At the core of Ro’i’s work are three separate surveys he conducted in 1992-93 in 11 of 15 countries of the former Soviet Union (FSU), with those omitted - the Baltic republics and Georgia - accounting for 5% of afgan...
]]>One of the main points of this book is to counter Euro-centric narratives of what the author called the “Soviet Second World War”. It argues for a consideration of the Asian dimension of the war, the eastern front, which is usually forgotten by historians, although Stalin refers to both in his speech on 2 September 1945. Edele points out that for some Soviet citizens, the Second World War w...
]]>Two central concepts in this book are mobilization and uncertainty, and the key question the book aims to answer is: "How do ordinary people navigate uncertainty to make mobilization decisions in civil war? Specifically, how did the Abkhaz go from the uncertainty created by the events of mid-August 1992 to a range of decisions about whether and in what capacity to mobilize? Why did some join the war effort, while others escaped the fighting?" (p. 1)
The book is comprised of seven chapters, maps, and figures. In the introduction, Anastasia Shesterinina describes the extensive fieldwork she carried out between 2010 and 2013, collecting firsthand ...
]]>Allen Frank's contribution to this field involves using an approach and method that he employed in his previous book on miracles in the Gulag, focusing on the Kazakhs. The aim is to give a voice to emic narratives (provided by the actors themselves) in the local language, belonging to genres or literary forms of the Kazakh tradition, and to open up a new perspective on the experiences of Central Asian Muslims in the great Soviet disciplinary institutions, such as the Gulag or the Army.
In this book, Allen Frank focuses on Kazakh conscripts in the Red Army who were mobilized both at the front and behind the lines, as soldiers or wor...
]]>In ‘A Loss’, Olesya Khromeychuk, a historian and writer, tells the story of her brother’s death on the frontlines of the war in eastern Ukraine in 2017. Although Khromeychuk is a trained historian, this is not a typical academic monograph. Rather, in this slim volume which is part memoir, part essay, Khromeychuk shares an intensely personal account of the loss of her brother, Volodymyr Pavliv.
It is a rare experience to read such an intimate book by an academic. In most disciplines, the personal and professional remain separate. But here we find a very personal tale of the author’s relationship with her brother, and experience of his death. It is a brave and generous endeavour by ...
]]>