New Books in Russian and Eurasian Studies

Charles KingView on Amazon[Crossposted from New Books in History] There's a concept I find myself coming back to again and again–"speciation." It's drawn from the vocabulary of evolutionary biology and means, roughly, the process by which new species arise. Speciation occurs when a species must adapt to new circumstances; the more new circumstances, the more new species. Thus one kind of Finch (to take a relevant example) becomes many kinds of Finches when those Finches are compelled to adapt to the circumstances presented by, say, a set of different Islands. To each Island its own Finch. The same process occurs in human history though we don't really have a name for it (though "ethnogenesis" comes close). When people of one culture spread to many different locales, their cultures "speciate," that is, become adapted to those new locales and thereby differentiate from the "parent" culture. This process can be very striking in places places where lots of different locales (however defined) are packed into a tiny geographic area. So it is in the Caucasus. Its geography is remarkably diverse, the result being a plethora of what are (to continue the analogy) separate ecological islands. As people moved from island to island, they speciated: their cultures adapted to local conditions and differentiated. To each island its own culture. This is why the Caucasus, though small, is so remarkably complex: it presents huge variety in a small space. And it is this complexity, together with the fact that the Caucusus stands at the nexus of three major empires (the Persian, Turkish, and Russian), that make its story so complicated. There are just a lot of moving parts in the "system." Happily, we have Charles King to help us make sense of it all. In The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus (Oxford, 2008), he draws together the many threads of Caucasian history into one rich, dense, though supple cloth. Much of the considerable beauty of this book is found precisely in Charles' ability to weave many complicated themes into one easy-to-follow story, and all in artful but not arty prose. This is a book you can read. Charles also pays considerable attention to the imaginary Caucusus, that is, the one that lived in the heads of the Persian, Turkish, and Russia imperialists who dominated the place for centuries, and the one that, at least in my case, continues to lead and mislead today. Suffice it to say that what you think you know about the Caucusus, you probably don't. So I suggest you pick up this book and let Charles remove the scales from your eyes. It's an enjoyable experience.

Deborah KapleView on Amazon[Crossposted from New Books in History] Here's something remarkable: at some point in the future, something you believe to be just fine will be utterly disdained by the greater part of humanity. For instance, it is at least imaginable that one day everyone will believe that zoos were [NB] profoundly immoral. The future will condemn us for imprisoning animals. The future will ask "How could they have done such a barbaric thing?" And the future, more than likely, will answer "Because they were evil." When looking into humanity's sordid past, we often say this sort of thing. Why did American slaveholders trade in human flesh? Because they were evil. Why did the Nazis persecute the Jews? Because they were evil. Why did the Khmer Rough murder countless innocent Cambodians? "Because they were evil," however, is not an explanation; it's an ethical judgment. It might make you feel morally superior; and indeed you might well be morally superior. But it will not help you comprehend anything. For if you really want to understand why seemingly ordinary people did what you feel are truly awful things, you have to listen to them explain why. In Gulag Boss: A Soviet Memoir (Oxford UP, 2010), Deborah Kaple gives us just this opportunity. She presents us with Fyodor Vasilevich Mochulsky–ordinary fellow, Communist Party member, and GULAG officer from 1940 to 1946. Born in Belorussia after the Revolution, Mochulsky was raised on Bolshevik ideas. Not surprisingly, he believed in the project; he wanted to help create a bright future for humankind. So he trained as an engineer, because building socialism was all about building in those days. In 1940, Mochulsky was tapped by the NKVD (it ran the GULAG system) to build railroads north of the Arctic Circle. He thereby came to control the lives of a great number of what were essentially slave-laborers. He, of course, did not see them as such. To him, they were "enemies of the people" and had received their just (if somewhat harsh) reward. Under his direction, many of them suffered and died. This bothered him a bit, but not enough to question "the system." He thought it was basically sound, though perhaps in need of better implementation. And that is the way he saw his role: he was improving "the system" without ever asking whether "the system" itself was bankrupt. Of course, looking back on what he did (he wrote the memoir in the 1990s), he has regrets. But he had none at the time. Mochulsky believed in what he was doing, just the way you believe that it's fine to imprison animals.

View on Amazon[Crossposted from New Books in History] I fear that most people think that "history" is "the past" and that the one and the other live in books. But it just ain't so. History is a story we tell about the past, or rather some small portion of it. The past itself is gone and cannot, outside science fiction, be revisited. And the histories in books are neither dead nor alive. They are zombies, endlessly repeating themselves, never having a new thought, never responding to anything you say. (Plato, by the way, is good on this subject.) In point of fact the only place that histories really live is in the minds of historians in the act of creation. In this context, the story is far from dead. Indeed, it hasn't even been born. As historians read, research, and think, they make histories like a carpenter makes a table. Readers rarely get to see the historical craftsmen at their benches. All they see is the result. Today we'll have the opportunity to look into the history workshop with Abbott ("Tom") Gleason. Tom has worked in academic history for nearly half a century. He has been everywhere, done everything, and faced every challenge a working historian can. And now he's written a terrific memoir about his path, and that of historians of his generation in general: A Liberal Education (TidePool Press, 2010). I came away from the book with a renewed appreciation of the hold Zeitgeist has on historians and their work. Tom was raised in a cultural milieu (the liberal WASP establishment) that has now largely vanished. That peculiar, specific context had a powerful impact (by his own admission, both positive and negative) on his historical opinions and writing. It was interesting for me to see how Tom, as a conflicted, thoughtful son of privilege, negotiated Harvard of the 1950s, academia in the 1960s, and the rise (and relative decline) of the Russian studies industry in the post war decades. With eyes wide open, he recognizes the limitations of his Cold-War scholarly cohort, the ways in which he and his colleagues saw some things while being oblivious to others. Sometimes they got Russia right; sometimes they didn't. But they were always on a quest to find the historical truth. Tom's memoir shows just how difficult that truth is to find.

Andrew GentesView on Amazon[Crossposted from New Books in History] Being "sent to Siberia" is practically a synonym for exile even in English-speaking countries. Why is this? In his fascinating new book Exile to Siberia, 1590-1822 (Palgrave, 2008), Andrew Gentes explains. And it's quite a story indeed. The tsars began to dispatch people to Siberia almost as soon as they "conquered" it in the sixteenth century (an interesting story in itself). Some of the exiles were criminals. Others were simply political enemies. But as Gentes demonstrates, Russian rulers sent them to this frozen vastness not only for the purposes of punishment, but also to populate Russia's new territories and make them productive, mostly via fur and mineral extraction. Long before the Soviet's founded the notrious GULag, Siberia was as much a work camp as a penal repository. And though the tsarist settlements were perhaps not as harsh (and certainly not as large) as their Soviet successors, they were still very nasty places. If tsarist-era exiles didn't die on the way to Siberia, they would very likely end their days there. America had a "Wild West." Russia had what we might call a "Deadly East." We should thank Andrew Gentes for showing it to us.

Robert GellatelyView on Amazon[Crossposted from New Books in History] Today we're pleased to feature an interview with Robert Gellately of Florida State University. Professor Gellately is a distinguished and widely read historian of Germany, with a particular focus on the Nazi period. He's the author of a number of path-breaking books, including The Politics of Economic Despair: Shopkeepers and German Politics, 1890-1914 (Sage Publications, 1974), The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933-1945 (Oxford University Press, 1990), and Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945 (Oxford University Press, 2001). Today we'll be discussing his most recent work Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007). Richard Pipes says of the book: "A most impressive account of the tragedies that befell the world during the first half of the twentieth century. Not the least merit of the book is that, unlike most historians who treat Lenin as a well-meaning idealist, he places him along side Stalin and Hitler as a founder of modern barbarism." I couldn't agree more.