Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939
The Soviet Union was the first of Europe's multiethnic states to confront the rising tide of nationalism by systematically promoting the national consciousness of its ethnic minorities and establishing for them many of the institutional forms characteristic of the modern nation-state. In the 1920s, the Bolshevik government, seeking to defuse ......
Why did the Peace of Nicias fail to reconcile Athens and Sparta? In the third volume of his landmark four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War, Donald Kagan examines the years between the signing of the peace treaty and the destruction of the Athenian expedition to Sicily in 413 B.C. The principal figure in the narrative is the Athenian ......
''In his classic study, Schleunes meticulously examines the incremental erosion of Jewish Germans' status in Nazi Germany before the deportations began. If we look here for parallels in other national settings, this is where we must begin: in a state that made anti-Semitism appear 'legal' and even 'just' to ordinary Germans. Integrating Nazi ......
The most important illuminating source that survived from the two centuries termed "the dark ages of Byzantium" is the chronicle of the monk Theophanes (d. 817 or 818). In it Theophanes paints a vivid picture of the Empire's struggle in the seventh and eighth centuries both to withstand foreign invasions and to quell internal religious conflicts. ......
History of the Lombards, by Paul the Deacon (c. 720-c. 799), is among the most important and oldest accounts of the Germanic nation. The book preserves many ancient myths and popular traditions and draws from sources that are now lost. The history traces the changing fortunes of the Lombards, the last of the migratory Germanic peoples to enter the ......
The German-Soviet War revises the conflict's generally accepted understanding through case studies, demonstrating the complexity of the war at the local level. The contributors assembled by Jeff Rutherford and Robert von Maier examine the multiplicity of experiences of individuals caught in this savage war, starting with the German war of ......
Intellectual Exchange in the Ottoman Empire and Renaissance Europe
Between 1450 and 1550, a remarkable century of intellectual exchange developed across the Eastern Mediterranean. As Renaissance Europe depended on knowledge from the Ottoman Empire, and the courts of Mehmed the Conqueror and Bayezid II greatly benefitted from knowledge coming out of Europe, merchants of knowledge-multilingual and transregional ......
How Medieval Theology Can Reenchant the Practice of Reading
Reading has become a problem--not just of attention, comprehension, or illiteracy rates, but of politics, society, and religion. The Mystified Letter offers an alternative to this malaise: a theology of reading centered on mystical encounter. It retrieves medieval Christian reading culture to build a case for a mystical theology of literature.
The Collapse of the USSR and the Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine
Among the various factors that contributed to Ukraine's nuclear renunciation, including diplomatic pressure from the United States and Russia and domestic economic woes, the NPT stands out as a salient force that provided an international framework for managing the Soviet nuclear collapse.
