Jacob Mikanowski is a historian, author, and journalist whose book Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land is out now.

In this episode, we first touch on reasons why people believe that Eastern Europe is backward and why it’s ignored. We touch on the paradox of this by showcasing some important philosophical and literary contributions of this part of the world. We then discuss the legacy of this history in the post-socialist world and the reasons why the pro-democratic sentiment was lost in the 1990s. To contrast this democratic backsliding, we look at how Central and Eastern European countries led the way for Ukrainian support after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Lastly, we address what “the end of history” could actually look like in this part of the world.

You can purchase Jacob Mikanowski’s book here: https://shorturl.at/nBCEN

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Professor Hana Kubatova teaches at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University. Her main research interests are the Holocaust and its aftermath, topographies of violence, how ideas and ideologies travel, political religions, and more.

Prof. Kubatova is the author of The Jew in Czech and Slovak Imagination, 1938-89: Antisemitism, the Holocaust, and Zionism and Nepokrades!: Nalady a Postoje Slovenske Spolecnosti k Zidovske Otazce, 1938-1945.

Her upcoming book’s previous title was Where the Foxes Say Goodnight: Christian Nationalism and the Making of the Holocaust in Slovakia. The present working title is Christian Nationalism Nation-building and the Making of the Holocaust in Slovakia. It is set to be published in 2025 by Oxford University Press.

Small note: we do not touch on this change in the title until the end of the episode, so bear that in mind when listening.

The overall theme of this episode is on Slovakia’s role in the Holocaust and how that history has been revised since 1945. I hope you enjoy.

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David Dube is a Ph.D. student in Political Science at McGill University and a member of the Centre for International Peace and Security Studies. His research interests revolve around Central, Eastern European and Eurasian political trajectories, democratization, and the development of computational methods and artificial intelligence as tools of social inquiry.

In this episode, we first address why academics and analysts use colonialism to depict Soviet Russia’s relationship with Soviet Ukraine. Then we talk about whether there is validity to looking at history or political science through nationalist perspectives. We further discuss some examples where there is a tendency to revise the history of the region. Lastly, we briefly touch on Alexei Navalny’s death. In particular, we contemplate if there is hope to have a Russian opposition to Putin that does not have to fall into similar Russian imperialist beliefs about its history. I hope you enjoy.

For those who might be interested, here is some further reading:

The mentioned book by Sheila Fitzpatrick: Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s: https://shorturl.at/vGRV2

And here is a book on the famine of 1930-33 (Ukrainians call the "Holodomor") in Kazakhstan that we briefly mentioned in the episode as well: The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan: https://shorturl.at/wIQ15

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