The Eurasian Knot

Wendy Goldman has researched and written about the Soviet Union for almost 40 years. And her topics have been wide ranging– women, feminism, revolution, labor, political violence, war and survival. But if there is one throughline in her work, it is social history. Goldman is primarily concerned with the experience of working people. Their life worlds. Their trials and tribulations. Their agency in the construction of the Soviet system. Warts and all. The Eurasian Knot spoke to Wendy Goldman in her office at Carnegie Mellon University to hear about her experience as a historian, a woman, and a social historian and how this has shaped her understanding of Soviet socialism, politics, and history.Guest:Wendy Goldman is Wendy Goldman, Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of History, is a social and political historian of Russia. She’s the author of several books on Soviet history. Her most recent work (with Donald Filtzer) is Fortress Dark and Stern: The Soviet Home Front during World War II published by Oxford University Press.Books discussed in this episode:Women, State, and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917-1936.Women at the Gates: Gender and Industry in Stalin's Russia. Terror and Democracy in the Age of Stalin: The Social Dynamics of Repression.Inventing the Enemy: Denunciation and Terror in Stalin’s Russia.Fortress Dark and Stern: The Soviet Home Front during World War II.Send us your sounds! PatreonKnotty News

Water is life. A cliché and undeniable reality. So, what happens when climate change imperils water access? This episode, the second in our Eurasian Environments series, features a discussion with Sarah Cameron and Enda Wangui on water in two far flung regions—the Aral Sea and East Africa. How does the increasing scarcity of water impact these two arid climates? Cameron and Wangui address the environmental challenges in Central Asia and East Africa. They shed light on how colonial legacies disrupted traditional land access and ownership and climate change’s profound social and ecological impact on water politics, tradition, gender relations and migration patterns.Guests:Sarah Cameron is an associate professor of history at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the author of The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan published by Cornell University Press. At present, she is at work on a new book, Aral: Life and Death of a Sea, about the causes and consequences of the demise of Central Asia’s Aral Sea. Edna Wangui is currently the chair of the Geography Department at Ohio University. Her research examines the impacts of climate change, rural development, contemporary agriculture and rural land on gender roles and relations among pastoralists and other marginalized communities in East Africa. She has published several articles on these issues as book chapters and peer-reviewed journals.Listen to more tracks from Die Blutleuchte's RUS.Send us your sounds! PatreonKnotty News

Debates about climate change and what to do about it occur a perilous political climate. It’s a problem that requires international cooperation. But elected politicians increasingly deny climate change, break global agreements, turn inward, and embrace authoritarianism. It’s a situation that both Eve Darian-Smith and Boris Schneider know well. Darian-Smith has written about the right-wing political responses to climate change, particularly to devastating fires, in the US, Brazil, and Australia. Schneider watches climate policy in Eurasia. What are some of the issues that intersect these regions? Are there shared ideological and policy actions? And what of resistance by climate groups hoping to stem the tide? These questions and more, are in this first episode of a six-part interview series “Eurasian Environments: Climate Justice and Sustainability in Global Context.” In each episode, experts on Eurasia are put in dialogue with those focusing on Europe, Africa, and Latin America. Guests:Eve Darian-Smith is a Distinguished Professor and Chair in the Department of Global Studies and International Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Her latest award-winning book is Global Burning: Rising Antidemocracy and the Climate Crisis published by Stanford University Press.Boris Schneider is a political economist. As co-host of The Eurasian Climate Brief podcast, he looks into underreported climate & energy stories in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. In addition to that, he tracks Europe’s move to climate neutrality as European Programme Manager at Clean Energy Wire (CLEW).Send us your sounds! PatreonKnotty News

In 1916, the German anthropologist Rudolf Pöch and musicologist Robert Lach set out to the Eger prisoner of war camp with a unique research agenda: to record the language and folk songs of Georgian prisoners from the Russian Empire. The recording equipment was clunky and its recordings scratchy and faint. Nevertheless, Pöch and Lach were doing some innovative recordings, not just in terms of their ethnographic research, but using multi-channel recording to capture Georgian polyphonic singing. What were these recordings for? How did they fit into theories of race science of the time? And just who was Lavrosi Mamaldze, the Georgian singer these recordings documented? The Eurasian Knot wanted to learn more and sat down with Brian Fairley to talk about his deep dive into early twentieth century audio recording in WWI POW camps.Guest:Brian Fairley is the UCIS Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh. He studies song, sound, and media across historical and ethnographic settings. His manuscript, “Separating Sounds: A Media History of Georgian Polyphony,” excavates a series of experimental recordings of Georgian music from 1916 to today, showing how prominent scholars and scientists repeatedly tried to capture this elusive musical tradition on record.Send us your sounds! PatreonKnotty News

Neoliberalism has so many meanings that some say it has no meaning. Nailing down a consensus is also hampered by the fact that no one calls themselves a “neoliberal.” There’s even calls to abandon the term altogether since it’s become more a slur than doctrine needing analysis. Enter Max Trecker. He took the debate over neoliberalism as an opportunity to investigate its intellectual origins in the 1920s and 1930s. What did it mean then? What was neoliberal thought a reaction to? And what would those neoliberals think today? Also, in this interview, Max talks about an additional project: How Ukraine has been imagined as an economic space. It’s an issue not only of historical import, but enormous relevance today as Ukraine plans its postwar future.Guest:Max Trecker is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the History Department at the University of Pittsburgh and an economic historian and postdoctoral researcher at the Leibniz Institute for History and Culture of Eastern Europe in Leipzig, Germany. He’s the author of Red Money for the Global South: East-South Economic Relations in the Cold War published by Routledge.Send us your sounds! PatreonKnotty News

In 1941, as Nazi forces laid siege to Leningrad, a group of Soviet botanists faced an unthinkable choice: eat their life’s work, a rare seed bank, or starve to death. This is the dilemma at the heart of Simon Parkin’s story about the world's first seed bank and its dedicated botanists. At the heart of this tale is Nikolai Vavilov, a brilliant botanist who traveled five continents collecting specimens before falling victim to Stalin's purges. Through meticulous research and newly accessed archives, Parkin reveals a vivid tale of the sacrifice of 19 scientists during the siege’s 900 days. The Eurasian Knot spoke to Parkin to learn more about Vavilov’s seed bank, the moral dimensions of choosing science over death, and how their legacy lives on in modern agriculture.Guest:Simon Parkin is a British author and journalist. He is contributing writer for the New Yorker, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and the author of three narrative non-fiction books, including The Island of Extraordinary Captives, winner of The Wingate Literary Prize. His new book is The Forbidden Garden: The Botanists of Besieged Leningrad and Their Impossible Choice published by Simon and Shuster.Send us your sounds! PatreonKnotty News

Vladimir Kozlov’s new book Shramy (Scars) explores street battles between anti-fascists and neo-Nazi skinheads in Moscow during the late 2000s. Kozlov is no stranger to these subcultures. He’s long been involved in Russian punk. And though he never participated in these street battles himself, his failed attempt to make a documentary about Antifa for Russian television gave him an inside look at the scene. Now, almost two decades later, Kozlov uses Shramy to reflect on the roots of Russian fascism in light of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. How did elements of neo-Nazi subculture seep into the Russian mainstream? And how does the Putin regime manipulate “Nazism” and “anti-fascism” for its own domestic and geopolitical ends? The Eurasian Knot spoke to Kozlov about his punk past, how they shaped the writing of Shramy, and how violence, ideology, and the complexities of Russian society have led to public support for the war in Ukraine.Guest:Vladimir Kozlov is a writer and filmmaker born in Mogilev in the Belarussian Soviet Socialist Republic. He spent his youth in the suburbs of that city, witnessing the collapse of the Soviet empire and a bizarre mix of unbridled freedom, wild capitalism and rampant crime in the early 1990s. He lived in Moscow until he went into exile in 2022 following his condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Kozlov is the author of more than a dozen books that have been published in translation in the United States, France, Serbia and Slovakia. His most recent book is Shramy. You can read an English excerpt of Shramy here.Send us your sounds! PatreonKnotty News

Who speaks for whom within the Romani rights movement today? This is the question that drives Adriana Helbig’s investigation into the relationship between development aid and Romani musicians in her book, Resounding Poverty. Her findings are crucial as are provocative: NGOs unintentionally perpetuate narratives of Romani life that continue to marginalize the poorest among them. And while aid is crucial, it also fails to address issues of poverty, community, and health particularly in rural areas. The Eurasian Knot spoke to Helbig about the fraught and complicated presence of NGOs in postsocialist space, the tensions between aid and agency, the pressure Romani musicians face to perform "gypsiness" for non-Romani audiences, and her personal insights about conducting research in Ukraine and how her own family history intersects with her academic work. We even listen to some music by the Carpathian Ensemble, a University of Pittsburgh student group that Helbig directed. highlighting the challenges and rewards of representing Romani music in an academic context.Guest:Adriana N. Helbig is Associate Professor of Music and former Assistant Dean of Undergraduates at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of Hip Hop Ukraine: Music, Race, and African Migration. Her most recent book is ReSounding Poverty: Romani Music and Development Aid published by Oxford University Press.Send us your sounds! PatreonKnotty News

The 2024 UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) ended in late November in Baku. Two weeks of intense climate negotiations unveiled deep divides—particularly between the Global North and South over climate finance and contentious debates on the right wording of transitioning away from fossil fuels.In this episode Angelina Davydova and Boris Schneider dissect the outcomes of the conference, offering insights into the broader implications for climate action, both globally and in Central Asia. Joining the conversation is Kyrgyz journalist Anastasia Bengard, who attended COP29 as a fellow of the Climate Change Media Partnership (CCMP) programme. She shares her firsthand observations from the conference, shedding light on the positions and statements of her home country and Central Asia at large, as detailed in her reporting for 24.kg.Tune in as we delve into the complex narratives and challenges that will define the future of climate action across Central Asia - and beyond.The Eurasian Climate Brief is a podcast dedicated to climate issues in the region stretching from Eastern Europe to Russia down to the Caucasus and Central Asia.This episode is supported by n-ost & eurasianet and made by:Angelina Davydova, environmental/climate journalist. Editor of the magazine "Environment and Rights", co-host of the podcast The Day After Tomorrow ("Posle Zavtra"). Environmental projects coordinator with the Dialogue for Understanding e. V (Berlin). Fellow with the Institute for Global Reconstitution (Berlin). Observer of the UN climate negotiations (UNFCCC) since 2008. Expert/editor of the Ukraine War Environmental Consequences Work Group.Boris Schneider, political economist. European Programme Manager at Clean Energy Wire CLEW (Berlin). Has worked as a specialist on Eastern European climate and energy topics, amongst others for n-ost and the German Economic Team.Reports cited in the episode:Open Letter on COP reformAfter a disappointing COP29, here’s how to design global climate talks that might actually workWe are not so naive anymore (Anastasia Bengard's interview with Edil Baisalov, Deputy Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers of Kyrgyzstan)Jingle: Natallia Kunitskaya alias MustelideSound editing & mixing: Angelo Tripkovsky