New Titles in Russian, Eastern & Central European, and Central Asian Studies - 2020 / 2021

Russian, Eastern & Central European, and Central Asian Studies 2020 / 2021

An examination of the lives and choices that Tolstoy, Chekhov, Bunin, and Meyerhold must have faced in order to preserve their singularity and integrity while attempting to achieve fame, greatness and success

“Rylkova’s meticulous study is full of original insights and new interpretations of famous literary works, delivered in a lucid and accessible writing style, with numerous references to primary sources; it is a joy to read.”

— OLGA TABACHNIKOVA, THE RUSSIAN REVIEW

Breaking Free from Death The Art of Being a Successful Russian Writer Galina Rylkova This volume examines how Russian writers respond to the burden of living with

GALINA RYLKOVA is Associate Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Florida.

anxieties about their creative outputs, and, ultimately, about their own inevitable finitude. What contributes to creative death are not just crippling diseases that make man defenseless in the face of death, and not just the arguably universal fear of death but, equally important, the innumerable impositions on the part of various outsiders. Many conflicts in the lives of Rylkova’s subjects arose not from their opposition to the existing political regimes but from their interactions with

like-minded and supporting intellectuals, friends, and relatives. The book describes the lives and choices that concrete individuals and—by extrapolation— their literary characters must face in order to preserve their singularity and integrity while attempting to achieve fame, greatness, and success.

March 2020 Hardcover | 9781644692646 | $109.00 Paperback | 9781644692660 | $29.95 204 pp. | 6.14 x 9.21

A comprehensive selection of thoughtfully collected, newly translated, and thoroughly commented works by the prominent twentieth-century Russian scholar and thinker Yuri Lotman

“This book makes it possible to perceive the deep level of Lotman’s thought, where the roots of its integrity are hidden, as well as its categorial structuring of the world and history, which underlies his semiotics of culture.”

— PEETER TOROP, UNIVERSITY OF TARTU

Culture and Communication: Signs in Flux An Anthology of Major and Lesser-Known Works Yuri Lotman Edited by Andreas Schönle; Translated by Benjamin Paloff

ANDREAS SCHÖNLE is Professor of Russian at the University of Bristol and Fellow of the British Academy.

BENJAMIN PALOFF is Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and of Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan.

Yuri Lotman (1922-1993) was one of the most prominent and influential scholars of the twentieth century working in the Soviet Union. A co-founder of the TartuMoscow school of semiotics, he applied his mind to a wide array of disciplines, from aesthetics to literary and cultural history, narrative theory to intellectual history, cinema to mythology. This collection provides a stand-alone primer to his intellectual legacy in both semiotics and cultural history. It includes new

translations of some of his major pieces as well as works that have never been published in English. The collection brings Lotman into the orbit of contemporary concerns such as gender, memory, performance, world literature, and urban life. It is aimed at students from various disciplines and is augmented by an introduction and notes that elucidate the relevant contexts.

CULTURAL SYLLABUS

September 2020 Hardcover | 9781644693865 | $109.00 Paperback | 9781644693872 | $32.00 254 pp. | 6.14 x 9.21

A cache of letters written to Ivan Bunin and his wife Vera by two Russian emigres whom history had forgotten published here for the first time

“By means of extensive

research in various archive sources, Vera Tsareva-Brauner attempts to reconstruct the lives of two people who happened to live through the tragedy of the Russian revolution and their subsequent exile.”

— TATIANA MARCHENKO, SOLZHENITSYN CENTRE FOR RUSSIA ABROAD STUDIES

Autographs Don’t Burn Letters to the Bunins, Part 1 VERA TSAREVA-BRAUNER is a lecturer at the University of Cambridge, specializing in Russian language and translation studies.

Vera Tsareva-Brauner This book sprang from three handwritten lines by Ivan Bunin, Russia’s first winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Found inside a first edition of Mitya’s Love, they led to the discovery of one of the largest corpora of letters written to Ivan and Vera Bunin by two people whose lives and legacy had been, until now, forgotten. These letters are now in the Russian Archive in Leeds (RAL), and are published here for the first time. The book also focuses on memory and history in its purest form, as narrated by witnesses who lived through the most tragic century in Russian history.

Their stories involve Grand Dukes, Russian literary and political giants, as well as one of the architects of the Gulag, and show how these lives intertwined. It also sheds new light on the life and works of Chekhov, Gorky, A. Tolstoy, and Bunin.

November 2020 Hardcover | 9781644694329 | $109.00 208 pp. | 32 illus. | 6.14 x 9.21

A powerfully written and exhaustively researched reconstruction of the life and work of Lev Shestov

“Thanks to Andrea Oppo, we finally have what is long overdue, the first full English-

language intellectual biography of Shestov. Oppo’s highly readable book traces the development of this selfmade philosopher’s thought from his earliest literaryphilosophical criticism to his later religiously oriented works.”

— EDITH W. CLOWES, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

Lev Shestov The Philosophy and Works of a Tragic Thinker ANDREA OPPO is Professor of Contemporary Philosophy at the Pontifical Faculty of Theology of Sardinia (Italy).

Andrea Oppo This study spans the entire life and work of the Russian philosopher Lev Shestov (1866-1938). It offers keys to understanding his thought, while also tracing the historical itinerary of his work. Shestov’s thought is not only interesting in itself, as a “philosophy fighting against philosophy,” but also because it reveals an entire world of cultural connections in its extraordinarily keen exploration of other “souls.” The reader will find in Shestov some of the sharpest analyses of authors such as Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Tolstoi, Dostoevskii, Luther, Plotinus, Pascal,

Kierkegaard, and many others. This study will better determine the controversial and fascinating philosopher’s place in the history of Russian and Western thought.

November 2020 Hardcover | 9781644694671 | $129.00 346 pp. | 6.14 x 9.21

A bilingual collection of essays celebrating Marko Pavlyshyn’s outstanding contribution to the study of modern and contemporary Ukrainian literature and culture

“Owing to the determined efforts of the editors, this volume will be specifically beneficial for any academic institutions, research institutions, or universities that have interests in Eastern Europe and, specifically, in Ukraine.”

— OSTAP KIN, KYIV-MOHYLA HUMANITIES JOURNAL

Cossacks in Jamaica, Ukraine at the Antipodes Essays in Honor of Marko Pavlyshyn Edited by

ALESSANDRO ACHILLI is Lecturer in Ukrainian Studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

DMYTRO YESYPENKO is a researcher at the Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. SERHY YEKELCHYK is Professor of Slavic Studies and History at the University of Victoria and current president of the Canadian Association for Ukrainian Studies.

Alessandro Achilli, Serhy Yekelchyk, and Dmytro Yesypenko This bilingual collection of essays celebrates Marko Pavlyshyn’s outstanding contribution to the study of modern and contemporary Ukrainian literature and culture. With its many methodological approaches and the variety of periods, authors and texts that it analyzes, the book reflects and builds on Pavlyshyn’s willingness to modernize our understanding of Ukrainian literature as an instrument of communication between authors, readers and the nation from the

late eighteenth century to the present day. Hopefully these essays will inspire readers and scholars to continue their journey through Ukrainian culture, in a context profoundly marked by the role of literary texts as agents of nation building and social evolution.

UKRAINIAN STUDIES

July 2020 Hardcover | 9781644693018 | $159.00 812 pp. | 2 illus. | 6.14 x 9.21

Examines the aesthetic consequences of Tolstoy’s practice of using some of his closest relatives as models for many of the central characters of “War and Peace”

“One need not be a fan of Richard Dawkins or the selfish gene to be fascinated by Brett Cooke’s meticulous trawl through the outlines, drafts and published versions of War and Peace, seeking signs of kin altruism and tracking mathematical relatedness.”

— CARYL EMERSON, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

Tolstoy’s Family Prototypes in War and Peace Brett Cooke What were the consequences of Tolstoy’s unusual reliance on members of his

BRETT COOKE is Professor of Russian at Texas A&M University.

family as source material for War and Peace? Did affection for close relatives influence depictions of these real prototypes in his fictional characters? Tolstoy used these models to consider his origins, to ponder alternative family histories, and to critique himself. Comparison of the novel and its fascinating drafts with the writer’s family history reveals increasing preferential treatment of those with greater relatedness to him: kin altruism, i.e., nepotism. This pattern helps explain many of Tolstoy’s choices amongst plot variants he considered, as well as some of

the curious devices he utilizes to get readers to share his biases, such as coincidences, notions of “fate,” and aversion to incest.

EVOLUTION, COGNITION, AND THE ARTS

November 2020 Hardcover | 9781644694084 | $119.00 318 pp. | 9 illus. | 6.14 x 9.21

A concise and accessible introduction to the works of one of the most imaginative and complex writers of modern Russia

“This exhaustively researched

and subtly argued monograph … is able to chart the writer’s creative evolution with its attendant ‘continuity in discontinuity’. … The Companion, to my mind, will remain the definitive study of Sorokin’s work 1985–2017, whatever may come next.”

— DAVID GILLESPIE, SLAVONIC AND EAST EUROPEAN REVIEW

Vladimir Sorokin’s Discourses A Companion DIRK UFFELMANN is Professor of East and West Slavic Literatures at Justus Liebig University Giessen, Hesse, Germany.

Dirk Uffelmann Vladimir Sorokin is the most prominent and the most controversial contemporary Russian writer. Having emerged as a prose writer in Moscow’s artistic underground in the late 1970s and early 80s, he became visible to a broader Russian audience only in the mid-1990s, with texts shocking the moralistic expectations of traditionally minded readers by violating not only Soviet ideological taboos, but also injecting vulgar language, sex, and violence into plots that the postmodernist Sorokin borrowed from nineteenth-century literature and Socialist Realism.

Sorokin became famous when the Putin youth organization burned his books in 2002 and he picked up neo-nationalist and neo-imperialist discourses in his dystopian novels of the 2000s and 2010s, making him one of the fiercest critics of Russia’s “new middle ages,” while remaining steadfast in his dismantling of foreign discourses.

COMPANIONS TO RUSSIAN LITERATURE

April 2020 Hardcover | 9781644692844 | $109.00 Paperback | 9781644692844 | $29.95 236 pp. | 6.14 x 9.21

An admirably illuminating, multifaceted, and thorough analysis of Gogol’s classic story

“Ksana Blank’s compendium makes meaningful detail

accessible and deploys it in a variety of possible interpretations. The commentary and essays together provide English speakers access to the verbal riches of the original that allows them to achieve their own closely-argued reading of Gogol’s gem.”

— PRISCILLA MEYER, WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY

“The Nose” A Stylistic and Critical Companion to Nikolai Gogol’s Story KSANA BLANK is a senior lecturer in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University.

Ksana Blank This literary guide leads students with advanced knowledge of Russian as well as experienced scholars through the text of Nikolai Gogol’s absurdist masterpiece “The Nose.” Part I focuses on numerous instances of the writer’s wordplay, which is meant to surprise and delight the reader, but which often is lost in English translations. It traces Gogol’s descriptions of everyday life in St. Petersburg, familiar to the writer’s contemporaries and fellow citizens but hidden from the modern Western reader. Part II presents an overview of major critical

interpretations of the story in Gogol scholarship from the time of its publication to the present, as well as its connections to the works of Shostakovich, Kafka, Dalí, and Kharms.

COMPANIONS TO RUSSIAN LITERATURE April 2021 Hardcover | 9781644695197 | $109.00 Paperback | 9781644695203 | $29.95 238 pp. | 6 illus. | 6.14 x 9.21

Brings Ivan Goncharov’s work into a twenty-firstcentury critical framework, engaging with approaches from post-colonial and queer studies, theories of genre and the novel, desire, laughter, technology, philosophy, and mobility and travel

“A much-needed reassessment of this classic Russian writer and our understanding of his place in the canon.”

— ANNE LOUNSBERY, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

Goncharov in the Twenty-First Century Edited by

Ingrid Kleespies and Lyudmila Parts This edited collection brings together a range of international scholars for a INGRID KLEESPIES is Associate Professor of Russian Studies in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Florida. LYUDMILA PARTS is Professor of Russian at McGill University (Montreal).

reexamination of Ivan Goncharov’s life and work through a twenty-first century critical lens. Contributions to the volume highlight Goncharov’s service career, the complex and understudied manifestation of Realism in his work, the diverse philosophical threads that shape his novels, and the often colliding contexts of writer and imperial bureaucrat in the 1858 travel text Frigate Pallada. Chapters engage with approaches from post-colonial and queer studies, theories of genre

and the novel, desire, laughter, technology, and mobility and travel.

STUDIES IN RUSSIAN AND SLAVIC LITERATURES, CULTURES, AND HISTORY

November 2021 Hardcover | 9781644696989 | $109.00 264 pp. | 6.14 x 9.21

An examination of the definition of redemption in Venedikt Erofeev’s “Moskva-Petushki”

“From the moment that the manuscript of MoskvaPetushki surfaced (and then sunk and resurfaced) over

forty years ago, readers and literary scholars have debated the nature of Erofeev’s dense intertextual references. Jill Martiniuk’s book is a significant contribution to that conversation, as she demonstrates persuasively that Erofeev is in deep and extensive dialogue with Radishchev, Dante, and

Milton.”

— KAREN RYAN, MERRIMACK COLLEGE

Wandering in Circles Venichka’s Journey of Redemption in Moskva-Petushki Jill Martiniuk This monograph examines the definition of redemption in Venedikt Erofeev’s

JILL MARTINIUK is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Department of Engineering Education at the University of Buffalo.

Moskva-Petushki. By placing Erofeev’s poema in conversation with other travel narratives from Russia and the West, the book explores the meaning of redemption across societies and cultures, and how Erofeev creates a commentary on the possibility of redemption in a broken political and social system. Through this comparative approach to Moskva-Petushki, this work offers a new reading of the text as a journey of failed social and personal redemption.

December 2021 Hardcover | 9781644697290 | $99.00 182 pp. | 6.14 x 9.21

A collaborative undertaking by a group of emerging Russianist scholars focusing on the work of one of the most important and hotly debated post-Soviet writers

“This compendium is an indispensable guide to the perplexing world of one of Russia’s most prominent contemporary writers.”

— BORIS NOORDENBOS, UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM

SOFYA KHAGI is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Companion to Victor Pelevin Edited by Sofya Khagi

This Companion is a collaborative undertaking by a group of emerging Russianist scholars, focusing on the work of one of the most important and hotly debated post-Soviet writers. It provides a valuable resource to scholars, teachers, and students, including how best to teach Pelevin to university-level students, and which critical debates invite further investigation. The contributors offer new readings of Pelevin texts that cover a broad time span and pay due attention to the philosophical and aesthetic complexities of Pelevin’s oeuvre in its development from the early post-Soviet years to the second decade of the present

millennium. Examining all of Pelevin’s major works and all Peleviniana currently available in English, the Companion aims to prompt further inquiry into this author’s intellectually stimulating and socially prescient work.

December 2021 Hardcover | 9781644697757 | $129.00 Paperback | 9781644697764 | $32.95 280 pp. | 6.14 x 9.21

A gripping and rewarding saga to find an artist who persevered in her art despite almost insurmountable odds

“[This] riveting narrative covers continents engulfed by cataclysmic events in defining epochs. Bernstein tells a tremendous story with compassion and confidence, its research crisscrossing America, Russia, Germany, and Bombay, Pune and Baroda in India.”

— MEHER MARFATIA, MID-DAY

LINA BERNSTEIN taught Russian and comparative literature at Franklin & Marshall College.

Magda Nachman An Artist in Exile Lina Bernstein The political and social turmoil of the twentieth century took Magda Nachman from a privileged childhood in St. Petersburg at the close of the nineteenth century, artistic studies with Léon Bakst and Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin at the Zvantseva Art Academy, and participation in the dynamic symbolist/modernist artistic ferment in pre-Revolutionary Russia to a refugee existence in the Russian countryside during the Russian Civil War followed by marriage to a prominent Indian nationalist, then with her husband to the hardships of émigré Berlin in the

1920s and 1930s, and finally to Bombay, where she established herself as an important artist and a mentor to a new generation of modern Indian artists.

MODERN BIOGRAPHIES

June 2020 Hardcover | 9781644692677 | $119.00 Paperback | 9781644692684 | $25.00 296 pp. | 46 illus. | 6.14 x 9.21

Focusing on the gestures of giving, touching, showing and handcrafting, this study examines key scenes of tactile interaction between subject and artifact

SUSANNE STRÄTLING teaches comparative literature with a special focus on East European literatures at Freie Universität Berlin.

The Hand at Work The Poetics of Poiesis in the Russian Avant-Garde Susanne Strätling Translated by Alexandra Berlina

Art = New Vision. This formula shaped the avant-garde. With moving images abruptly expanding the boundaries of the visible world, new printing techniques triggering a pictorial turn in graphic art, and literature becoming almost inseparable from visual media we still regard the avant-garde as heyday for modernisms obsession with the eye. But what are the blind spots of this optocentrism? Focusing on the gestures of giving, touching, showing and

handcrafting, this study examines key scenes of tactile interaction between subject and artifact. Hand movements, manual maneuvers and manipulations challenge optics and expose the crises of a visually dominated perspective on the arts. The readings of this book call for a revision of an optically obscured aesthetics and poetics to include haptic experience as an often overlooked but pivotal part of the making as well as the perception of literature and the arts.

December 2021 Hardcover | 9781644697078 | $109.00 290 pp. | 70 figs. | 6.14 x 9.21

An examination of ninety recent films over three decades with contributions from the next generation of US-Russian cinema scholars

“Ideally suited to cinema survey classes, Cinemasaurus will offer clarity to both students and scholars, and it will prompt substantial future research.”

— DAVID MACFADYEN, STUDIES IN EUROPEAN CINEMA

NANCY CONDEE is Director of University of Pittsburgh’s Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Center, a Title VI Center. ALEXANDER PROKHOROV teaches at Russian and Film Studies Programs at the College of William & Mary. ELENA PROKHOROVA teaches at Russian and Film Studies Programs at the College of William & Mary.

Cinemasaurus Russian Film in Contemporary Context Edited by

Nancy Condee, Alexander Prokhorov, and Elena Prokhorova Cinemasaurus examines contemporary Russian cinema as a new visual economy, emerging over three decades after the Soviet collapse. Focusing on debates and films exhibited at Russian and US public festivals where the films have premiered, the volume’s contributors—the new generation of US scholars studying Russian cinema—examine four issues of Russia’s transition: (1) its imperial legacy, (2) the emergence of a film market and its new genres, (3) Russia’s uneven integration

into European values and hierarchies, (4) the renegotiation of state power vis-à-vis arthouse and independent cinemas. An introductory essay frames each of the four sections, with 90 films total under discussion, concluding with a historical timeline and five interviews of key film-industry figures formative of the historical context.

FILM AND MEDIA STUDIES

April 2020 Hardcover | 9781644692707 | $119.00 Paperback | 9781644692714 | $35.00 330 pp. | 45 color illus. | 8.5 x 8.5

An examination of the work of twelve female animation directors in the Soviet Union and Russia, placing them within history, culture, and industrial practice in animation

“Leigh and Mjolness have convincingly demonstrated how little we know about the full range of Soviet female filmmakers and that Soviet animated films offer a treasure trove of new material for a deeper understanding of Soviet society and how its values were inculcated—and

sometimes subtly subverted— by women.”

— DENISE J. YOUNGBLOOD, WOMEN EAST-WEST

She Animates Soviet Female Subjectivity in Russian Animation Michele Leigh & Lora Mjolsness This volume examines the work of twelve female animation directors in the Soviet Union and Russia, who have long been overlooked by film scholars and historians.

MICHELE LEIGH is an independent scholar writing on gender in film and television. LORA MJOLSNESS is a lecturer at the University of California, Irvine in the Department of European Studies and the Director of Program in Russian Studies.

The authors approach examines these directors within history, culture, and industrial practice in animation. In addition to making a case for including these women and their work in the annals of film and animation history, this volume also makes an argument for why their work should be considered part of the tradition of women’s cinema. Leigh and Mjolsness offer textual analysis that focuses on the

changing attitudes towards both the woman question and feminism by examining the films in light of the emergence and evolution of a Soviet female subjectivity that still informs women’s cinema in Russia today.

FILM & MEDIA STUDIES

November 2020 Hardcover | 9781644690345 | $109.00 Paperback | 9781644690666 | $32.00 230 pp. | 30 illus. | 6.14 x 9.21

Discusses major Russian tv series focusing on three major issues: Russian television’s transition to digital postbroadcast visual economy, Russian television’s integration into global television markets and their genre systems, major shifts in representation of gender and sexuality on television

“Essential reading for all students and scholars of contemporary Russian media,

culture, and society.”

— STEVEN HUTCHINGS, UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER

Russian TV Series in the Era of Transition Genres, Technologies, Identities Edited by

Alexander Prokhorov, Elena Prokhorova, and Rimgaila Salys This edited collection examines contemporary Russian television genres in the age ALEXANDER PROKHOROV teaches at Russian and Film Studies Programs at the College of William & Mary. ELENA PROKHOROVA teaches at Russian and Film Studies Programs at the College of William & Mary. RIMGAILA SALYS is Professor Emerita of Russian Program at the University of Colorado Boulder.

of transition from broadcast to post-broadcast television. Focusing on critical debates and the most significant TV series of the past two decades, the volume’s contributors—the leading US and European scholars studying Russian television, as well as the leading Russian TV producers and directors—focus on three major issues: Russian television’s transition to digital post-broadcast economy, which

redefined the media environment; Russian television’s integration into global television markets and their genre systems; and major changes in the representation of gender and sexuality on Russian television.

FILM AND MEDIA STUDIES

December 2021 Hardcover | 9781644696439 | $119.00 Paperback | 9781644696446 | $35.00 280 pp. | 57 illus. (color) | 8.5 x 9

First edition of the collected critical prose of Anna Frajlich, scholar of Polish literature and culture and awardwinning Polish poet

“Written over the author’s long

career as a poet, essayist, scholar, and teacher, these essays include pieces of insightful academic criticism, expert comparative studies, personal reminiscences, autobiographical sketches, and philosophical reflections on literature’s entanglements with modern history.”

— JAROSLAW ANDERS, POLISH LITERARY CRITIC AND TRANSLATOR

The Ghost of Shakespeare Collected Essays ANNA FRAJLICH (Senior Lecturer Emerita) taught Polish language and literature at Columbia University for over three decades.

Anna Frajlich Edited by Ronald Meyer

This volume collects the critical prose of award-winning writer Anna Frajlich. The Ghost of Shakespeare takes its name from Frajlich’s essay on Nobel Prize laureate Wisława Szymborska, but informs her approach as a comparativist more generally as she considers the work of major Polish writers of the twentieth century, including Zbigniew Herbert, Czesław Miłosz, and Bruno Schulz. Frajlich’s study of the Roman theme in Russian Symbolism owes its origins to her stay in the Eternal

City, the second stop on her exile from Poland in 1969. The book concludes with autobiographical essays that describe her parents’ dramatic flight from Poland at the outbreak of the war, her own exile from Poland in 1969, settling in New York City, and building her career as a scholar and leading poet of her generation.

POLISH STUDIES

November 2020 Hardcover | 9781644694718 | $119.00 308 pp. | 7 x 10

A ground-breaking collection that presents the work of a key yet unrecognized figure in the constellation of European modernity

“This volume is the first

publication in the world to contain such an extensive and comprehensive selection of Vogel’s writings.”

— JOANNA LISEK, UNIVERSITY OF WROCŁAW

ANASTASIYA LYUBAS is the Visiting Research Fellow at the Northrop Frye Centre at the University of Toronto.

Blooming Spaces The Collected Poetry, Prose, Critical Writing, and Letters of Debora Vogel Debora Vogel Edited by Anastasiya Lyubas

Debora Vogel (1900-1942) wrote in Yiddish unlike anyone else. Yiddish, her fourth language after Polish, Hebrew, and German, became the central vehicle for her modernist experiments in poetry and prose. This ground-breaking collection presents the work of a strikingly original yet overlooked author, art critic, and intellectual, and resituates Vogel as an important figure in the constellation of

European modernity. Vogel’s astute observations on art, literature, and psychology in her essays, her bold prose experiments inspired by photography and film, and Cubist poetry that both challenges and captivates invite the reader on a journey of discovery—into the microcosm of the talented thinker marked by tragic fate and the macrocosm of Jewish history and Poland’s turbulent twentieth century.

JEWS OF POLAND

August 2020 Hardcover | 9781644693902 | $119.00 Paperback | 9781644693919 | $35.00 436 pp. | 36 illus. | 6.14 x 9.21

The story of the friendship and collaboration between Joseph Brodsky and George L. Kline, from its beginnings in 1960s Leningrad and concluding with the Nobel poet's death

“Kline emerges as human, warm and vividly idiosyncratic in the pages of Haven’s volume.”

— STEPHANIE SANDLER, THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

CYNTHIA L. HAVEN is a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar.

The Man Who Brought Brodsky into English Conversations with George L. Kline Cynthia L. Haven Brodsky’s poetic career in the West was launched when Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems was published in 1973. Its translator was a scholar and war hero, George L. Kline. This is the story of that friendship and collaboration, from its beginnings in 1960s Leningrad and concluding with the Nobel poet's death in 1996.

Kline translated more of Brodsky’s poems than any other single person, with the exception of Brodsky himself. The Bryn Mawr philosophy professor and Slavic scholar was a modest and retiring man, but on occasion he could be as forthright and adamant as Brodsky himself. “Akhmatova discovered Brodsky for Russia, but I discovered him for the West,” he claimed.

Kline’s interviews with author Cynthia L. Haven before his death in 2014 include a description of his first encounter with Brodsky, the KGB interrogations triggered by their friendship, Brodsky's emigration, and the camaraderie and conflict over

JEWS OF RUSSIA & EASTERN EUROPE AND THEIR LEGACY March 2021 Hardcover | 9781644695135 | $90.00 Paperback | 9781644695142 | $19.95 216 pp. | 16 illus. | 6.14 x 9.21

translation. When Kline called Brodsky in London to congratulate him for the Nobel, the grateful poet responded, “And congratulations to you, too, George!”

Brings together leading American, European, Israeli and Russian scholars to examine David Shrayer-Petrov’s writings from various literary-historical and theoretical perspectives

“The book contextualizes, analyzes, and celebrates the work of a non-conformist writer who for several decades explored the thought, the feel, and the fantasy of RussianSoviet-Jewish, Jewishrefusenik, and Jewishimmigrant-American experience.”

— LEONA TOKER, THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM

The Parallel Universes of David Shrayer-Petrov A Collection Published on the Occasion of the Writer’s 85th Birthday Edited by Roman Katsman, Maxim D. Shrayer, & Klavdia Smola

ROMAN KATSMAN is a professor in the Department of Literature of the Jewish People in Bar-Ilan University.

MAXIM D. SHRAYER is Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies at Boston College and Director of the Project on Russian and Eurasian Jewry at the Davis Center, Harvard University. KLAVDIA SMOLA is Professor and Chair of Slavic Literatures and Cultures at the Department of Slavic Studies, University of Dresden (Germany).

This volume celebrates the literary oeuvres of David Shrayer-Petrov—poet, fiction writer, memoirist, essayist, and literary translator (and medical doctor and researcher in his parallel career). Author of the refusenik novel Doctor Levitin, Shrayer-Petrov is one of the most important representatives of Jewish-Russian literature. Published in the year of Shrayer-Petrov’s eighty-fifth birthday, thirty-five years after the writer’s emigration from the former USSR, this is the first volume to

gather materials and investigations that examine his writings from various literaryhistorical and theoretical perspectives. By focusing on many different aspects of Shrayer-Petrov’s multifaceted and eventful literary career, the volume brings together some of the leading American, European, Israeli and Russian scholars of Jewish poetics, exilic literature, and Russian and Soviet culture and history. In addition to fifteen essays and an extensive interview with Shrayer-Petrov, the

JEWS OF RUSSIA & EASTERN EUROPE AND THEIR LEGACY January 2021 Hardcover | 9781644695265 | $90.00 Paperback | 9781644695272 | $30.00 458 pp. | 114 illus. | 6.14 x 9.21

volume features a detailed bibliography and a pictorial biography.

A detailed study of the longstanding Yiddish newspaper, the “Forverts”, drawing on many primary and secondary sources

“Bringing to bear a wealth of

knowledge, Gennady Estraikh expertly leads the reader between Russia and the United States as he examines how the Yiddish Daily Forverts shaped the politics and culture of immigrant Jews. This most important immigrant institution has finally received the scholarly treatment it deserves.”

— TONY MICHELS, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN–MADISON

Transatlantic Russian Jewishness Ideological Voyages of the Yiddish Daily Forverts in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

GENNADY ESTRAIKH is a Clinical Professor at New York University, Director of the Shvidler Project for the History of the Jews of the Soviet Union at NYU, and Senior Scholar at the Moscow Higher School of Economics.

Gennady Estraikh In the early decades of the twentieth century, tens of thousands of Yiddish speaking immigrants actively participated in the American Socialist and labor movement. They formed the milieu of the hugely successful daily Forverts (Forward), established in New York in April 1897. Its editorial columns and bylined articles—many of whose authors, such as Abraham Cahan and Sholem Asch, were household names at the time—both reflected and shaped the attitudes and values

of the readership. Most pages of this book are focused on the newspaper’s reaction to the political developments in the home country. Profound admiration of Russian literature and culture did not mitigate the writers’ criticism of the czarist and Soviet regimes.

JEWS OF RUSSIA & EASTERN EUROPE AND THEIR LEGACY

September 2020 Hardcover | 9781644693636 | $119.00 354 pp. | 6.14 x 9.21

An overarching exploration of the flight and evacuation of Soviet Jews during the Holocaust

“With care, academic rigor,

and a keen understanding of Soviet Jewish history, Feferman culls from this cache of more than one hundred handwritten letters the otherwise hidden, intimate lengthy struggles of the Ginsburgs.”

— WENDY LOWER, CLAREMONT MCKENNA COLLEGE

“If we had wings we would fly to you” A Soviet Jewish Family Faces Destruction, 1941–42 KIRIL FEFERMAN teaches at Ariel University and is the head of Ariel’s Holocaust History Center.

Kiril Feferman This is the first work in any language that offers both an overarching exploration of the flight and evacuation of Soviet Jews viewed at the macro level, and a personal history of one Soviet Jewish family. It is also the first study to examine Jewish life in the Northern Caucasus, a Soviet region that history scholars have rarely addressed. Drawing on a collection of family letters, Kiril Feferman provides a history of the Ginsburgs as they debate whether to evacuate their home of Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia and are eventually swept away by the Soviet-

German War, the German invasion of Soviet Russia, and the Holocaust. The book makes a significant contribution to the history of the Holocaust and Second World War in the Soviet Union, presenting one Soviet region as an illustration of wartime social and media politics.

JEWS OF RUSSIA & EASTERN EUROPE AND THEIR LEGACY

June 2020 Hardcover | 9781644692905 | $119.00 Paperback | 9781644692912 | $26.95 322 pp. | 22 illus. | 6.14 x 9.21

A classic compilation of original Russian and Jewish sources on the anti-Nazi resistance in Eastern Europe, including over 100 photographs and 12 maps

“A remarkable collection of terrifying and inspiring testimonies from Jewish partisans who did what they could under appalling circumstances to resist the Nazis and wreak vengeance of their own. Faced with unrelenting threats from Nazis and neighbors alike, they took

to the forests and organized raids, fighting to resist and ultimately survive.”

— JOSHUA RUBENSTEIN, AUTHOR OF TANGLED LOYALTIES: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ILYA EHRENBURG

Jewish Partisans of the Soviet Union during World War II Jack Nusan Porter This volume is a classic compilation of original Russian and Jewish sources on the anti-Nazi resistance in Eastern Europe. It is rooted in decades of research motivated by a desire to set the record straight on Jewish participation in resistance movements, a phenomenon often overlooked when not actively

JACK NUSAN PORTER is currently an associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University.

concealed. As the son of Jewish partisans in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, Jack Porter presents here the result of his decades-long research: first-hand accounts and interviews with survivors and partisans, as well as some of their original work,

and a seminal English translation of Partisan Brotherhood, a historical document gathered by Russian-Jewish intellectuals in 1948 at the height of anti-Semitic hysteria, written mainly by non-Jewish Soviet partisan commanders recounting the deeds of the Jewish fighters in their units.

CHERRY ORCHARD BOOKS An imprint of Academic Studies Press

June 2021 Hardcover | 9781644694923 | $149.00 Paperback | 9781644694930 | $29.95 662 pp. | 100 illus.; 12 maps | 6.14 x 9.21

A collection of original essays thattells the story of more than 200,000 Polish Jews who survived World War II and the Holocaust in the interior of the Soviet Union

KATHARINA FRIEDLA is a historian specializing in East European and Jewish history, with a major focus on nationalism and identity politics, culture, state ideology, and forced migrations. MARKUS NESSELRODT is a historian of East European history and specializes in Polish history, history of migration, and urban history.

Polish Jews in the Soviet Union (1939–1959) History and Memory of Deportation, Exile, and Survival Edited by

Katharina Friedla and Markus Nesselrodt The majority of Poland’s prewar Jewish population managed to survive World War II and the Holocaust in the interior of the Soviet Union. This collection of original essays tells the story of more than 200,000 Polish Jews who came to a foreign country as war refugees, forced laborers, or political prisoners. This diverse set of experiences is covered by historians, literary and memory scholars, and sociologists who specialize in the field of East European Jewish history and

culture.

JEWS OF POLAND

December 2021 Hardcover | 9781644697498 | $139.00 350 pp. | 6.14 x 9.21

Analyzes the ways in which literary works and cultural discourses employ the construct of the Jew’s body in relation to the material world in order either to establish or to subvert dominant cultural norms and stereotypes

“This book undoubtedly expands and deepens our knowledge of both the conceptual and the strictly artistic-aesthetic depiction of the Jewish body in Russian literature.”

— VLADIMIR KHAZAN, HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM

Embodied Differences The Jew’s Body and Materiality in Russian Literature and Culture Henrietta Mondry

HENRIETTA MONDRY is Professor in the Department of Global, Cultural and Language Studies at the University of Canterbury.

This book analyzes the ways in which literary works and cultural discourses employ the construct of the Jew’s body in relation to the material world in order either to establish and reinforce, or to subvert and challenge, dominant cultural norms and stereotypes. It examines the use of physical characteristics, embodied practices, tacit knowledge and senses to define the body taxonomically as normative, different, abject or mimetically desired. Starting from the works of Gogol and Dostoevsky

through

to

contemporary

Russian-Jewish

women’s

writing,

broadening the scope to examining the role of objects, museum displays, and the politics of heritage food, the book argues that materiality can embody fictional constructions that should be approached on a culture-specific basis.

January 2021 Hardcover | 9781644694855 | $119.00 268 pp. | 14 illus. | 6.14 x 9.21

Examines the arguments and rhetoric used by the United States and the USSR following the 1983 downing of KAL 007 and the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident

DAVID CRATIS WILLIAMS is Professor of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at Florida Atlantic University.

MARILYN J. YOUNG is the Wayne C. Minnick Professor of Communication Emerita at Florida State University.

MICHAEL K. LAUNER is Professor Emeritus of Russian at Florida State University.

The Rhetorical Rise and Demise of “Democracy” in Russian Political Discourse Volume 1: The Path from Disaster toward Russian “Democracy” David Cratis Williams, Marilyn J. Young, & Michael K. Launer The essays in this book examine the arguments and rhetoric used by the United States and the USSR following two catastrophes that impacted both countries, as blame is cast and consequences are debated. In this environment, it was perhaps inevitable that conspiracy theories would arise, especially about the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 over the Sea of Japan. Those theories are examined, resulting in at least one method for addressing conspiracy arguments. In the case of Chernobyl, the disaster ruptured the “social compact” between the Soviet government and the people; efforts to overcome the resulting disillusionment quickly became the focus of state efforts.

December 2021 Hardcover | 9781644697320 | $139.00 506 pp. | 6.14 x 9.21

An exploration of the unique socio-political and socio-cultural community of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the late fifteenth to the early seventeenth century

“The book should stand for some time as the most thorough account of the emergence of early modern Lithuania.”

— MARTIN O. HEISLER, HIPERBOREEA

JŪRATĖ KIAUPIENĖ was a senior research officer of the Institute for Lithuanian History in Vilnius and a professor of Vytautas the Great University (Kaunas)

Between Rome and Byzantium The Golden Age of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s Political Culture.

Second Half of the Fifteenth Century to First Half of the Seventeenth Century Jūratė Kiaupienė Translated by Jayde Will

The focus of this book is the unique socio-political and socio-cultural community of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the golden age of the late fifteenth to early seventeenth century. This study analyses the cultural and political impact of the values disseminated in the newly created state, such as the concept of the state

itself, its governance, representation, laws, and other elements of the socio-political system.

Through theoretical and factographic arguments, this book demonstrates that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a social, political, and cultural link between geopolitical and geo-cultural spaces of the Roman West and the Byzantine East.

Located at the cultural crossroads of Europe, Lithuania was an ethnically diverse, multilingual, multi-faith, multicultural national space. Nurtured by international LITHUANIAN STUDIES WITHOUT BORDERS

January 2020 Hardcover | 9781644691465 | $119.00 278 pp. | 6.14 x 9.21

contacts, its political system developed rapidly, influencing the formation of geopolitical and geo-cultural mentality of the whole Central Eastern European region.

An outline of history and research of the Lithuanian Metrica, an important part of archival inheritance, comprising documents from the late fourteenth to the late eighteenth century

“Some books have to be written despite the challenge. The present volume, written by four outstanding Lithuanian scholars, has been awaited for years among academics. “ — LIDIA KORCZAK, JAGIELLONIAN UNIVERSITY, KRAKOW

The Lithuanian Metrica History and Research ARTŪRAS DUBONIS is a senior research fellow at the Lithuanian Institute of History. DARIUS ANTANAVIČIUS is a senior research fellow at the Lithuanian Institute of History. RAIMONDA RAGAUSKIENĖ is a senior research fellow at the Lithuanian Institute of History.

RAMUNĖ ŠMIGELSKYTĖ-STUKIENĖ is a senior research fellow at the Lithuanian Institute of History.

Artūras Dubonis, Darius Antanavičius, Raimonda Ragauskienė, and Ramunė Šmigelskytė-Stukienė This volume analyzes the history of the Lithuanian Metrica—the chancellery books of the Lithuanian grand duke—from the formation of its books in the mid-fifteenth century until now. It reveals how the first Metrica books emerged in the second half of the fifteenth century, discussing the titles given to them in different periods in history, and explains why the Lithuanian Metrica should be considered the state archive of early Lithuania. Material hitherto unknown in academic literature about

the fate of the Lithuanian Metrica at the end of the eighteenth century, in the last years of the existence of the joint Polish-Lithuanian state, is also revealed in this account. The book dedicates a great deal of attention to the history of the publication and research of the documents and books of the Lithuanian Metrica, which are now kept in Moscow, Russia, as a historical source.

LITHUANIAN STUDIES WITHOUT BORDERS

June 2020 Hardcover | 9781644693100 | $109.00 264 pp. | 6.14 x 9.21

An elucidation on the complicated relationship between religion and national consciousness in the modern world, shedding light on the various cases of Central and Eastern Europe

“The volume makes an admirable contribution to our understanding of this complicated part of Europe, and scholars of religion and nation there will surely benefit from engaging with its findings.”

— PAUL W. WERTH, UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, LAS VEGAS

YOKO AOSHIMA is an associate professor at the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido University.

Entangled Interactions between Religion and National Consciousness in Central and Eastern Europe Edited by

Yoko Aoshima This book elucidates the complicated relationship between religion and national consciousness in the modern world, highlighting various cases within Central and Eastern Europe. Through these analyses, contributors demonstrate how religion, far from disappearing, strongly impacted the emerging national consciousness.

Starting with the pre-modern era, essays examine the long-term transformation of religious, political, and social situations of the region. In addition, the book considers the impact of imperial powers, which tended to be linked with a universal religion. Light is also shed on the multifaceted nature of nations, which contribute to a new vision of the historical transformation of the region that enriches the general theories of nationalism.

LITHUANIAN STUDIES WITHOUT BORDERS

August 2020 Hardcover | 9781644693568 | $109.00 216 pp. | 2 illus. | 6.14 x 9.21

From the angle of folklore studies and personal remembrances, a collection of articles that shed light on communicative memory, intimate ties between the people and the land, changing landscapes, and the dramatic ruptures and tragedies of Lithuania’s long twentieth century

“This anthology is a stellar example of how the disciplinary tradition of simultaneously looking

inwards and outwards while

The Storytelling Human

keeping one’s eye on the

Lithuanian Folk Tradition Today

protean matter of research, is realised in the present.”

Compiled and edited by Lina Būgienė

— SUSANNE ÖSTERLUND-PÖTZSCH, TAUTOSAKOS DARBAI / FOLKLORE STUDIES

This book is among the very few publications offering to the English-speaking readership significant insights into contemporary Lithuanian folklore research.

Dealing with a broad variety of materials—from archived manuscripts to audiorecorded life stories to internet folklore—it comprises such topics as history and identity; the traditional worldview influencing modern people’s actions; the construction of the mental landscape; types and modes of storytelling; and the mod-

LINA BŪGIENĖ is a researcher in Lithuanian traditional and contemporary folk narratives, oral history, and folk belief.

ern uses of proverbs, anecdotes, and internet lore. In a balanced way reflecting

upon past and present, tradition and modernity, individual and collective, and employing modern research methodologies to dissect and analyze popular subjects and themes, this book presents a condensed view of the popular Lithuanian culture and mentality.

LITHUANIAN STUDIES WITHOUT BORDERS

November 2020 Hardcover | 9781644694237 | $109.00 290 pp. | 33 illus. | 6.14 x 9.21

Based on a investigative research and vast resources, this volume provides a fresh look from Kazakhstan at the genesis and formation of not only the Russian nation and the Moscow state, but also the origin and roots of several states on the Eurasian continent during the Middle Ages

MARAT SHAIKHUTDINOV is the First Deputy Secretary of the Security Council of the Republic of Kazakhstan and Scientific Advisor at the Astana International University.

Between East and West The Formation of the Moscow State Marat Shaikhutdinov Drawing on a wide range of sources and historiographical material, Between East and West provides a comprehensive analysis of the efforts of the Moscow princes to form a centralized Russian state. According to the author, the unification of Russia around Moscow was not historically inevitable. Tver, Novgorod, and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania also claimed this role, and if they had been victorious, a less authoritarian, less autocratic and less despotic Russian state could have emerged. Professor Shaikhutdinov rejects the concept of the “Mongol-Tatar yoke”

and claims that relations between Moscow and Ulus Jochi (Golden Horde) were more complicated and interdependent. The influence of Ulus Jochi on Moscow was especially strong in the political, economic and military spheres, while the religious field was dominated by the influence from Byzantium. The volume discusses in detail the geopolitical aspirations of Russia and the “Moscow—Third Rome” theory. In sum, the formation of the Moscow state was directly influenced by both internal and external factors, countries of the East and the West.

November 2021 Hardcover | 9781644697139 | $109.00 274 pp. | 8 figs.; 11 maps | 6.14 x 9.21

A collection of articles investigating the impact of the Russian revolution on Norway and Sweden

“This collaborative effort to explore the events of 1917 and their impact on Norway and Sweden in particular, constitutes a valuable source for those interested in studying the reception of the Russian Revolution of 1917 by other countries as well as its various impacts in those countries.”

— AYSE DIETRICH, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN STUDIES

KARI AGA MYKLEBOST is Professor of History and Barents Chair in Russian Studies at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. JENS PETTER NIELSEN is Professor of History at the Department of Archaeology, History, Religious Studies, and Theology, UiT The Arctic University of Norway. ANDREI ROGATCHEVSKI is Professor of Russian Literature and Culture at UiT The Arctic University of Norway

The Russian Revolutions of 1917 The Northern Impact and Beyond Edited by

Kari Aga Myklebost, Jens Petter Nielsen, & Andrei Rogatchevski In October 2017, UiT – the Arctic University of Norway hosted the international conference The Russian Revolutions of 1917: The Northern Impact and Beyond.

The aim was to explore the events of 1917 in Russia, with a particular focus on the northern regions and the impact on Russia’s neighbor state in the northwestern corner of the empire, Norway. The conference also included contributions that reach beyond the North, opening up for more general perspectives on the

revolutionary events of 1917 and their impact in Europe, as well as Russia. Several contributions contain a bilateral perspective, discussing the reception of the Russian revolutions of 1917 in Scandinavian states and the significance of these events for the bilateral relations between various states.

March 2020 Hardcover | 9781644690642 | $109.00 232 pp. | 15 figs. | 6.14 x 9.21

Explores the contradictory images of Ivan the Terrible in Russian historical memory since 1991

“In this extraordinarily capacious survey of contemporary treatments of Ivan the Terrible, Halperin expertly describes and critiques the field of competing stances on this figure.”

— KEVIN M. F. PLATT, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

CHARLES J. HALPERIN is an independent scholar residing in Bloomington, Indiana.

Ivan the Terrible in Russian Historical Memory since 1991 Charles J. Halperin Tsar Ivan the Terrible (Ivan IV, 1533-1584) is one of the most controversial rulers in Russian history, infamous for his cruelty. He was the first Russian ruler to use mass terror as a political instrument, and the only Russian ruler to do so before Stalin.

Comparisons of Ivan to Stalin only exacerbated the politicization of his image.

Russians have never agreed on his role in Russian history, but his reign is too important to ignore. Since the abolition of censorship in 1991 professional historians and amateurs have grappled with this problem. Some authors have

manipulated that image to serve political and cultural agendas. This book explores Russia’s contradictory historical memory of Ivan in scholarly, pedagogical and political publications.

STUDIES IN RUSSIAN AND SLAVIC LITERATURES, CULTURES, AND HISTORY July 2021 Hardcover | 9781644695876 | $109.00 308 pp. | 6.14 x 9.21

An important contribution to our understanding of some of the major issues and developments in the dynamics of contemporary life in Central Asia in the postSoviet period

IRAJ BASHIRI is one of the leading scholars in the fields of Central Asian studies and Iranian studies with a focus on Tajik and Iranian identity.

“As an expert’s personal account of Tajik culture and language, the book is one of the few contributions to the

The History of the Civil War in Tajikistan

field. Importantly, it reflects

Iraj Bashiri

the perspectives of Tajiks and prominent figures in Tajik politics on the background and the aftermath of the civil war.”

— HALIL BURAK SAKAL, EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES

In the 10th century, the Turks separated the Tajiks, a Central Asian community, from their Iranian kinfolk. The Tajiks adopted the Hanafi faith and, alongside ethnicity, made it a pillar of their identity. Between 1920 and 1990, the Soviets tried to alter the Tajiks’ identity. While they could affect the Tajiks’ social status substantially (cf. Afghanistan), they failed in changing the Tajiks’ ideology. Instead, they became involved in a conflict that pitted Soviet Tajiks against radical Muslim Tajiks, the latter intentionally misidentified as Wahhabis by the Soviets. The question was about the viability of enforcing the secular Soviet constitution versus

the Islamic Shari’a. Inability to resolve the dispute led to civil war (1992). The volume traces the conflict from its roots in Bukhara to the establishment of an independent secular Tajik state (1997).

CENTRAL ASIAN STUDIES

May 2020 Hardcover | 9781644692875 | $119.00 336 pp. | 6.14 x 9.21

A literary and cultural history examination of Russian tourism through the prism of cosmopolitanism, pitted against provinciality and nationalist anxiety about the allure of Western Europe

“The book’s publication during our twenty-first century pandemic lockdown is timely— a reminder of the historical importance of expanded opportunities to travel and the imprint of travel on the Russian identity.”

— JEFFREY BROOKS, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

Contested Russian Tourism Cosmopolitanism, Nation, and Empire in the Nineteenth Century Susan Layton

SUSAN LAYTON is a research associate at the Centre d’études des mondes russe, caucasien et centre-européen (CERCEC) in Paris.

This literary, cultural history examines imperial Russian tourism’s entanglement in the vexed issue of cosmopolitanism understood as receptiveness to the foreign and pitted against provinciality and nationalist anxiety about the allure and the influence of Western Europe. The study maps the shift from Enlightenment cosmopolitanism to Byronic cosmopolitanism with special attention to the art pilgrimage abroad. For typically middle-class Russians daunted by the cultural riches of the West, vacationing in the North Caucasus, Georgia, and the Crimea

afforded the compensatory opportunity to play colonizer kings and queens in “Asia.” Drawing on Anna Karenina and other literary classics, travel writing, journalism, and guidebooks, the investigation engages with current debates in cosmopolitan studies, including the fuzzy paradigm of “colonial cosmopolitanism.”

IMPERIAL ENCOUNTERS IN RUSSIAN HISTORY August 2021 Hardcover | 9781644694206 | $139.00 480 pp. | 14 illus. (color) | 6.14 x 9.21

A popular Russian radio host asked his listeners to describe a moment of happiness, captured here in the voices of Dubas’s fellow countrymen from the breadth and depth of today’s Russia

ALEX DUBAS is a celebrity Russian writer, talk-show host, travel journalist, cultural entrepreneur, and host of the popular radio show Serebriannii Dozhd’ [Silver Rain]. YVONNE HOWELL teaches Russian language and literature at the University of Richmond.

Moments of Happiness Alex Dubas Translated by Yvonne Howell; Photographs by Alexander Petrosyan

In 2014, when the Russian-Latvian radio talk-show host Alex Dubas started asking his celebrity guests to describe a personal “moment of happiness” in their lives, the results were unexpectedly frank and exhilarating. Soon the project expanded to include submissions from two million listeners. This book holds a collection of hundreds of mini-stories about human joy, ranging from a diver’s first beholding of the underwater world, to the words of a new mother in sign language, to a Russian rock star’s rousing concert in Ukraine. As Alex puts it, “this book is a distillation—

and a catalyst—of intense happiness.”

CHERRY ORCHARD BOOKS An imprint of Academic Studies Press

July 2021 Paperback | 9781644694961 | $23.95 126 pp. | 14 illus. (color) | 8 x 8

A bilingual UkrainianEnglish collection that makes the major works of one of the most important Ukrainian Modernist poets of the twentieth century available to both scholars and the general reader alike

“There is more to Quiet Spiders of the Hidden Soul than meets the eye. Readers too are invited to dig through the texts, to unleash Bazhan’s memory as well as their own.”

— OLENA JENNINGS, READING IN TRANSLATION

“Quiet Spiders of the Hidden Soul” Mykola (Nik) Bazhan’s Early Experimental Poetry Edited by OKSANA ROSENBLUM is an art historian and translator residing in New York City. LEV FRIDMAN is a Speech-Language Pathologist based in New York City. ANZHELIKA KHYZHNYA is a scholar and journalist.

Oksana Rosenblum, Lev Fridman, and Anzhelika Khyzhnya This bilingual Ukrainian-English collection brings together the most interesting experimental works by Mykola (Nik) Bazhan, one of the major Ukrainian poets of the twentieth century. As he moved from futurism to neoclassicism, symbolism to socialist realism, Bazhan consistently displayed a creative approach to theme, versification, and vocabulary. Many poems from his three remarkable early collections (1926, 1927, and 1929) remain unknown to readers, both in Ukraine

and the West. Because Bazhan was later forced into the straitjacket of officially sanctioned socialist realism, his early poetry has been neglected. This collection makes these outstanding works available for the first time.

UKRAINIAN STUDIES

November 2020 Hardcover | 9781644693940 | $109.00 Paperback | 9781644693957 | $24.95 324 pp. | 8 illus. | 6.14 x 9.21

Brings to an Englishreading audience for the first time Yuri Tynianov’s ground-breaking novel “Küchlya”, a romanticized, evocative biography of the Decembrist poet Wilhelm Küchelbecker, a school-friend of Alexander Pushkin

“Accompanied by an excellent introduction, this wonderfully fresh and highly readable translation will bring Tynianov’s genre-bending historical novel to an Englishspeaking readership.”

— DANIEL BEER, ROYAL HOLLOWAY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

Küchlya: Decembrist Poet A Novel Yuri Tynianov Translated by Anna Kurkina Rush, Peter France, & Christopher Rush

ANNA KURKINA RUSH taught Russian at George Watson’s College (Edinburgh) and the University of St Andrews. PETER FRANCE is the author and editor of many books on Russian, French, and comparative literature. CHRISTOPHER RUSH is the author of twenty-five critically acclaimed books in various genres, including poetry, prose fiction and biography.

The poet Wilhelm Küchelbecker, Pushkin’s school-friend, suffered twenty years of imprisonment and Siberian exile for his part in the ill-fated Decembrist rising of 1825 against the Russian autocracy. His largely forgotten life and work are vividly recreated in Küchlya (1925), a pioneering historical novel by the eminent literary scholar and Formalist theorist Yuri Tynianov. Writing at a time when Stalin was tightening his grip on Soviet culture and society, Tynyanov implicitly brings

together the disquieting experiences of the 1820s and the 1920s. In a lively, innovative style, his gripping and moving narrative, here translated for the first time, evokes the childhood, youth, beliefs and often absurd adventures of a Quixotic, idealistic protagonist against the richly complex backdrop of postNapoleonic Russian society.

CHERRY ORCHARD BOOKS An imprint of Academic Studies Press

October 2021 Hardcover | 9781644696842 | $119.00 Paperback | 9781644696859 | $24.95 396 pp. | 6.14 x 9.21

An extraordinary travelogue by the pioneering Hebrew writer Avigdor Hameiri as he leaves his home in Mandate-era Palestine to revisit the Europe he had left

“Peter Appelbaum not only brilliantly translated a text which is full of complex references and referrals, but he enriched it with hundreds of learned annotations. All this makes for an enjoyable and intellectually stimulating book.”

— ISTVÁN DEÁK, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Voyage into Savage Europe A Declining Civilization

PETER C. APPELBAUM is Emeritus Professor of Pathology and spends his retirement writing and translating books about Jewish soldiers in World War I Central Power Armies.

Avigdor Hameiri Translated by Peter C. Appelbaum

In this unique memoir, now in English for the first time, Israel’s first Poet Laureate Avigdor Hameiri details a trip to Europe in 1930 from the perspective of a Hungarian Jew who had served in the Habsburg Army. Upon visiting Austria, Hungary, Romania (including parts of ceded Hungarian Transylvania), and Czechoslovakia (including his Carpatho-Ruthenian homeland), he sees Europe in flux on the brink of an unknown disaster. Austria and Hungary are full of youth

whose philosophy is “eat, drink and be merry; tomorrow we die.” There is fear of Bolshevism from without, but the unfelt danger is German Fascism. Jews (especially in Hungary) are assimilated but cannot escape from their Jewishness: some are Zionists. Romania is corrupt and antisemitic. In Carpatho-Ruthenia, Hameiri has two premonitions warning him to return to Israel, a prediction of the destruction soon to befall Europe. Hameiri also gives accounts of the artistic and cultural scenes of 1930s Europe, as well as the world of Carpatho-Ruthenian CHERRY ORCHARD BOOKS

Hasidism, which was soon to be destroyed by the Holocaust. From the growing

An imprint of Academic Studies Press

danger and confusion surrounding inter-war Europe, in prose at once

September 2020 Hardcover | 9781644693360 | $109.00 Paperback | 9781644693377 | $24.95 254 pp. | 6.14 x 9.21

compassionate and bitingly sarcastic, comes a sweeping account of Jewish life in 1930 from one of Israel’s prolific writers.

A first person account of the struggle for survival under the harsh Soviet regime in Ukraine

“An important addition to the small, but steadily growing, body of memoirs that give voice to the Ukrainian encoun-

ter with catastrophe in the twentieth century. As such, it sounds a warning about the dangers of authoritarianism, fanaticism, and intolerance to all people of good will.”

— ALEXANDER J. MOTYL, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY-NEWARK

ANDREI KUSHNIR is an American artist/author of Ukrainian-American descent.

Epic Journey The Life and Times of Wasyl Kushnir Andrei Kushnir Wasyl Andreievych Kushnir was born in Ukraine in 1923, and was witness to the tragedies and horrors of the early years of collectivization under the Soviet regime.

His father fought in the Ukrainian National Army against the Russian Bolshevik invasion and ultimate occupation of Ukraine, and his grandfather was murdered

by Chekist Bolsheviks. Early in Kushnir’s life, his family's home and all personal possessions were confiscated by the authorities, and both parents were exiled.

During this period, millions perished in Ukraine from famine, and Kushnir himself

suffered during the Ukrainian Holodomor. Upon the escape of his parents from prison camps, the family reunited, only to be torn apart again during World War II when Kushnir was taken by the Nazis as a slave laborer to Germany. At the war's conclusion, Kushnir emigrated to the United States and built a family.

The story of Wasyl Kushnir’s life, which extended almost a century, is told by his son Andrei in his father’s voice. Andrei combined his father’s memories, written CHERRY ORCHARD BOOKS An imprint of Academic Studies Press

April 2020 Hardcover | 9781644691090 | $90.00 Paperback | 9781644691106 | $32.95 142 pp. | 215 color illus. | 8.5 x 9

longhand in Ukrainian, with translated documents and additional narrative. This non-fiction work attests to the struggle for survival under the harsh Soviet regime in Ukraine, the courage and persistence of one remarkable man, the importance of family, and the strength and endurance of the human spirit.

A moving memoir that lovingly recreates the lives of a Jewish family in the dying years of the Romanov dynasty

“Descriptions of the profound stillness of the frozen northern

taiga to a personal journey of facing and embracing her own Jewishness enrich the narrative. Abundant maps and delightful illustrations add to the text.”

— PATRICIA POLANSKY, UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII AT MANOA

ELISA BRODINSKY MILLER had a long career in Russian Far East business and trade: both in academia at the University of Washington and in the business community.

When the River Ice Flows, I Will Come Home A Memoir Elisa Brodinsky Miller Shortly after her father’s death, Elisa Brodinsky Miller uncovered a cache of letters among his belongings. Written in Russian and Yiddish, with datelines in Tsarist and early Soviet Russia, the letters detail eight long years (1914-1922) during which Elisa’s father, his five siblings, and their mother spend apart from Elisa’s grandfather who had left for America, believing their separation would be short.

Miller, a Russian affairs specialist, learns bit by bit with each translation about the family she knew so little about, and the eight years of history they lived through, enabling her for the first time to connect her own experiences with those who came before her. This captivating memoir bridges the past with the present, as we learn about her grandparents’ struggles to escape Tsarist Russia, her parents’ hopes for their marriage in America, and her own reach for meaning and purpose: each a generation with dreams—first theirs, now hers.

CHERRY ORCHARD BOOKS An imprint of Academic Studies Press

May 2020 Hardcover | 9781644692790 | $90.00 Paperback | 9781644692806 | $26.95 202 pp. | 59 color illus. | 6.14 x 9.21

A sensitive and painfully honest evocation of survival, idealism and displacement, full of insight and beautifully written

“In this moving book, Annette

Aronowicz revisits a past that was that of her parents and also that of many communist Jews caught up in the terrifying turmoil of the twentieth century in Poland.”

— CATHERINE CHALIER, PARIS OUEST NANTERRE UNIVERSITY

ANNETTE ARONOWICZ was Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin & Marshall College

Self-Portrait, with Parents and Footnotes In and Out of a Postwar Jewish Childhood Annette Aronowicz This book is a story of movement. Moving from city to city characterized the author's growing up—from Poland to Belgium and from the East Coast to the West Coast of the United States. The book also moves between past and present. The authors' parents, Jews from Eastern Europe, lived through the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, the post-war Communist world, and much migration in between. How were these events transmitted to their child, and what questions do they give rise to today? The book moves between straightforward story-telling and

reflections on memory, on politics and religion, and on literature. It seeks the genesis of intellectual interests in personal history.

CHERRY ORCHARD BOOKS An imprint of Academic Studies Press

September 2021 Hardcover | 9781644696200 | $99.00 Paperback | 9781644696217 | $22.95 152 pp. | 17 illus. | 6.14 x 9.21

The personal story of an underground Hebrew teacher in communist Soviet Union who was sentenced to prison after false claims by the KGB

“The book is written with the

verve and fervor that drove Kholmyansky at the time and brings alive the atmospherics of the last two decades of the Soviet Union’s existence and the exigencies of Jewish life under a hostile and powerful regime.”

— YACOV RO'I, TEL-AVIV UNIVERSITY

The Voice of Silence EPHRAIM KHOLMYANSKY is a Jewish activist and was a Prisoner of Zion in the USSR.

The Story of the Jewish Underground in the USSR Ephraim (Alexander) Kholmyansky While trying to revive Jewish national life by teaching Hebrew and Judaism in the Soviet Union, Ephraim Kholmyansky is arrested and threatened with long years of imprisonment and exile. In response, he declares a hunger strike. Supporters throughout the world rally to pressure the Soviet government to release him. A race against time begins…

Ephraim Kholmyansky was born in Moscow in 1950. In 1979, he initiated an underground network for dissemination of Hebrew, Jewish tradition and Zionist values throughout the peripheral cities of the USSR. He was arrested in 1984 when the KGB planted weapons in his apartment in order to stage a show trial and intimidate Jewish activists. Kholmyansky held a prolonged hunger strike while kept in prison. Thanks to his hunger strike and major international solidarity campaign, he received a relatively short sentence. This is an exceedingly rare case of victory over the KGB. This book documents this trying episode of his life and provides a unique perspective from inside the USSR.

JEWS OF RUSSIA & EASTERN EUROPE AND THEIR LEGACY

September 2021 Paperback | 9781644695913 | $23.95 286 pp. | 61 illus. (color) | 6.14 x 9.21

An amalgam of personal reminiscences that captures the mighty pulsation of Jewish life in Poland in its last two decades of existence, 1919-1939—an extraordinary, perhaps unique, mode of Jewish life in the diaspora

EFRAIM SHMUELI was an Israeli philosopher and historian who lectured and taught for over fifty years in Israel and the United States.

The Last Generation of Jews in Poland Efraim Shmueli Edited and translated by Gila Shmueli

The sense of a mighty, profound pulsation of national life still animated Polish Jews in the last two decades of their existence, 1919-1939—perhaps one of the most beautiful modes of Jewish life in the diaspora, with Hasidism as “Polish Jewry’s gift to the Jewish people.”

To capture the spiritual and intellectual ferment that animated Polish Jewry in those interbellum years, the author weaves memories of his youth into the story of the Jewish world he knew in his native Lodz. From his roots in the pietistic world of

Hasidism and his later immersion in a secular Zionist high school, he invokes programs of "salvation" that shift from passive submission to God's will to political, social and national activism.

CHERRY ORCHARD BOOKS An imprint of Academic Studies Press

November 2021 Hardcover | 9781644695975 | $119.00 Paperback | 9781644695982 | $25.95 274 pp. | 8 figs.; 11 maps | 6.14 x 9.21

Co-published with

The long-awaited new edition of the acclaimed, first-ever comprehensive, informative, and entertaining history of Eastern Europe in English—thoroughly updated, with a major new section on the postcommunist era

“Astonishing, entertaining, and informative ... How can you write a book that covers thousands of years over half a continent and keep your readers with you? ... Tomek Jankowski tells it in a way you

have to listen. And sometimes

Eastern Europe!

you get so excited that you

2nd Edition: Everything You Need to Know About the History (and More) of a Region that Shaped Our World and Still Does

want to repeat his stories to your friends."

— NICK THORPE, BBC NEWS CENTRAL EUROPE CORRESPONDENT

Tomek Jankowski with a foreword by Nick Thorpe

Even those knowledgeable about Western Europe often see Eastern Europe as terra incognito, with a sign on the border declaring “Here be monsters.” Tomek Jankowski's book is a gateway to understanding both what unites and separates Eastern Europeans from their Western brethren, and how this vital region has

TOMEK JANKOWSKI is a senior analyst at a research firm that specializes in producing market analysis for the management consulting world, where he has authored numerous reports focusing on Eastern Europe and other emerging markets regions.

been shaped by but has also left its mark on Western Europe, Central Asia, the

Middle East, and North Africa. It is a reader-friendly guide to a region that is all too often mischaracterized as remote, insular, and superstitious.

The first part sums up modern linguistic, geographic, and religious contours of Eastern Europe, while the second, main part delves into the region's history, from the earliest origins of Europe up to the end of the Cold War, as well as—new to the 2nd edition—a section on the post-Cold War period. Closing the book is a section that makes sense of geographical name references—many cities, rivers, or regions

November 2021 Paperback | 9780997316926 | $29.95 746 pp. | 6.14 x 9.21

have different names—and also includes an "Eastern Europe by Numbers" feature that provides charts describing the populations, politics, and economies of the

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region today. Throughout are boxed-off anecdotes ("Useless Trivia") describing

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fascinating aspects of Eastern European history or culture.

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Farewell and a Handkerchief Poems from the Road

The Eighth Wonder of the World

Vitězslav Nezval Translated from the Czech by Roman Kostovski with a foreword by Karen von Kuneš

This collection reflects on the month-long travels of Czech poet Vítězslav Nezval through Vienna, Paris, southern France, and Italy.

During this journey, on May 9, 1933, Nezval had a chance encounter with two of the surrealist movement’s most influential poets— André Breton and Paul Éluard—while sitting at the Cardinal Café on the Grands Boulevards in Paris, a meeting that proved transformative.

After returning home, Nezval helped found the Czech Surrealist Group, along with Karel Teige, Jindřich Stýrský, and Toyen. It became the only official group of its kind outside of France.

Jordan Plevnes Translated from the Macedonian by Will Firth

In his novel, Plevnes takes his dark sense of humor and undeniable wit on a search for a common ground in an uncommon world. His protagonist Alexander Simsar, during the last 3.3 seconds of his life in Berlin in 1989 (weeks before the fall of Berlin Wall), envisions the creation of a monument—an eighth wonder of the world—that would embrace humanity in all its layers and countenances. In this absurdist novel, Plevnes invents a utopia that unites many of the differences in the world: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and even Satanism.

“Plevnes contrasts the violence of European “In this new translation of a Czech classic, English speakers get a taste of one of Europe’s most underappreciated verse writers.”

— KIRKUS REVIEWS

history with the beauty of its dramatic tragedies, scenes from the canon—Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Beckett are interwoven with the story of an artist.”

— THE NEW YORK TIMES

PLAMEN PRESS

PLAMEN PRESS

May 2020 Paperback | 9780996072250 | $19.00 176 pp. | 5.5 x 8.5

May 2020 Paperback | 9780996072267 | $19.00 162 pp. | 5.5 x 8.5

Distributed Publishers

The Back of Beyond Travels with Benjamin Martin Vopěnka Translated from the Czech by Anna Bryson

This is the story of a middle-aged man, who— despite his professional success and

affluence—lacks fulfillment. After the tragic death of his wife, he is left alone with his eight -year-old son and quickly realizes that if he wants to succeed in the role of single parent that has suddenly been thrust upon him, he has to change fundamentally. So, he takes his son and sets out on a journey to what he dubs the Back of Beyond. Without telling anyone of their plans—in fact, without any plans to speak of—father and son travel from city to city, from country to country, assembling a travelogue that includes not only depictions of exotic places and colorful encounters, but also an inner journey, deep into the human experience and the complexities of living in a post-communist world. With its unique blend of sensitive and suggestive language, The Back of Beyond is a stylistic gem, rendered in seamless translation and appearing here for the first time in English.

To Taste the River Baiba Bičole Translated from the Latvian by Bitite Vinklers

Baiba Bičole belongs to the postwar generation of Latvian poets living in exile who reached artistic maturity outside their native country and broke with the older exile generation’s traditional, nationalistic poetry.

In To Taste the River, Bičole's poems are lyrical and personal, often with intense emotion and startling imagery. Shown through different prisms, like variations on a theme, her subjects include separation, loss, and time; the power of language and song; and love. Central to her vision is nature, both as subject and metaphor. Appearing most frequently are waters (rain, mist, ice, rivers), birds, sun, and sky. Her unique voice renders a continuing motif of thirst, along with the

need for freedom and movement, usually expressed through transformation. Nature in her poetry is distinct in that it is rooted in the world of the traditional Latvian folk songs, the dainas, where nature is animistic and personified, and the human and natural worlds are deeply interrelated. This is Bičole's first collection of poems in English translation.

PLAMEN PRESS

PLAMEN PRESS

July 2021 Paperback | 9781951508012 | $19.95 308 pp. | 5.5 x 8.5

July 2021 Paperback | 9781951508029 | $17.00 150 pp. | 5 illus. | 5.5 x 8.5

Coming in 2022

Gogol’s Crime and Punishment An essay in the interpretation of

Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment

Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls

A Reader’s Guide

Urs Heftrich

Deborah A. Martinsen

This monograph is nothing less than a bold attempt at solving the riddle of Gogol’s novel

This Reader’s Guide focuses on narrative strategy, psychology and ideology. Martinsen

Dead Souls that even inspired a theatrical staging at Schauspiel Stuttgart. Heftrich provides a comprehensive, coherent answer to the question of the novel’s meaning by meticulously laying bare its structure. The first part of the monograph is dedicated to one section of Gogol’s novel that has been neglected by virtually all critics—a clue that leads to a strictly ethical reading of Gogol’s epic. Gogol, as it emerges, constructed Dead Souls strictly according to a moral pattern. It is amazing to discover how flawlessly the novel

is built in this regard. Dead Souls thus proves to be a true descendant of medieval romance with its inseparable interrelation between ethics and epics.

demonstrates how Dostoevsky first plunges the reader into Raskolnikov’s fevered brain, creating sympathy for him, and she explains why most readers root for him to get away from the scene of the crime. Dostoevsky subsequently provides outsider perspectives on Raskolnikov’s thinking, effecting a conversion in reader sympathy. By examining the multiple justifications for murder Raskolnikov gives as he confesses to Sonya, Dostoevsky debunks rationality-based theories. Finally, the question of why Raskolnikov

and others, including the reader, focus on the murder of the pawnbroker and forget the unintended murder of Lizaveta reveals a narrative strategy based on shame and guilt.

STUDIES IN RUSSIAN AND SLAVIC

CULTURAL SYLLABUS

LITERATURES, CULTURES, AND HISTORY

February 2022 Hardcover | 9781644697832 | $119.00 Paperback | 9781644697849 | $24.95 120 pp. | 6.14 x 9.21

March 2022 Hardcover | 9781644697627 | $129.00 300 pp. | 6.14 x 9.21

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