The future of our food depends on seeds in orchards and fields the world over. In 1943, one of the first to recognize this fact, botanist Nikolay Vavilov, lay dying of starvation in a Soviet prison. But in the years before Stalin jailed him as a scapegoat, Vavilov had traveled o…
One of the most enduring features in the modern history of Northern Eurasia has been the nationalities question. Not only did the resurgence of nationalism in the late 1980s prove pivotal to the ending of the twentieth century's last empire, the Soviet Union, but it has remained…
In 2014, Russia annexed the Crimea and attempted to seize a portion of Ukraine. While the world watched in outrage, this blatant violation of national sovereignty was only the latest iteration of a centuries-long effort to expand Russian boundaries and create a pan-Russian natio…
Drawing on his own experiences before, during, and after his 11 years of incarceration and exile, Solzhenitsyn reveals with torrential narrative and dramatic power the entire apparatus of Soviet repression. Through truly Shakespearean portraits of its victims, we encounter the s…
