The Eurasian Knot

An overlooked destination for thousands immigrating out of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union was Mexico. The reasons were many. Jews fled anti-semitic violence. Religious groups like the Molokans left because of persecution. Many more left in the wake of war, revolution, famine, and political repression. Regardless, Mexico was a viable alternative with the US borders closed to immigration in the interwar period. Collectively known as Los Rusos, these “Russians” built new lives, integrated into Mexican society, or eventually ended up in Los Angeles with the help of some dubious “ethnopolitical entrepreneurs.” Who were the Los Rusos? What was their immigrant experience like? How did the weather during the years of anti-communist hysteria, spy mania, and xenophobia? And why has Mexico eluded our attention as a destination for refugees from the Russian empire? The Eurasian Knot spoke to Andrew Jenks about his new book, Los Rusos: The Russian Departure to Mexico and Southern California, 1900-1965, to learn more.Guest:Andrew Jenks is a professor of history at California State University Long Beach. He has published books on the history of space exploration, folk art, the environment, and migration. He’s the author of Los Rusos: The Russian Departure to Mexico and Southern California, 1900–1965 published by Cornell University Press.

When did Putin decide to invade Ukraine? Was it shortly after 2012 when he returned as President? In 2014, after the seizure of Crimea and clashes in the Donbas? Or was it when Russian forces began massing at the Ukraine-Russia-Belarus borders for a full-scale assault? The answer to when, Michael Kimmage says, is important because that would tell us what drove Putin and what might be necessary to bring a diplomatic solution. The Ukraine War has been raging longer than WWI and WWII with no end in sight. And Kimmage argues that the global context and ramifications need analysis. The Ukraine War is the most documented war in history and we might not have all the information to answer “why?” for years, maybe decades. Kimmage recently gave a talk at the University of Michigan's Center for Russian, East European, & Eurasian Studies on the origins of the Ukraine War, and Rusana, the Eurasian Knot’s Midwest correspondent, sat down with him for a wide ranging interview.In the interview, Rusana and Michael discussed the Kennan Institute’s project on the origins of the Ukraine war. You can watch the available videos here. Also, check out the Kennan’s Dispatches for reports from Ukraine.Guest:Michael Kimmage is the Director of Kennan Institute. He’s also a professor of history at the Catholic University of America. He publishes widely on international affairs and on U.S. policy toward Russia. His latest book is Collisions: The War in Ukraine and the Origins of the New Global Instability published by Oxford University Press.

The fact that the USSR executed its citizens with little jurisprudence is well known. The word “troika” is synonymous with Stalinist repressions of the 1930s. What is less known is that the Soviet Union’s death penalty regime changed significantly in the postwar period. After a brief moratorium adopted by Stalin(!) in 1947, Khrushchev revived capital punishment in 1954 as part of his war on crime. Homicide became a capital offense. The application of the death penalty became professionalized with lawyers, forensics, psychologists, and an appeals process. The narrative of appeals for clemency also changed. Whereas those from the prewar generation often cited a convict’s service to the Soviet state, supplicants after the 1960s portrayed themselves as abandoned by the welfare state. In Fate in My Hands, Yana Skorobogatov looked at about a hundred of these death penalty cases and clemency appeals from 1954-1991 to understand this new regime. What were the circumstances of the crimes and their adjudication? How did those on death row make their appeals? And how did the Soviet system correspond with the death penalty in, say, the United States? Knowing nothing about the Soviet death penalty, the Eurasian Knot spoke to Skorobogatov about her book, Fate in My Hand: The Death Penalty in the Soviet Union, and what it means for the postwar USSR and for us as the death penalty once again appears on the political agenda.Guest:Yana Skorobogatov is the Gladys and Roland Harriman Assistant Professor of Russian and Soviet History in the Department of History at Columbia University. She’s the author of Fate in My Hands: The Death Penalty in the Soviet Union published by the University of Chicago Press.

We tend to think of the 1990s when it comes to Protestantism in Russia. It was then that evangelicals descended on Russia to shine Jesus’ light into the post-Soviet void. Yet, the Soviet Union, despite its best efforts, was a multiconfessional state. And though officially atheist, religious belief persisted, including among the Union’s small pockets of Protestants. Like with other faiths, the state’s relations with Protestants vacillated between repression, accommodation, and control. As Miriam Dobson says in her new book, The Unorthodox, things shifted after Stalin’s death. By the 1960s, regulating religious life fell under the purview of the Council of Religious Affairs. Sure, the state still emphasized atheism, closed churches, and prosecuted Protestants. But its methods were more surgical and the Council relied more on policing the margins over mass repression. So what was life like for the USSR’s Protestant minority? How did they practice their faith and maintain community despite pressures of family, society, and the state? And how did all of this connect to the larger Cold War context where the USSR’s archenemy was a Protestant majority country? The Eurasian Knot talked to Miriam about The Unorthodox to learn more about Protestant faith and community during the Cold War. Guest:Miriam Dobson is a Reader in Modern History at the University of Sheffield. She is the author of Khrushchev's Cold Summer: Gulag Returnees, Crime, and the Fate of Reform after Stalin and The Unorthodox: Soviet Protestants in Cold-War Ukraine and Russia published by Cornell University Press.

Over the last century, tens of millions of people quit Eastern Europe for the United States. The push-pull factors were many—war, poverty, instability, persecution at home and opportunity, refuge, and liberty abroad. But manna didn’t simply fall from the sky in America. Immigrants from Eastern Europe confronted many of the same challenges migrants do everywhere—exploitation, hardship, and discrimination.Thresholds is a REEES podcast series that will grapple with these histories through interviews with scholars and immigrants’ personal profiles. What pushed them to leave? What did they discover when they arrived? How did they change and be changed by American society? What opportunities and challenges did they face to become “American”? And what can we learn about immigration today?Guest:Olga immigrated to the United States from Moscow, Russia in 1990 as a child. She’s a high school teacher and lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Over the last century, tens of millions of people quit Eastern Europe for the United States. The push-pull factors were many—war, poverty, instability, persecution at home and opportunity, refuge, and liberty abroad. But manna didn’t simply fall from the sky in America. Immigrants from Eastern Europe confronted many of the same challenges migrants do everywhere—exploitation, hardship, and discrimination.Thresholds is a REEES podcast series that will grapple with these histories through interviews with scholars and immigrants’ personal profiles. What pushed them to leave? What did they discover when they arrived? How did they change and be changed by American society? What opportunities and challenges did they face to become “American”? And what can we learn about immigration today?Guest:Yelena immigrated to the United States in 1979 as part of the wave of Soviet Jewish emigration. She’s a retired engineer and lives in Reading, Pennsylvania.

Over the last century, tens of millions of people quit Eastern Europe for the United States. The push-pull factors were many—war, poverty, instability, persecution at home and opportunity, refuge, and liberty abroad. But manna didn’t simply fall from the sky in America. Immigrants from Eastern Europe confronted many of the same challenges migrants do everywhere—exploitation, hardship, and discrimination.Thresholds is a REEES podcast series that will grapple with these histories through interviews with scholars and immigrants’ personal profiles. What pushed them to leave? What did they discover when they arrived? How did they change and be changed by American society? What opportunities and challenges did they face to become “American”? And what can we learn about immigration today?Guest:Julia Alekseyeva immigrated to United States from Kyiv, Ukraine, in 1992. She’s Assistant Professor of English and Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She’s the author of Soviet Daughter: A Graphic Revolution and Antifascism and the Avant-Garde: Radical Documentary in the 1960s and Antifascism and the Avant-Garde: Radical Documentary in the 1960s.

Over the last century, tens of millions of people quit Eastern Europe for the United States. The push-pull factors were many—war, poverty, instability, persecution at home and opportunity, refuge, and liberty abroad. But manna didn’t simply fall from the sky in America. Immigrants from Eastern Europe confronted many of the same challenges migrants do everywhere—exploitation, hardship, and discrimination.Thresholds is a REEES podcast series that will grapple with these histories through interviews with scholars and immigrants’ personal profiles. What pushed them to leave? What did they discover when they arrived? How did they change and be changed by American society? What opportunities and challenges did they face to become “American”? And what can we learn about immigration today?Guest:Claudia Sadowski-Smith is Professor of English at Arizona State University. She is the author of The New Immigrant Whiteness: Race, Neoliberalism, and Post-Soviet Migration to the United States published by NYU Press.

Over the last century, tens of millions of people quit Eastern Europe for the United States. The push-pull factors were many—war, poverty, instability, persecution at home and opportunity, refuge, and liberty abroad. But manna didn’t simply fall from the sky in America. Immigrants from Eastern Europe confronted many of the same challenges migrants do everywhere—exploitation, hardship, and discrimination.Thresholds is a REEES podcast series that will grapple with these histories through interviews with scholars and immigrants’ personal profiles. What pushed them to leave? What did they discover when they arrived? How did they change and be changed by American society? What opportunities and challenges did they face to become “American”? And what can we learn about immigration today?Guest:Nina Bogdan is a historian and cultural preservationist. She recently authored the “Russian American Historic Context Statement” for the San Francisco City Planning Department as part of the Citywide Cultural Resources Survey. She’s the author of Before We Disappear into Oblivion: San Francisco’s Russian Diaspora from Revolution to Cold War published by McGill-Queen’s University Press.