New Books in Russian and Eurasian Studies

In 2014, a well-trained, mysterious band of mercenaries arrived in Ukraine, part of Russia's first attempt to claim the country as its own. Upon ceasefire, the “Wagner Group” faded back into shadow, only to reemerge in the Middle East, where they'd go toe-to-toe with the U.S., and in Africa, where they'd earn praise for “tough measures” against insurgencies yet spark outrage for looting, torture, and civilian deaths. As Russia gained a foothold of influence abroad, Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, known as “Putin's Chef,” went from caterer to commander to single greatest threat Putin has faced in his over-twenty-year rule. Dually armed with military and strategic prowess, the Wagner Group created a new market in a vast geopolitical landscape increasingly receptive to the promises of private actors. In this trailblazing account of the Group's origins and operations, Death Is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781639733361] (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025) by John Lechner-the only journalist to report across its many warzones-brings us on the ground to witness Wagner partner with fragile nation states, score access to natural resources, oust peacekeeping missions, and cash in on conflicts reframed as Kremlin interests. After rebelling, Prigozhin faced an epic demise-but Wagner lives on, its political, business, and military ventures a pillar of Russian operations the world over. Featuring exclusive interviews with over thirty Wagner Group members, Death Is Our Business is the terrifying true tale of the renegade militia that proved global instability is nothing if not an opportunity. John Lechner [https://www.johnlechnerauthor.com/about] is a journalist and an independent researcher and consultant to NGOs and other institutions working in Africa. He holds a master's degree in foreign service from Georgetown University. He speaks Russian, French, Turkish, Georgian, Chechen, Sango, and more. His reporting has been featured in outlets such as the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and the BBC and published in Foreign Policy, Lawfare, and War on the Rocks, among others. A native of Boston, Massachusetts, he lives in Washington, D.C. Stephen Satkiewicz [https://independent.academia.edu/StephenSatkiewicz] is an independent scholar whose research areas are related to Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, military history, War studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, as well as Russian and East European history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies]

Memory and truth are malleable and nowhere more so than in the Soviet Union.  To be a writer in that country was to face an ongoing dilemma: conform to State-mandated topics and themes, or consign oneself to obscurity, writing only for “the desk drawer” or “without permission.” Vasily Grossman challenged that binary choice, creating some of the most compelling and uncompromising fiction and journalism of the century, but also enduring heartbreaking censorship. Her excellent new biography, Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0300222785/?tag=newbooinhis-20] (Yale University Press, 2019) brings the life and work of this often-overlooked writer into brilliant focus. Biography of a writer — particularly one with Grossman’s output — can be tricky to pull off, but Popoff’s extensive research is elegantly arranged into a very readable narrative, in which we follow Grossman through the harrowing experiences of witnessing first hand, famine in the 1920s, the Terror of the 1930s, the carnage of World War II, and the dull ache of censorship in the post-war Soviet Union. Jennifer Eremeeva is an American expatriate writer who divides her time between Riga, Latvia, and New England.  Jennifer writes about travel, food, lifestyle, and Russian history and culture with bylines in Reuters, Fodor’s, The Moscow Times, and Russian Life.  She is the in-house travel blogger for Alexander & Roberts, and the award-winning author of  Lenin Lives Next Door:  Marriage, Martinis, and Mayhem in Moscow [https://amzn.to/2QbzIKW].  Follow Jennifer on Twitter [https://twitter.com/JWeremeeva], Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/jennifereremeeva/], and Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/jweremeeva] or visit jennifereremeeva.com for more information.    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies]

In this engaging life of the twentieth century’s most self-consciously learned dictator, Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read, how he read them, and what they taught him. Stalin firmly believed in the transformative potential of words, and his voracious appetite for reading guided him throughout his years. A biography as well as an intellectual portrait, Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780300179040] (Yale UP, 2022) explores all aspects of Stalin’s tumultuous life and politics. Stalin, an avid reader from an early age, amassed a surprisingly diverse personal collection of thousands of books, many of which he marked and annotated, revealing his intimate thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. Based on his wide-ranging research in Russian archives, Roberts tells the story of the creation, fragmentation, and resurrection of Stalin’s personal library. As a true believer in communist ideology, Stalin was a fanatical idealist who hated his enemies—the bourgeoisie, kulaks, capitalists, imperialists, reactionaries, counter-revolutionaries, traitors—but detested their ideas even more. Geoffrey Roberts is emeritus professor of history at University College Cork and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. A leading Soviet history expert, his many books include an award-winning biography of Zhukov, Stalin’s General, and the acclaimed Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War. Morteza Hajizadeh [https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos] is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. [https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies]

We Have Ceased to See the Purpose: Essential Speeches of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780268208585] (U Notre Dame Press, 2025) brings together ten of Nobel Prize–winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s most memorable and consequential speeches, delivered in the West and in Russia between 1972 and 1997. Following his exile from the USSR in 1974, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn lived and traveled in the West for twenty years before the fall of Communism allowed him to return home to Russia. The majority of the speeches collected in this volume straddle this period of exile, contemplating the materialism prevalent worldwide—forcibly imposed in the socialist East, freely chosen in the capitalist West—and searching for humanity’s possible paths forward. In beautiful yet haunting and prophetic prose, Solzhenitsyn explores the mysterious purpose of art, the two-edged nature of limitless freedom, the decline of faith in favor of legalistic secularism, and—perhaps most centrally—the power of literature, art, and culture to elevate the human spirit. These annotated speeches, including his timeless “Nobel Lecture” and “Harvard Address,” have been rendered in English by skilled translators, including Solzhenitsyn’s sons. The volume includes an introduction to the speeches, brief background information about each speech, and a timeline of the key dates in Solzhenitsyn’s life. Ignat Solzhenitsyn is a pianist and conductor based in New York City. The middle son of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, he is translator and editor of several of his father’s works in English. Daniel Moran’s writing about literature and film can be found on Pages and Frames [https://pagesandframes.substack.com/]. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers [https://ugapress.org/book/9780820352930/creating-flannery-oconnor/], he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the long-running podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics [https://newbooksnetwork.com/hosts/profile/b03ba330-e86b-47b0-b47a-319088be5448]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies]

Irina Nikifortchuk was 19 years old and a Ukrainian schoolteacher when she was abducted to be a forced laborer in the Leica camera factory in Nazi Germany. Eventually pulled from the camp hospital to work as a domestic in the Leica owners’ household, Irina survived the war and eventually found her way to Canada. Decades later Sasha Colby, Irina’s granddaughter, seeks out her grandmother’s story over a series of summer visits and gradually begins to interweave the as-told-to story with historical research. As she delves deeper into the history of the Leica factory and World War II forced labor, she discovers the parallel story of Elsie Kühn-Leitz, Irina’s rescuer and the factory heiress, later imprisoned and interrogated by the Gestapo on charges of “excessive humanity.” This is creative nonfiction at its best as the mystery of Irina’s life unspools skillfully and arrestingly. Despite the horrors that the story must tell, it is full of life, humor, food, and the joy of ordinary safety in Canada. The Matryoshka Memoirs: A Story of Ukrainian Forced Labour, the Leica Camera Factory, and Nazi Resistance [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781770417359] (ECW Press, 2023) takes us into a forgotten corner of history, weaving a rich and satisfying tapestry of survival and family ties and asking what we owe those who aid us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies]