The Eurasian Knot

• Birobidzhan

  Jews presented a particular national problem in the Soviet Union. Though seen as one of the many oppressed minorities in the Russian Empire, there were also a people without a national territory. The lack of Jewish “homeland” in the Soviet Union posed a theoretical problem as well. As Stalin declared, “a common territory is one of the characteristic features of a nation.” How then can Jews be a nation without a territory? Well, you create one. Enter Birobidzhan–an bold experiment to create a Jewish nation out of whole cloth in Siberia. But why in Siberia? Why did Jews settle there? What did they find? Birobidzhan was a failure by many measures. So what is its place in Jewish history? To get answers, the Eurasian Knot turned to Gennady Estraikh to talk about his short history of this unique chapter in Jewish history. Guest:Gennady Estraikh is an Emeritus Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. He has written and edited numerous books, including most recently Jews in the Soviet Union: After Stalin, The History of Birobidzhan: Building a Soviet Jewish Homeland in Siberia and Yiddish Literature under Surveillance: The Case of Soviet Ukraine published by Lexington Books.Send us your sounds! PatreonKnotty News Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Cold War Pen Pals

  During WWII, the Soviet Women’s Antifascist Committee started an experiment–a pen pal campaign with American women to promote the friendship between the United States and the USSR. The program began with fits and starts but eventually gained traction. So much so it continued into the early Cold War even as relations between the two countries quickly soured. Authorities on both sides considered the contact between women fairly safe. American and Soviet women corresponded about the legacy of the war, marriage, family, career, as well as more Cold War topics. Some of these pen pals even lasted several years. What were these intimate exchanges like? What did Soviet and American women counsel each other on? And what did they learn about each other and themselves? The Eurasian Knot wanted to learn more about this fascinating moment in Soviet-American relations and its meaning within the larger Cold War. So, we turned to Alexis Peri to talk about her fascinating new book, Dear Unknown Friend: The Remarkable Correspondence between American and Soviet Women published by Harvard University Press.Guest:Alexis Peri is Associate Professor of History at Boston University. Her first book, The War Within: Diaries from the Siege of Leningrad, won the Pushkin House Book Prize and was named in the Wall Street Journal as one of the ten best books on the Soviet home front. Her new book is Dear Unknown Friend: The Remarkable Correspondence between American and Soviet Women published by Harvard University Press.Send us your sounds! PatreonKnotty News Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Ukraine in the Global Food System

  Did you know that Ukraine is the fourth largest corn exporter globally? This is not the beginning of a Soviet joke. . . Ukraine plays a crucial role on the world food market. About sixty percent of its exports are agricultural products with destinations in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Ukraine also accounts for around one-sixth of the world wheat and barley markets and a staggering half of the world’s supply of sunflower oil. But Ukrainian agribusiness is under stress. Soviet and post-Soviet legacies abound. Climate change and depleted soil pose long term obstacles. And Russia’s invasion has only increased the calamity thanks to destruction, theft, and environmental damage. How do things look at the moment? In the fourth event in our Eurasian Environments series, the Eurasian Knot spoke to Susanne Wengle and Natalia Mamonova about Ukraine’s past and present place in the global food system, the impact of the war, and the prospects of renewal and recovery. Guests:Susanne Wengle is professor of Russian and Eurasian studies at Uppsala University and associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame. Her most recent book is Black Earth, White Bread: A Technopolitical History of Russian Agriculture and Food published by the University of Wisconsin Press.Natalia Mamonova is a senior researcher at RURALIS - Institute for Rural and Regional Research, Norway. Her current research at RURALIS mainly focuses on the impact of the war in Ukraine on the Ukrainian and global food systems.Send us your sounds! PatreonKnotty News Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Orthodoxy's Social Gospel

  In his memoir of life as a parish Orthodox priest in the 19th century, I. S. Belliustin wrote that the clergy was “humiliated, oppressed, downtrodden, they themselves have already lost consciousness of their own significance.” This is just one of several damning portraits Belliustin paints of his fellow holymen and the flock they tended. It’s an image that stuck, even among historians. But Daniel Scarborough says there’s another, brighter side to the story. Many Russian Orthodox parish priests also preached the social gospel. They served as mediators and informants between the state and peasantry, carried out social relief, taught literacy, and addressed other social ills. The most famous being Father Gapon, the priest that sparked the 1905 Revolution. Who were these priests? What social work did they do? And how did their actions intersect with the growing revolutionary movement in Imperial Russia? The Eurasian Knot sat down with Daniel Scarborough during a recent trip to Pittsburgh to find out more.Guest:Daniel Scarborough is an Assistant Professor of Russian history and religion at Nazarbayev University. His interests include the religious and intellectual history of late imperial Russia, the local history of Moscow and Tver, and Russia’s Silver Age. He’s the author of Russia’s Social Gospel: The Orthodox Pastoral Movement in Famine, War, and Revolution published by University of Wisconsin Press.Send us your sounds! PatreonKnotty News Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Kicking the Hydrocarbon Habit

  One daunting challenge to addressing climate change is to kick our addiction to hydrocarbons. But this is easier said than done. Hydrocarbons remain the fuel of modernity. And a transition to renewable energy requires massive state intervention. How do we get from our carbon-based present to a green future? Especially in regions like Eastern Europe and Chin, that still rely heavily on oil, gas and coal. In this third event in our series, Eurasian Environments, the Eurasian Knot has paired Pawel Cyzyak, an expert on energy in Eastern Europe, and Zhaojin Zeng, an economic historian of China, to discuss the legacies of state socialist economies, the challenges of transitioning to renewables, their past and present reliance on Russia, the role of geopolitics, and how a turn to EVs presents different challenges, especially as electricity is still generated by coal. Guests:Zhaojin Zeng is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Philosophy and Geography at Texas A&M University. His first book project is “Engineering Modern China: Industrial Factories and the Transformation of the Chinese Economy in the Long Twentieth Century.”Pawel Czyzak is an economist, engineer, expert on climate and energy policy, and author of several dozen publications on energy transformation in Europe. He is currently associated with the global energy think-tank Ember. As a consultant he has advised, among others, the largest European energy companies and the World Bank. He’s also an aspiring farmer.Send us your sounds! PatreonKnotty News Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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