The Eurasian Knot The Eurasian Knot



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.

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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.

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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.

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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.



A lot of interesting people pass through the University of Pittsburgh. And though I can’t catch them all, there are a few that I won’t to let go. The infamous Russian poet Dmitrii Bykov is one. Bykov visited Pittsburgh recently, and I didn’t hesitate to finagle a way to pull him into the studio. In this wide ranging conversation, Bykov spoke about the War in Ukraine, the role of art in politics, satire, his poisoning in 2019, protest, love and family. Bykov was quite an enjoyable guest–interesting, witty, and a good sense of humor. Be sure to check out this dive into the mind of Dmitrii Bykov.

Guest:

Dmitry Bykov is many things at once–a journalist, biographer, public intellectual, novelist, media personality, professor of literature, and poet. Bykov is the author of some 90 books, including five biographies, 12 novels, and 20 collections of poetry. He’s famous for “Citizen Poet” a series of YouTube videos where he satirizes Russian social and political realities through verse.

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Baku is an oil town. In the early 20th century, it attracted workers, foreign investors, criminals, and revolutionaries. Some key Bolsheviks cut their revolutionary teeth in Baku, Stalin among them. And after the Revolution, Soviet control of the South Caucasus came with a special prize: oil. In the 1920s, Baku oil was integral to Bolshevik control and state building. And to get that oil industry back up and churning, Moscow had to walk a fine line between national interests, local elites, and fragile institutions. How did the Bolsheviks understand and harness Baku’s black gold? How did political aspirations and economic realities shape Bolshevik policy? The Eurasian Knot sat down with Sara Brinegar to discuss her book Power and the Politics of Oil in the Soviet South Caucasus to find out.

Guest:

Sara Brinegar is an independent scholar based in the Washington, DC area. She was previously Digital Pedagogy Fellow and Freelance Researcher at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. She’s the author of The Power and Politics of Oil in the Soviet South Caucasus: Periphery Unbound, 1920-29 published by Bloomsbury.

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