Advancing Medieval Studies in Halle
Mikhail Boytsov, Professor in the HSE’s Faculty of History, recently held the Christan Wolff professorship at the Martin Luther University in Halle and Wittenberg. He spoke with the HSE news service about his experience working in Germany and his plans for future research.
History behind HSE Buildings
The HSE launches a new project ‘HSE. Basis’, which will cover the history of the buildings the university occupies today. The first article is about number 8 Pokrovsky Boulevard which at various times has been a famous girl’s gymnasium, the apartment of the animalist painter Stepanov, and the editorial offices of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
HSE History Professors Win South African Book of the Year Award
South African publishing conglomerate Media 24 has awarded the book The Hidden Thread. Russia and South Africa in the Soviet Eraby Professors Irina Filatova and Apollon Davidson of HSE’s Faculty of History the Recht Malan Prize for Best Non-Fiction of the year. This is the country’s top literary award for works of nonfiction.
Anthony John Heywood on the Weather and Tsarist Russia’s War Effort
Anthony John Heywood, Chair in History at the School of Divinity, History and Philosophy, (University of Aberdeen), recently took part in the international conference ‘Russia in the First World War’, which was organized by the HSE’s International Centre for the History and Sociology of World War II and its Consequences and took place on June 3-5, 2014. He spoke with the HSE news service about his interests in weather, Russia’s railways, the study of history in today’s society, as well as his impressions of collaborating with Russian colleagues.
Alfred Rieber Speaks on Social Fragmentation at First World War Conference
Alfred J. Rieber, University Research Professor at Central European University (Budapest, Hungary), recently presented at the international conference ‘Russia in the First World War’, which was organized by the HSE’s International Centre for the History and Sociology of World War II and its Consequences and took place on June 3-5, 2014.
From Agrarian Studies to Zoos: Professor Tracy McDonald Speaks about Her Interests
Tracy McDonald is a professor of Russian and Soviet History at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. In 2011, her first book, Face to the Village: The Riazan Countryside Under Soviet Rule was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2011. Currently she is conducting research for a book titled Behind the Iron Bars: A History of Soviet Zoos. She presented a lecture ‘Saving Beauty: Moscow and Leningrad Zoos during the Second World War’ in the HSE, Moscow and kindly agreed to answer a few questions for the HSE news service.
Constructing Usable Pasts: Why Have Interdisciplinary Approaches to History?
Julia Lajus, Associate Professor at HSE Faculty of History, Senior Researcher, Center for Historical Research, HSE St. Petersburg, Co-chair of the Master’s programme in Applied and Interdisciplinary History and Vice President of the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH), spoke to the HSE English language news Portal about the subject of a conference hosted by the Faculty of History at St. Petersburg campus on 28-29 March 'A Usable Past: Applied and Interdisciplinary History'.
Cultural Nationalism Contributed to the Fall of the Soviet Union
Nationalism in the post-Soviet republics did not arise solely as a result of the economic and political crisis in the Soviet Union. The longstanding policy of the Soviet elite aimed at forming a multinational state is what enabled it. Authorities sought to use ethnic diversity to strengthen the state structure, but the result was exactly the opposite. A study by Andrey Shcherbak, senior research fellow at the HSE’s Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (LCSR).
Imperial Nation
On March 13, 2014, Ronald Suny, Professor of Social and Political History at the University of Michigan and Emeritus Professor of Political Science and History at the University of Chicago, delivered a public lecture at the HSE Saint Petersburg.
Professor David Engerman: ‘Americans in particular view "Cold War culture" as repressive - and don't really have much understanding of soviet life. Yet both societies shared responsibility for the Cold War’
On October 17-19, 2013 the international conference ‘Social and Human Sciences on Both Sides of the “Iron Curtain”’ organized by the HSE Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities is being held in Moscow. David Engerman, Professor of History at Brandeis University told the news service about a new western approach to understanding soviet life during the Cold War.