The Eurasian Knot

  • Home
  • The Eurasian Knot

The Eurasian Knot The Eurasian Knot treats your ears to stories about Eurasia’s complex past, present, and future. But it doesn’t have to be. Eurasia will never appear the same.

To many, Russia, and the wider Eurasia, is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. The SRB Podcast dispels the stereotypes and myths about the region with lively and informative interviews on Eurasia’s complex past, present, and future. New episodes drop weekly with an eclectic mix of topics from punk rock to Putin, and everything in-between. Subscribe on your favorite podcasts app, grab your headphones, hit play, and tune in.

Looking for more from this week's guest, Paul Hanebrink? Make sure to check out his first publication, which details the...
07/10/2025

Looking for more from this week's guest, Paul Hanebrink?
Make sure to check out his first publication, which details the role of religion in shaping Hungary's national identity.
cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801475306/in-defense-of-christian-hungary/ =1

07/10/2025

Paul Hanebrink is a Professor of History at Rutgers University specializing in modern East Central Europe, with a particular focus on Hungary, nationalism and antisemitism as modern political ideologies, and the place of religion in the modern nation-state.
hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674244764

06/10/2025

I’ve been thinking about the use of “they” in our political rhetoric. In some respects, this third-person plural pronoun is indicative of politics. The “they” in politics often refers specifically to an entity–political party, a group of politicians, etc. But what if the “they” refers to another nebulous entity? For example, here’s a clip from a recent NYT Daily episode on Charlie Kirk’s memorial: “They also had a goal of gaining control of the media and Hollywood so they could change the culture in America. They kill and terrorize their opponents, hoping to silence them.”

Who is this “they”? This reminded me of an interview I did with Paul Hanebrink from 2019 about his book A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism. Hanebrink gives a good history of one “they” that is at the center of the Judeo-Bolshevik myth–a conspiracy that I think is the foundation of most conspiracy thinking–a shadowy “they” that is behind all social ills. How has the Judeo-Bolshevik myth shaped the 20th century? How did it change over time? And what resonance does it have today? To get some insight, give this interview with Paul Hanebrink another go.
patreon.com/posts/judeo-bolshevik-140577356

05/10/2025

How do you define the rebel?
Take a look back with Anna Arutunyan as she counters the 'politically passive' preconception of Russian society in last week's episode, "Rebel Russia."
patreon.com/posts/rebel-russia-139480825

02/10/2025

Our guest this week is Elana Resnick, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UC Santa Barbara and leader of the Infrastructural Inequalities Research Group. She’s the author of several articles and the book, "Refusing Sustainability: Race and Environmentalism in a Changing Europe," published by Stanford University Press.
sup.org/books/anthropology/refusing-sustainability

Congratulations to our friend and EKP guest, Benjamin Nathans! His book, "To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many...
01/10/2025

Congratulations to our friend and EKP guest, Benjamin Nathans! His book, "To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement," which we covered in the episode linked below, has won the 2025 Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize.
patreon.com/posts/world-of-soviet-115800053

01/10/2025

There’s a paradox at the center of Elana Resnick’s book, Refusing Sustainability: Race and Environmentalism in a Changing Europe. EU policies of environmental sustainability in Bulgaria require the racialization of Romani into a permanent low-skilled and impoverished workforce. Waste management required teams of Romani streetsweepers and trash collectors to sort trash into waste, recyclables and compost, and bring them for processing and reuse. This labor was historically filled by Bulgaria’s Romani citizens, to the point where white Bulgarians equated them with waste. And in turn, Roma’s racial otherness allowed white Bulgarians to enter a pan-European concept of whiteness. Since race is a favorite subject on the Eurasian Knot, Sean spoke to Elana about Sofia’s Romani women as waste workers, the powerful solidarity and collective action that emerges from their labor, and the implications for Romani rights struggle in Bulgaria.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/romani-waste-and-140017745?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

23/09/2025

Anna Arutunyan is a Russian-American journalist, who has also served as senior Russia analyst for the International Crisis Group and authored five books on the country.
politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=rebel-russia-dissent-and-protest-from-the-tsars-to-navalny--9781509552290

22/09/2025

There are many stereotypes about Russia. But perhaps one of the strangest is that Russians prefer a strong hand, are politically passive, even apolitical, and rebellion just isn’t in their DNA. This belief requires a hefty dose of historical amnesia. Many of Russia’s most memorable historical figures–Stenka Razin, Pugachev, the Decembrists, the People’s Will, Lenin, Sakharov, Alexei Navalny, to name a few, were rebels. Not to mention, Russia has experienced three revolutions over the last century–1905, 1917, and 1991. Rebellion, in fact, is an integral part of Russia’s history, and the rebel often leads the dance with the Tsar. What is rebellion? Who are these rebels? What makes them? And how do they shape the Russian political system? These are questions that resonate in Russia and beyond. So the Eurasian Knot invited Anna Arutunyan on the pod to discuss the figure of the rebel in her new book, Rebel Russia: Dissent and Protest from Tsars to Navalny published by Polity.
patreon.com/posts/rebel-russia-139480825

21/09/2025

So, why jokes?
Before tomorrow's release, take a look back at Jon Waterlow's exploration into the world of comedy under the Soviet regime- how it functioned, who it affected, and why it matters in the first place.
patreon.com/posts/soviet-jokes-138424149

17/09/2025

In addition to authoring "Before We Disappear into Oblivion: San Francisco’s Russian Diaspora from Revolution to Cold War," this week's guest, Nina Bogdan, is a cultural preservationist and historian of the Russian community.
mqup.ca/before-we-disappear-into-oblivion-products-9780228024736.php

15/09/2025

After 1917, San Francisco’s small Russian community exploded with new arrivals. Over the next decade, thousands quit Soviet Russia, often via the Far East or China, to escape revolution and civil war. Arrival in America, however, was only the beginning of new trials. In the 1920s and 1930s, American nativists saw Slavic people as low in the racial hierarchy–people who were visually white, but culturally not quite. The Russian community in San Francisco was faced with a contradictory choice: to preserve their culture, a culture that they saw was being destroyed in Soviet Russia or shed their Russianess and become more “American” i.e. more “white.” How did this first wave of Russian emigres meet the challenge of otherness and assimilation? And what about the second wave of Russians who came after WWII? How did they navigate the Red Scare where Russian was equated with communist and the notions of Americanness had become more polarized? The Eurasian Knot spoke to the historian Nina Bogdan about her new book, "Before We Disappear into Oblivion: San Francisco’s Russian Diaspora from Revolution to Cold War," to get some insight.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/russians-in-san-138965677?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

Address


Website

https://soundcloud.com/euraknot

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when The Eurasian Knot posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to The Eurasian Knot:

Shortcuts

  • Want your business to be the top-listed Media Company?

Share