New Books in Eastern European Studies

On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, the surprise invasion of the Soviet Union that opened the Eastern Front in World War II. With lightning speed and devastating success, the German army tore through Soviet territory and rolled over the Red Army, scoring some of the most dramatic victories in

How and when did Russia become a country of smokers? Why did makhorka and papirosy become ubiquitous products of tobacco consumption? Tricia Starks explores these themes as well as the connections between tobacco, gender, and empire in her latest monograph, Smoking Under the Tsars: A History of Tobacco in Imperial Russ

Violence and Propaganda in European Civil Wars explores the complex interplay between violence and propaganda during the continent's major civil conflicts in the first half of the 20th century. The book, edited by Yiannis Kokosalakis and Francisco J. Leira Castiñeira, uses a multidisciplinary approach to analyze how pr

Richard W. Harrison's The Soviet Army's High Commands in War and Peace, 1941-1992 (Casemate Academic, 2022) is the first full treatment of the unique phenomenon of High Commands in the Soviet Army during World War II and the Cold War. The war on the Eastern Front during 1941–45 was an immense struggle, running from the

In The Image of Christ in Russian Literature: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Pasternak (Northern Illinois University Press, 2018), Dr. John Givens of the University of Rochester discusses classics of Russian literature such as The Brothers Karamazov and Dr. Zhivago, as well as texts of less renown to English-speaking a

Officially, women in the Soviet Union enjoyed a degree of equality unknown elsewhere in Allied countries at the time. However, long-standing norms of gendered behavior and stereotypes that cast women as morally weak, politically fallible, and sexually tempting meant that women in the army or living behind enemy lines w