How Konigsberg Became Kaliningrad

The Prussian city of Konigsberg is well-known as the birthplace of Immanuel Kant. But in many ways it’s also a microcosm for the twentieth century. Founded in the 13th century by Teutonic knights, the city served as a key trading center for the Prussian Empire until the Polish corridor severed it from Germany after WWI. It is then that the history of Konigsberg takes an even more dramatic turn. Its “Germanness” became an object of debate and political exploitation. By the early 1930s, it had one of the highest votes for the Nazis in Germany. But then–WWII. Destroyed and depopulated by 1944, it became the first city to satisfy the Red Army appetite for revenge rape and pillaging. It became a Soviet possession after WWII and, like the rest of Eastern Europe, was sovietized into Kaliningrad. And even though the USSR is no more, it remains a part of the Russian Federation.The history of Konigsberg/Kaliningrad begs so many questions. Why Nazism? What was life there during the war? The Red Army violence but also its reconstruction into Kaliningrad? How did the Soviets handle their mortal German enemies after a war of annihilation? And how is this legacy seared into the city? The Eurasian Knot wanted to know more and turned to Nicole Eaton to learn more about her book, German Blood, Slavic Soil: How Nazi Königsberg Became Soviet Kaliningrad.Guest:Nicole Eaton is Associate Professor of History at Boston College where she teaches courses on the Soviet Union, Imperial Russia, modern Europe, authoritarianism, and mass violence. She’s the author of German Blood, Slavic Soil: How Nazi Königsberg Became Soviet Kaliningrad published by Cornell University Press. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I’ve been thinking about the use of “they” in our political rhetoric. In some respects, this third-person plural pronoun is indicative of politics. The “they” in politics often refers specifically to an entity–political party, a group of politicians, etc. But what if the “they” refers to another nebulous entity? For example, here’s a clip from a recent NYT Daily episode on Charlie Kirk’s memorial: “They also had a goal of gaining control of the media and Hollywood so they could change the culture in America. They kill and terrorize their opponents, hoping to silence them.”Who is this “they”? This reminded me of an interview I did with Paul Hanebrink from 2019 about his book A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism. Hanebrink gives a good history of one “they” that is at the center of the Judeo-Bolshevik myth–a conspiracy that I think is the foundation of most conspiracy thinking–a shadowy “they” that is behind all social ills. How has the Judeo-Bolshevik myth shaped the 20th century? How did it change over time? And what resonance does it have today? To get some insight, give this interview with Paul Hanebrink another go.Guest:Paul Hanebrink is a Professor of History at Rutgers University specializing in modern East Central Europe, with a particular focus on Hungary, nationalism and antisemitism as modern political ideologies, and the place of religion in the modern nation-state. He’s the author of In Defense of Christian Hungary. His most recent book is A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism published by Harvard University Press. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There’s a paradox at the center of Elana Resnick’s book, Refusing Sustainability: Race and Environmentalism in a Changing Europe. EU policies of environmental sustainability in Bulgaria require the racialization of Romani into a permanent low-skilled and impoverished workforce. Waste management required teams of Romani streetsweepers and trash collectors to sort trash into waste, recyclables and compost, and bring them for processing and reuse. This labor was historically filled by Bulgaria’s Romani citizens, to the point where white Bulgarians equated them with waste. And in turn, Roma’s racial otherness allowed white Bulgarians to enter a pan-European concept of whiteness. Since race is a favorite subject on the Eurasian Knot, Sean spoke to Elana about Sofia’s Romani women as waste workers, the powerful solidarity and collective action that emerges from their labor, and the implications for Romani rights struggle in Bulgaria.Guest:Elana Resnick is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she also leads the Infrastructural Inequalities Research Group. She’s the author of several articles and the book, Refusing Sustainability: Race and Environmentalism in a Changing Europe, published by Stanford University Press.Send us your sounds! PatreonKnotty News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are many stereotypes about Russia. But perhaps one of the strangest is that Russians prefer a strong hand, are politically passive, even apolitical, and rebellion just isn’t in their DNA. This belief requires a hefty dose of historical amnesia. Many of Russia’s most memorable historical figures–Stenka Razin, Pugachev, the Decembrists, the People’s Will, Lenin, Sakharov, Alexei Navalny, to name a few, were rebels. Not to mention, Russia has experienced three revolutions over the last century–1905, 1917, and 1991. Rebellion, in fact, is an integral part of Russia’s history, and the rebel often leads the dance with the Tsar. What is rebellion? Who are these rebels? What makes them? And how do they shape the Russian political system? These are questions that resonate in Russia and beyond. So the Eurasian Knot invited Anna Arutunyan on the pod to discuss the figure of the rebel in her new book, Rebel Russia: Dissent and Protest from Tsars to Navalny published by Polity.Guest:Anna Arutunyan is a Russian-American journalist, analyst, and author. She served as senior Russia analyst for the International Crisis Group before leaving Russia in 2022 and is the author of five books about the country, its politics, society and wars. Her new book is Rebel Russia: Dissent and Protest from Tsars to Navalny published by Polity. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After 1917, San Francisco’s small Russian community exploded with new arrivals. Over the next decade, thousands quit Soviet Russia, often via the Far East or China, to escape revolution and civil war. Arrival in America, however, was only the beginning of new trials. In the 1920s and 1930s, American nativists saw Slavic people as low in the racial hierarchy–people who were visually white, but culturally not quite. The Russian community in San Francisco was faced with a contradictory choice: to preserve their culture, a culture that they saw was being destroyed in Soviet Russia or shed their Russianess and become more “American” i.e. more “white.” How did this first wave of Russian emigres meet the challenge of otherness and assimilation? And what about the second wave of Russians who came after WWII? How did they navigate the Red Scare where Russian was equated with communist and the notions of Americanness had become more polarized? The Eurasian Knot spoke to the historian Nina Bogdan about her new book, Before We Disappear into Oblivion: San Francisco’s Russian Diaspora from Revolution to Cold War, to get some insight.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.The article Rusana mentions on the history of Berkeley's Institute of Slavic Studies is here. However, the piece is about the historian Robert J. Kerner, not Nicholas Raisanovsky. Send us your sounds! PatreonKnotty News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What power do jokes have in authoritarian societies? I’ve been thinking about this recently as Trump further consolidates power. Turn on any American late night show and it’s one joke about Trump after another. It’s easy for comedians. The Trump jokes write themselves. Soviet Russia didn’t have late night, and openly poking fun at the authorities was highly circumscribed. This continues to a large extent in today’s Russia. But people still tell biting, insulting jokes in daily life. Laughing at power can’t be totally contained. But do they matter? What power do they have? In what ways are they criticism of the powers that be, a way to cope with the absurdity of everyday life, and or merely self-delusional exercises in political agency? All three? In 2018, the Eurasian Knot took on these questions about jokes in a conversation with Jon Waterlow about his book, Only A Joke, Comrade! Humor, Trust, And Everyday Life Under Stalin, 1929-1941. We decided to rerun the interview for what it can tell us about our present conjecture.Guest:Jon Waterlow received his PhD in History at Oxford. He’s the author of It's Only A Joke, Comrade! Humor, Trust, And Everyday Life Under Stalin, 1929-1941. Jon is also host of the podcast Voices in the Dark. Look for it on your favorite podcast feed. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Games have a long history. Several are centuries old. But a new crop of games has emerged over the last century. Elaborate board games, role playing games, and of course, video games. Today, video games are one of the most consumed forms of media entertainment. They inspire communities, live-action role playing, movies and other media. All of these have fostered new identities and ethics. And Eastern Europe has played an outsized role in this culture. Enter Daniil Leiderman, the new Slavicist at the University of Pittsburgh. He says that games are a portal to a whole bunch of issues–identity, moral responsibility, agency, and cultural critique. The Eurasian Knot greeted Daniil with a conversation about gaming and Eastern Europe. How do games give players agency in crafting alternative histories? What role do Soviet and post-Soviet landscapes play? And what are the wider effects do games have on our lives outside the magic circle? Guest:Daniil Leiderman is an art historian. He taught art history and game studies at Texas A&M University before joining University of Pittsburgh’s Slavic Languages and Literatures Department as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2025. As a scholar, Daniil’s research focuses on underground and protest art and culture and video games.Send us your sounds! PatreonKnotty News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we check-in with frequent EK guest Brian Milakovsky to learn about the destruction of forests in Ukraine. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014, and its full-scale assault in 2022, war has destroyed much of the forests of the Seversky Donets Basin. These trees serve as a place of leisure, pride, identity, and economy for nearby residents. But Russian artillery, mines, and other ordnance have repeatedly ignited forest fires. The ecology of the region has been transformed, likely forever. How has the war accelerated the destruction of eastern Ukraine’s ecology? And what does this mean for the future? We also get an update on how Brian sees the war at the present moment, when at the time of recording, Putin and Trump were meeting in Alaska. It’s a dark time. And an even darker horizon approaches us.Guest:Brian Milakovsky is a forester who worked on conservation and development programs in Ukraine and Russia from 2009 to 2024. He presently resides in Bath, Maine and works for the New England Forestry Foundation. He is also an associate researcher with the Regional East European Fire Management Center in Kyiv, Ukraine. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As frequent listeners know, my advisor and friend Arch Getty passed away from cancer a few months ago. I was recently in Los Angeles to attend his memorial. I got to catch up with fellow grad students and friends. One was James Harris, a close friend and collaborator with Arch. James is also one of the best Soviet historians around. After chatting with James, I was reminded that I interviewed him way back in 2016–about a year after I started the SRB Podcast. I decided to re-edit and release James’ interview about his book, The Great Fear. The book looks at how Soviet leaders were constantly afraid of invasion, uprisings, and dissent. James argues that this fear was an important driver of the regime’s use of violence and ultimately the Great Terror of 1937-38. So, in honor of seeing James and in memory of Arch, here’s another listen to the Great Fear.Guest:James Harris is a Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at Leeds University where he specializes in the history of Stalinism. James has published several books and articles on the Stalin period. He’s the author of The Great Fear: Stalin’s Terror in the 1930s published by Oxford University Press.Send us your sounds! PatreonKnotty News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1912, a strike of 18,000 restaurant and hotel workers in New York City birthed the Hotel and Restaurant Employees International, a union representing tens of thousands of Manhattan’s service workers. The union still exists today as Local 6 of the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, AFL-CIO and remains one of the NYC strongest unions. But why is the Eurasian Knot featuring a story about an American trade union? Because the history of the American labor movement in the early 20th century cannot be told without the Communist Party. That means the Soviet Union via the Communist International played an important role in shaping Local 6 in the 1920s and 1930s. How did the Russian Revolution reverberate through American labor? How did the Hotel and Restaurant Union navigate the various ideological and political shifts, to say nothing of the Red Scare? And what about the American communists like William Z. Foster? And what does Local 6 have to teach us today? The Eurasian Knot talked to one of Sean’s old Socialist Party comrades, Shaun Richman, about his book, We Always Had a Union: The New York Hotel Workers’ Union, 1912-1953, for some answers.Guest:Shaun Richman teaches labor history at SUNY Empire State University. He's an historian of U.S. labor and American Communism, with a particular focus on union organizing, the service sector and the American Federation of Labor. He teaches labor history at SUNY Empire State University"He’s the author of We Always Had a Union: The New York Hotel Workers’ Union, 1912-1953 published by University of Illinois Press.Send us your sounds! PatreonKnotty News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.