Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2020 -

Prior to WW II, different political and cultural pressures imposed on young Jews in eastern Poland and the western Soviet Union affected how they lived their Jewishness. In Vitebsk, Belarus, for instance, Soviet policies encouraged social advancement, but at the cost of marginalizing one's Jewish identity. In Polish Grodno, politics of exclusion and anti-Semitism pushed young Jews to reassert their identity in groups that provided family-like ties. These different systems impacted youths' reactions to the intensifying policies of mass murder, their social and ideological leanings, and, after Germany's 1941 attack on the Soviet Union, their coping strategies as they adjusted to harsh living conditions. Koerber (Chapman Univ.) provides a fascinating comparison of a generation of young Jews living under two different political systems, crushed by the Nazi exterminatory machine. Drawing on a broad set of sources across six languages, he depicts how Jewish survival strategies, even in geographic proximity, differed drastically depending on cultural and political prewar contexts. Impeccably researched and based on engaging personal accounts, the study contributes to a transnational understanding of Jewish responses to persecutions, delivering invaluable insights into an underresearched geographic region in Holocaust scholarship.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.

Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia's efforts to define itself as well as to reknit the Soviet space has generated political and scholarly attention in the West as well as in Russia. At the center of interest is "Eurasianism," which serves to define Russia as both European and Asian and as a scaffold for various projects to integrate former Soviet republics. Defining "Eurasianism" as an ideology, Pizzolo (LUISS Guido Carlo Univ., Italy) addresses the concept in the context of geopolitical theories, notably those of Halford Mackinder and Nicholas J. Spykman. This covers familiar ground, but his narrative on Aleksandr Dugin's "neo-Eurasianism" is a useful study of the more controversial aspects of "Eurasianism." Among other things, Pizzolo discusses Dugin's "Fourth Political Theory," a peculiar melding of liberalism, fascism, and Marxism that is intended to replace Western Atlanticism as a dominant world order. The international system, Dugin argues, is becoming multipolar. Pizzolo also addresses Dugin's much-criticized advocacy of Russian imperialism. Pizzolo's study is well documented with a bibliography rich in Russian sources. The book is strongly recommended for all university readers.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.

In 2015 Alexievich won the Nobel prize for literature for her "polyphonic writings." For this book, she gathered the stories of approximately one hundred individuals who were children in the Soviet Union in June 1941, and who were shaped by the experience of Nazi occupation, the siege in Leningrad, or as refugees in the east. Most of her subjects were between the ages of 4 and 14 when the war began. Their stories, some as short as one page, have a few common themes. Many speak of hunger or the loss of parents and siblings either to Nazi violence or disease, and many describe the long-term impact of the war on their psyches. Alexievich does not provide an introduction or even an explanation of the questions she asked. The reader does not even know how she choose the individuals whose stories are included. What the book provides is an unfiltered view of experiences that were burned into the memories of children and recalled more than 70 years later by adults who could never leave the war behind.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.

This specialized but ultimately solid collection takes the sociological concept of "lifestyle" and applies it to 10 anthropological field sites across Russia. From 2010 to 2012, contributors conducted research under the auspices of the Center for Siberian Studies at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, at these field sites. Using lifestyle as a lens through which to examine Siberia, the authors move past the usual concepts of crisis and tradition that guide many approaches to studying post-Soviet Russia. Chapters examine the ways that lifestyle (which may or may not hinge on consumption) intersects with other concepts and lived realities, including technology, infrastructure, transportation, tourism, travel, ethnicity, aesthetics, celebrations, play, and leisure. A useful introduction and conclusion further situate the theoretical underpinnings of lifestyle with regard to current Russian sociological scholarship, and provide some historical background for understanding the transition from the Soviet era to the post-socialist present. Strong bibliographies and color photographs accompany each chapter and help illustrate the different aspects of lifestyle under discussion. This volume is a necessary addition for institutions with strong regional (Russia, Eastern Europe, circumpolar) holdings or collections on the anthropology of everyday life.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

There are very few books that attempt to systematically compare the political trajectory of all 15 post-soviet states since the revolutions of 1989. Graney (Skidmore College), however, seeks to fill this massive gap in the literature. She focuses on the theme of Europeanization, since the question of drawing closer to Europe has been central to regional foreign and security policies and to domestic national identity debates. Using a "European-Orientalist Cultural Gradient" to measure this process, she calibrates the relationship with European values through three successive phases (Europhoria, Europhilia, and Europhobia) since 1991. The first third of the book provides thematic analysis of political, security, and cultural dimensions, while the remainder of the book consists of country studies grouped by region. Although economic policy is not directly addressed, apart from some tables on trade flows, Graney's assessment is informed and insightful throughout. This volume is a singular achievement in covering social, political, and security issues across all 15 former Soviet republics. Both theoretically informed and empirically grounded, it will be invaluable to those teaching post-Soviet politics and for courses on European politics concerned with the EU's eastern policy.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

The complicated politics of memory and commemoration regarding the Holocaust in post-communist Eastern Europe is the subject of Subotic's thoughtful analysis. The former Soviet republics have all sought to integrate with Europe and join European institutions, but to do so they have had to address ugly and painful aspects of their 20th-century history. State leaders, however, have largely aimed to delegitimize their communist past, instead endorsing a more "usable past" by harkening back to prewar ethnic nationalism and a "heroic" narrative of broader in-group suffering during WW II and the communist period. Subotic (Georgia State Univ.) compares the former Yugoslavia and Lithuania, analyzing the similar ways political leaders have appropriated the language and imagery of the Holocaust and creatively applied it to their respective "Gentile" groups while ignoring their Jewish communities. Subotic describes this behavior as ontological insecurity and a refusal to honestly address controversial past issues. Why this is the case relates to a lingering anti-Semitism but also to the groupthink of ethnic nationalism, which has seen a resurgence in recent years. Disturbing in its implications, this well-written and reasoned work is required reading for those studying history and memory.Summing Up: Essential. All readership levels.