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Current History Magazine

First published in 1914 to cover World War I, we are America's oldest magazine dedicated exclusively to world affairs. Nye Jr.

Current History is the oldest United States-based publication devoted exclusively to contemporary world affairs. The magazine was founded in 1914 by George Washington Ochs Oakes, brother of New York Times publisher Adolph Ochs, in order to provide detailed coverage of World War I. Current History was published by The New York Times Company from its founding until 1936. Since 1942 it has been owned

by members of the Redmond family; its current publisher is Daniel Mark Redmond. Current History, based in Philadelphia, maintains no institutional, political, or governmental affiliation. It is published monthly, from September through May. Seven issues each year are devoted to world regions (China and East Asia, Russia and Eurasia, the Middle East, Latin America, Europe, South Asia, and Africa); one issue covers current global trends; and one issue addresses a special theme such as climate change or global governance. The magazine has followed this practice of devoting each issue to a single region or theme since 1953. Each issue includes a chronology of major international events, and most contain a book review section and an article devoted to commentary. Contributors to Current History in the publication's early years included George Bernard Shaw, Winston Churchill, Charles Beard, Allan Nevins, and Henry Steele Commager. More recently, the journal has featured authors such as James Schlesinger, Francis Fukuyama, Jeffrey Sachs, Bruce Riedel, Leslie H. Gelb, Bruce Russett, Elizabeth Economy, Charles Kupchan, Ivo Daalder, Joseph Cirincione, Phebe Marr, Juan Cole, Bruce Gilley, and Marina Ottaway. Shortly after Current History began publishing in 1914, its editor, Ochs Oakes, decided that a magazine recording “history in the making” should maintain as regular contributors a group of historians and social scientists. He enlisted the help of a Harvard historian, Albert Bushnell Hart, in organizing the journal’s initial group of contributing editors. Current History’s board of contributing editors today includes Catherine Boone (London School of Economics); Bruce Cumings (University of Chicago); Uri Dadush (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace); Deborah Davis (Yale University); Larry Diamond (Stanford University); Michele Dunne (Carnegie Endowment); Barry Eichengreen (University of California, Berkeley); C. Christine Fair (Georgetown University); Sumit Ganguly (Indiana University); G. John Ikenberry (Princeton University); Michael T. Klare (Hampshire College); Joshua Kurlantzick (Council on Foreign Relations); Michael McFaul (Stanford University); Rajan Menon (Lehigh University); Augustus Richard Norton (Boston University); Joseph S. (Harvard University); Bruce Russett (Yale University); Michael Shifter (Inter-American Dialogue); Arturo Valenzuela (Georgetown University); and Jeffrey Wasserstrom (University of California, Irvine). The publication’s editor is Joshua Lustig.

10/27/2025

Current History’s November 2025 issue, “Anti-Governance”—a special issue on global political trends—is now available in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/124/865

The issue features the following essays:

Abandoning Institutionalism
Erik Jones (European University Institute)
In the absence of shared social values, self-interest leads many voters to back candidates determined to attack institutions and restore the privileged positions of former majorities.

Walls and Cages: A Transnational Blueprint for Rising Authoritarianism
Ċetta Mainwaring, Thom Tyerman, and Andonea Dickson (University of Edinburgh)
Across borders and political parties, Western states in partnership with private corporations have developed an immigrant detention system that undermines democracy.

Medical Populism and the Future of Global Health
Gideon Lasco (University of the Philippines, Diliman)
As politicians and influencers attack vaccines and “globalist” institutions, better communication and
more inclusive health care systems are needed to rebuild trust.

Conspiracism, Politics, and the State in the Twenty-First Century
Erol Saglam (Istanbul Medeniyet University)
Once identified with the fringe, conspiracy theories now exert a powerful influence on social discourse,
voter behavior, and policy, with Turkey a case in point.

A New Age of Crypto-Authoritarianism
Antulio Rosales (York University)
From the United States to El Salvador and Venezuela, cryptocurrencies have become entwined with the
state, with little oversight to check corruption.

PERSPECTIVE
Anti-Governance of the Deed
Holly Case (Brown University)
Since the nineteenth century, “facts” have been manufactured to serve political ends. Opponents of
such authoritarian logic have often been frozen by a fear of unintended consequences.

BOOKS
Machine Dreams of the Tech Barons
Duncan Bell (University of Cambridge)
Technological salvationists, with Silicon Valley billionaires in the vanguard, envision a future of human
immortality, hyper-intelligent machines, and interplanetary conquest.

Current History | 124 | 865 | November 2025

10/22/2025

In our October issue, J. Eugene Clay reviews “The Spirit of Socialism: Culture and Belief at the Soviet Collapse,” by Joseph Kellner. Rather than representing “the failure of the atheistic, rationalistic socialist ideology of the Soviet state,” new religious movements that emerged in the late Soviet era were infused with that worldview, writes Clay, an associate professor at the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. These movements enfolded “reverence for the hard sciences of mathematics and physics, the romance of space travel, and, above all, the conviction that history had a moral purpose and direction.” Another factor exerted a powerful influence on spiritual seekers during this era: globalization. “As Soviet citizens enjoyed greater opportunities to experience the world beyond the USSR, they embraced new beliefs and practices.”
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/124/864/277/213494/The-Eclectic-Quests-of-Late-Soviet-Spiritual

Clay’s review is available along with the rest of our annual Russia and Eurasia issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/124/864

Soviet reverence for science and utopian visions inspired a profusion of faith groups in the USSR’s end times, but the influence of globalization was also strong, and it continues to shape Russia’s post-Soviet religious field.

10/17/2025

In our annual Russia and Eurasia issue, Catherine Wanner explains Ukrainians’ determination to retain and strengthen their sovereignty and national identity despite Russia’s attempts to dispossess them of their land and freedom. “This resilience stems from a commitment to repossess political and cultural autonomy,” writes Wanner, a professor of history, anthropology, and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University. Vladimir Putin’s desire to absorb Ukraine into the “Russian world” echoes “Russification, Sovietization, and other assimilatory pressures designed to erase cultural and linguistic specificities” of past eras. The current Russian invasion’s existential threat has inspired widespread resistance. “Ukrainians responded with almost total civilian mobilization to defend the country,” and language, religious institutions, gender relations, and even humor have all become ways of “reinforcing state borders.”
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/124/864/274/213496/How-Ukraine-Grew-Resilient-in-the-Face-of

Wanner’s essay, “How Ukraine Grew Resilient in the Face of Dispossession,” is available along with the rest of our October issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/124/864

As Russia’s invasion has dispossessed Ukrainians of livelihoods, land, and communities, they have responded with determined efforts to recover sovereignty.

10/15/2025

In our October issue, Agha Bayramov details how the green energy transition is affecting the countries that border the Caspian Sea. The region is currently “a site of mounting ecological crisis,” writes Bayramov, an assistant professor at the Department of International Relations at the University of Groningen, and “environmental protection is repeatedly sidelined in favor of oil and gas interests.” Several agreements among the region’s governments and with the European Union promise increasing reliance on renewable energy sources, with undersea pipelines to export power to Europe. But lofty goals for the further development of renewables must contend with obstacles including fossil fuel subsidies and lack of public awareness.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/124/864/268/213497/The-Emerging-Green-Energy-Corridor-in-the-Caspian

Bayramov’s essay, “The Emerging Green Energy Corridor in the Caspian Region,” is available along with the rest of our annual Russia and Eurasia issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/124/864

The Caspian–European Union Green Energy Corridor is a strategic initiative to bolster energy security and diversification in a tense geopolitical climate. The corridor hinges on large-scale renewable energy projects like the Black Sea and Caspian Sea Electricity Cables, facilitating green energy e...

10/10/2025

In our annual Russia and Eurasia issue, Florian Mühlfried explains why the Georgian government’s decision to suspend the process of joining the European Union inspired massive and sustained protests. The ruling party, Georgian Dream, portrays “Europe as a place of hypocrisy and decadence,” writes Mühlfried, a professor of anthropology at Ilia State University. While many Georgians share this view, they also see Europe as “an undefined beacon of hope.” Months-long protests in Tbilisi have been detached from party politics and attracted varied crowds, though young people of Generation Z have played a prominent role. In common with similar developments elsewhere, “these protests reveal a dual crisis”: ”both the government and the opposition parties” are deeply mistrusted. Rather than causing apathy, “mistrust is a driving factor behind the street protests and a unifying element among the demonstrators.”
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/124/864/262/213500/Protesting-for-Europe-in-Georgia

Mühlfried’s essay, “Protesting for Europe in Georgia,” is available along with the rest of our October issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/124/864

The Georgian government’s decision to suspend accession negotiations with the European Union in November 2024 triggered a massive wave of protests that continues to this day. These protests are characterized by mistrust and by hope. There is mistrust not only of the ruling party, but also of party...

10/07/2025

In our October issue, Olena Strelnyk details how the Russian invasion has affected gender relations in Ukraine. Contrary to expectations, Ukrainians have shown “a positive shift in public attitudes toward gender role distribution and increased support for LGBTQ rights,” writes Strelnyk, a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. While the war has reinforced the traditional idea of men as defenders of the homeland, Ukrainians have also become more supportive of women’s military service. A powerful explanation for these changing perceptions is Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s cultural framing of the war. “As homophobia and anti-gender rhetoric have become closely associated with” the invading country, this “has opened space for more inclusive, rights-based discourses.”
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/124/864/249/213498/The-Path-to-Gender-Equality-in-Wartime-Ukraine

Strelnyk’s essay, “The Path to Gender Equality in Wartime Ukraine,” is available along with the rest of our annual Russia and Eurasia issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/124/864

This article examines three key dimensions shaping gender (in)equality in Ukraine during the full-scale war: legal, geopolitical, and socio-cultural. Legally, martial law reinforces a traditional (patriarchal) gender order by positioning men primarily as defenders of the state. In contrast, geopolit...

10/03/2025

In our annual Russia and Eurasia issue, Jeremy Morris shows how ordinary Russians have been affected by three years of war. Though few in the working poor majority have benefited from the “quagmire of blood and mud” in Ukraine, writes Morris, a professor of Russian and global studies at Aarhus University, open dissent is rare. The state enforces consent through a “soft” security regime of omnipresent surveillance. It also maintains a material status quo, at least for those who can afford it. Major urban areas “ offer a 24-hour leisure and consumption culture that few other European cities can rival.” But the Kremlin has failed to provide a coherent narrative to justify the war to its own people.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/124/864/243/213495/Maintaining-the-IllusionRussian-Society-After

Morris’s essay, “Maintaining the Illusion: Russian Society After Three Years of War,” is available along with the rest of our October issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/124/864

Well into the fourth year of war since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian society remains largely compliant, even though few have benefited from the conflict. The working poor who make up the majority of the population have borne the war’s economic costs. Yet on the surface, little...

09/30/2025

In our October issue, enjoy free access (for a limited time) to an essay by Nelly Bekus on how Belarus has changed since protests against a rigged presidential election exploded in 2020. The protests “transformed Belarusian society more profoundly than any other contemporary event,” writes Bekus, a senior lecturer in history at the University of Exeter. The state suppressed the demonstrations and “became increasingly guided by the securitization of all aspects of public life.” The years since the protests have seen the first notable wave of out-migration from Belarus in its post-Soviet history. This diaspora has “led to the development of a network-based Belarusian collectivity and the decoupling of national identity from the territorial boundaries of the state.”
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/124/864/255/213499/Belarus-in-the-Long-Shadow-of-2020

Bekus’s essay, “Belarus in the Long Shadow of 2020,” is available along with the rest of our annual Russia and Eurasia issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/124/864

The long shadow of 2020’s protests against a rigged election continues to shape Belarus’s political, social, and cultural landscape. The country has undergone a profound reconfiguration of state-society relations, and the ruptures exposed by the protests were further deepened by Russia’s war i...

09/29/2025

The international affairs journal Current History presents its October 2025 issue: the annual Russia and Eurasia issue. https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/124/864

The issue features the following essays:

Maintaining the Illusion: Russian Society After Three Years of War
Jeremy Morris (Aarhus University)
Though most Russians see no benefit from the war with Ukraine, the security regime maintains outward
compliance, whereas copious consumer options provide a sense of normality.

The Path to Gender Equality in Wartime Ukraine
Olena Strelnyk (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine)
Contrary to expectations, the Ukrainian public has become more open to parity between men and
women, as well as to LGBTQ rights, since the Russian invasion.

Belarus in the Long Shadow of 2020
Nelly Bekus (University of Exeter)
Five years since mass protests against election-rigging, a growing diaspora is detaching national
identity from territory and challenging the façade of stable autocracy.

Protesting for Europe in Georgia
Florian Mühlfried (Ilia State University)
Sustained demonstrations, led principally by young people, erupted in the wake of the Georgian prime
minister’s decision to end EU membership negotiations.

The Emerging Green Energy Corridor in the Caspian Region
Agha Bayramov (University of Groningen)
Regional states are developing their renewable energy sectors and cooperating on export schemes—but
ecological crises and hydrocarbon dependence complicate lofty goals.

PERSPECTIVE
How Ukraine Grew Resilient in the Face of Dispossession
Catherine Wanner (Pennsylvania State University)
Amid the destruction wrought by Russia’s pursuit of territorial and cultural dominance, Ukrainians
have renewed commitments to social belonging and independent institutions.

BOOKS
The Eclectic Quests of Late Soviet Spiritual Seekers
J. Eugene Clay (Arizona State University)
A reverence for science and a utopian interpretation of history infused many forms of faith in the end
times of the USSR, but the influence of globalization was also prevalent.

Current History | 124 | 864 | October 2025

09/24/2025

In our September issue, Charlene Makley reviews Politics of Tranquility: The Material and Mundane Lives of Buddhist Nuns in Post-Mao Tibet, by Yasmin Cho. By focusing on the quotidian aspect of the nuns’ lives at Yachen Gar, the largest Tibetan nunnery in the world, the author “challenges readers’ assumptions that Tibetan Buddhist communities are primarily to be understood in esoteric terms,” writes Makley, a professor of anthropology at Reed College. But this focus on the mundane risks downplaying the political context of Chinese rule in Tibet, as well as the nuns’ own “assumptions about s*x, gender, and s*xuality, which would shed light on their Buddhist values and decisions.”
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/124/863/237/212839/The-Politics-of-Ethnography-at-a-Tibetan-Nunnery

Makley’s review, “The Politics of Ethnography at a Tibetan Nunnery,” is available along with the rest of our annual China and East Asia issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/124/863

Finding out what the women at a massive Buddhist convent really think about gender and power hierarchies is an ethically fraught project that cannot be separated from the context of Chinese domination and settlement of the region.

09/19/2025

In our September issue, Junjia Ye examines Singapore’s skills-based migration regime. In the multicultural city-state, “diversity is structured by skill categorizations that organize labor and classify workers,” writes Ye, an associate professor of human geography at the School of Social Sciences at Nanyang Technological University. While a viable path to citizenship is available to certain higher-income migrants, the lives of the far more numerous workers deemed semi-skilled or unskilled and denied the right to long-term settlement are rendered precarious. Yet migrants from countries in South and Southeast Asia have managed to create enclaves that offer community and culture: “Even with their transience and economic marginalization, migrants leave their mark on the city, shaping and claiming public spaces.”
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/124/863/229/212841/How-Singapore-Manages-Labor-Migration-and

Ye’s essay, “How Singapore Manages Labor Migration and Diversity” is available along with the rest of our annual China and East Asia issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/124/863

Singapore has long relied on migrant workers, using a framework of racial categories dating from the colonial era to manage diversity. More recently, the city-state has turned to classifying migrants’ skills as a means of regulating their access to employment, rights, and longer-term settlement. T...

09/17/2025

In our annual China and East Asia September issue, Dominik M. Müller explains how absolute monarchy has endured in Brunei. “Although Brunei is an autocracy, it differs from more overtly repressive or violent dictatorial regimes,” writes Müller, chair of cultural and social anthropology at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg. The “soft authoritarianism” of Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah’s long rule has been maintained “through bureaucratic restrictions, consensus, and extensive welfare.” But the aging monarch’s recent health scare has his subjects wondering what the future holds. The political system will need to respond to increasing concerns about “inclusion, nondiscrimination, educational and children’s rights, citizenship issues,” and other “core values of human rights” among Brunei’s cosmopolitan and well-educated young people.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/124/863/222/212837/Brunei-Faces-Generational-Change

Müller’s essay, “Brunei Faces Generational Change,” is available along with the rest of our September issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/124/863

Brunei Darussalam is an absolute monarchy that has resisted decades of international advocacy for democracy and civic rights. Long seen as an anachronism, its autocratic order—anchored in expansive welfare, personalized rule, and discursive legitimation through the doctrine of “Melayu Islam Bera...

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