as “the stylish,” these youths, the majority of whom were men, wore flashy hairstyles and bright colored cl...

Soviet ideology called for the emancipation of women. Soviet women would be active participants in public life, unburdened by the home, children, and husbands, and serve equally in the building and defense of the Soviet state...

About two years ago, I was brought on to a podcast project started by the Global Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh. The initial pitch was to produce a student-led podcast featuring two threatened artists that are...

What is peat? We had no idea until the Eurasian Knot spoke to Katja Bruisch about how this coal-like soil was an energy source in Russia and the Soviet Union. Found in wetlands, peat is the extracted top soil that is dried an...

I’ve grown to admire historians like Catherine Merridale. You know, those historians who buck academic conventions to write for a non-academic audience. This was quite a change for me since I used to hold such work in contemp...

The Prussian city of Konigsberg is well-known as the birthplace of Immanuel Kant. But in many ways it’s also a microcosm for the twentieth century. Founded in the 13th century by Teutonic knights, the city served as a key tra...

There’s a paradox at the center of Elana Resnick’s book, Refusing Sustainability: Race and Environmentalism in a Changing Europe . EU policies of environmental sustainability in Bulgaria require the racialization of Romani in...

There are many stereotypes about Russia. But perhaps one of the strangest is that Russians prefer a strong hand, are politically passive, even apolitical, and rebellion just isn’t in their DNA. This belief requires a hefty do...

After 1917, San Francisco’s small Russian community exploded with new arrivals. Over the next decade, thousands quit Soviet Russia, often via the Far East or China, to escape revolution and civil war. Arrival in America, howe...

What power do jokes have in authoritarian societies? I’ve been thinking about this recently as Trump further consolidates power. Turn on any American late-night show and it’s one joke about Trump after another. It’s easy for ...

Games have a long history. Several are centuries old. But a new crop of games has emerged over the last century. Elaborate board games, role playing games, and of course, video games. Today, video games are one of the most co...

This week we check-in with frequent EK guest Brian Milakovsky to learn about the destruction of forests in Ukraine. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014, and its full-scale assault in 2022, war has destroyed much of the...

As frequent listeners know, my advisor and friend Arch Getty passed away from cancer a few months ago. I was recently in Los Angeles to attend his memorial. I got to catch up with fellow grad students and friends. One was Jam...

In 1912, a strike of 18,000 restaurant and hotel workers in New York City birthed the Hotel and Restaurant Employees International, a union representing tens of thousands of Manhattan’s service workers. The union still exists...

What does it mean for the city to be a symphony? True, city symphonies are a silent film genre best represented by Dziga Vertov and Walter Ruttmann. These early silent films tried to capture the “sound” of the city by editing...

In early October 1993, tanks pummeled the Russian Duma in central Moscow. It was a dark mirror of just two years prior when Boris Yeltsin definitely climbed atop a tank and made history. Now, tanks were again Yeltsin’s histor...