The Eurasian Knot The Eurasian Knot



In 1935, two Soviet funny men, Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, set off to America. They didn’t emigrate. Or go to make an official state visit. Their mission, interestingly, was a particularly American one–to take a 10,000 mile road trip from New York to Hollywood and back. Armed with a used car, a map, and a Russian Jewish immigrant and his wife as translator and guide, the dynamic duo passed through cities big and small, the Midwest and the deep South, up and down the West and East coasts, and met a variety of people in between. Ilf and Petrov published their travelog as “One-Story America ” in 1937. What was the purpose of Ilf and Petrov’s road trip? Why a road trip? What did they think of America and Americans? And to what extent did their ideological lenses warp their perception of American realities? The Eurasian Knot put these questions and more to Lisa Kirschenbaum about her new book Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists: Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip published by Cambridge University Press.

Guest:

Lisa Kirschenbaum is an award-winning author whose research explores how individuals navigated the traumas of the twentieth century. Her books include Small Comrades: Revolutionizing Childhood in Soviet Russia, 1917–1932; The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995; and International Communism and the Spanish Civil War. Her most recent book is Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists: Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip published by Cambridge University Press.

Send us your sounds! euraknot.org/contact/

Patreon: www.patreon.com/euraknot

Knotty News: eurasianknot.substack.com/

The Knot’s Nest: eurasian-knot.sellfy.store/

Website: euraknot.org/



When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, they ignored one crucial issue: Islam. And not just in terms of faith, but Islam as a mobilizing force in Afghan society. It’s strange when you consider the long relationship the Soviets had with its own Muslim population. Yet they consistently saw Islam as having short roots or as a mere instrument of the US, Iran and Pakistan against Moscow. How to explain this blindness? And how did the Soviet Union’s reckoning with Islam prove to be too little too late? The Eurasian Know discussed this perplexing and crucial aspect of the Soviet-Afghan War at the center of his new book, A Slow Reckoning: The USSR, the Afghan Communists, and Islam.

Guest:

Vassily Klimentov is a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Zurich. Prior to this, he has worked for several years in the humanitarian field, including for two years in the Middle East. He’s the author of A Slow Reckoning: The USSR, the Afghan Communists, and Islam published by Cornell University Press.

Send us your sounds! euraknot.org/contact/

Patreon: www.patreon.com/euraknot

Knotty News: eurasianknot.substack.com/

The Knot’s Nest: eurasian-knot.sellfy.store/

Website: euraknot.org/



Convergence between the United States and Russia is most often expressed in socio-economic terms. Very rarely in regard to ideology. The political culture and history of the two nations are just too different. But the ideological convergence that was unthinkable decades ago is now not so easily dismissed when it comes to the far right. As Alexandar Mikahilovic explains in Illiberal Vanguard, rightists like Alexander Dugin and Kevin McDonald politically intersect. Steve Bannon keeps Lenin in his political toolkit. And American and Russian rightwing politics of homophobia, illiberalism, and ire for global elites are interchangeable. How did this convergence come to be? And what does it say about the United States and Russia in our present moment? The Eurasian Knot spoke to Alexandar Mikhailovic about this unlikely convergence between the American and Russian far-right.

Guest:

Alexandar Mihailovic is a Professor Emeritus of Russian and Comparative Literature at Hofstra University. He is the author of many books on Russian culture. His two most recent books are Screening Solidarity: Neoliberalism and Transnational Cinemas, co-authored with Patricia A. Simpson and Helga Druxes published by Bloomsbury and Illiberal Vanguard: Populist Elitism in the United States and Russia published by University of Wisconsin Press.

Send us your sounds! euraknot.org/contact/

Patreon: www.patreon.com/euraknot

Knotty News: eurasianknot.substack.com/

The Knot’s Nest: eurasian-knot.sellfy.store/

Website: euraknot.org/



The Soviet economy used a lot of wood. For fuel, construction, consumer products, even in military weaponry. Wood could be shaped and transformed. But wood was also finite–and trying to balance the demand with the supply in forests was a delicate dance. The Soviet forestry industry understood this, and developed a unique form of industrial ecology—a practical approach toward natural resources for the economy and society to extract wood in a sustainable way. This ecological sustainability is not about preserving the natural world, like we think today. Rather, Soviet sustainability was about maintaining supply for production. What did this mean in theory and practice in the Soviet economy? How was it applied to cutting of forests, especially the so-called virgin forests of Siberia? To learn more about the Soviet world of wood, the Eurasian Knot turned to Elena Kochetkova to learn about her book The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology.

Guest:

Elena Kochetkova an Associate Professor in Modern European Economic History at the Department of Archeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion at the University of Bergen. Her first book is The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology published by MIT Press.

Send us your sounds! https://euraknot.org/contact/ 

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/euraknot 

Knotty News: https://eurasianknot.substack.com/

The Knot’s Nest: https://eurasian-knot.sellfy.store/ 

Website: https://euraknot.org/



When Greta Uehling set out to do her fieldwork, she noticed that ordinary Ukrainians in the war torn region of Donbas practiced an “ethics of care.” These are the everyday acts often overlooked in a conflict–civilians engaging in mutual aid, volunteers collecting bodies, aid workers smuggling medicine across the line, and neighbors helping each other navigate the horrors of violence, loss, and deprivation. But not every act is one of solidarity. She was also attentive to how the war has split communities, families, lovers, and friends. How do we make sense of the war in Donbas since 2014 through the daily experiences of civilians? The Eurasian Knot sat down with Greta Uehling to talk about her new book, Everyday War: The Conflict over Donbas, Ukraine.

Guest:

Greta Uehling is a Teaching Professor at the University of Michigan. Her scholarship is broadly concerned with international migration and forced displacement. Previously, Uehling consulted with a number of international organizations including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the Watson Institute at Brown University. Her new book is Everyday War: The Conflict over Donbas, Ukraine published by Cornell University Press.

Send us your sounds! https://euraknot.org/contact/

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/euraknot

Knotty News: https://eurasianknot.substack.com/

The Knot’s Nest: https://eurasian-knot.sellfy.store/

Website: https://euraknot.org/



Communist Albania is often portrayed as a backwater, paranoid state with an eccentric dictator, Enver Hoxha. Basically, it was a joke, signified by the 750,000 bunkers littering the country. Of course, everyday life in Albania didn’t fit the stereotypes. Like many communist regimes, the Albanian Communist Party carried out a massive modernization campaign, a process that turned small agricultural communities into sites of industrial production. This is the story of Artan Hoxha’s microhistory Sugarland. The transformation of swampy Maliq into a major hub of sugar production. How did sugar transform the people of Maliq? And how did modernization in Albania intersect with that of postwar Europe? The Eurasian Knot spoke to Artan Hoxha about the impact of sugar on ordinary rural Albanian lives.

Guest:

Artan Hoxha is a historian of Southeastern Europe with a strong thematic interest in social and cultural transformations during the 20th century. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh and is currently a researcher at the Institute of History in Tirana, Albania. He’s the author of Sugarland: The Transformation of the Countryside in Communist Albania published by Central European University Press.