Newsline: Studies of New Imperial History and Nationalism in the Post-Soviet Space
Ab Imperio is an international humanities and social sciences peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the studies in new imperial history, and interdisciplinary and comparative study of nationalism and nationalities in the post-Soviet space.
20/06/2026
Book for review in Ab Imperio: Bradley Woodworth, Violeta Davoliūtė, and Darius Staliūnas (Eds.). Ethnic Relations in the Baltic Reconsidered. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2026. 408 pp., ill. Index. ISBN: 978-90-4857-045-4. Please follow the link in first comment
13/06/2026
Book for review in Ab Imperio: Lori Khatchadourian, Adam T. Smith, Ian Lindsay, and Husik Ghulyan (Eds.). Heritage Forensics: Culture on the Front Lines of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2026. 194 pp., ill. Index. ISBN: 978-1-5017-8737-9. Please follow the link in first comment:
10/06/2026
Book for review in Ab Imperio: Halyna Babak, Yuliya Ilchuk and Andrei Ustinov (Eds.). Ukrainian Literary Modernism of the 1910s–mid-1930s: A Critical Reader. Vols. 1–2. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2026. Vol. 1. 373 pp. Index. ISBN: 979-8-8978-3119-7. Vol. 2. 530 pp. Annotations. Index. ISBN: 979-8-8978-3135-7. Please follow the link in first comment:
06/06/2026
Book for review in Ab Imperio: Marisa Karyl Franz. Near and Desired Things: Shamanism in Late Imperial Local Siberian Museums. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2026. 197 pp., ill. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-1-5017-8795-9. Please follow the link in first comment:
04/06/2026
Book for review in Ab Imperio: Dominik Gutmeyr-Schnur. Camera Caucasica: Networks of Photographic Practices in the Transimperial Caucasus. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2026. 318 pp., ill. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 979-8-8978-3113-5. Please follow the link in first comment:
30/05/2026
Вышла книга редактора Ab Imperio: Илья Герасимов. Российская модернистская литература и время постмодерна. Chișinău: The Historical Expertise, 2026 -- с разнообразным и работающим доступом, в том числа через Ozon в РФ и "Просто книги" в Казахстане (все подробности по линку в комменте). Это не литведческое -- историческое -- прочтение литературы как механизма осмысления времени, социального и физического.
23/05/2026
Interesting reviews of some fine books have been published in Ab Imperio 1/2026 (see the links in first comment):
Leyla Amzi-Erdogdular, The Afterlife of Ottoman Europe: Muslims in Habsburg Bosnia Herzegovina (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2024). 318 pp., ill. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-1-5036-3670-5. -- by Anahit Kartashyan
Tatiana Borisova. “Когда велит совесть”: Культурные истоки Судебной реформы 1864 года в России. Москва: Новое литературное обозрение, 2025. 584 с. Указатель имен. ISBN: 978-5-4448-2590-7. -- by Алексей Козлов and Илья Матвеев
Kerstin S. Jobst, Oksana Nagornaia, and Kerstin von Lingen (Eds.), The Great War and the Anthropocene: Empire and Environment, Soldiers and Civilians on the Eastern Front (Leiden: Brill, 2024). 391 pp., ill. Index. ISBN: 978-90-04-71011-5. -- by Микола Глібіщук
Alistair Wright, Revolution and Civil War in North Russia: Karelia and the Murmansk Region, 1917–1920 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2025). 237 pp., ill. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-1-3504-3401-1. -- by Andrey Ganin
Marianne Kamp, Collectivization Generation: Oral Histories of a Social Revolution in Uzbekistan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2024). 285 pp., ill. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-1-5017-7799-8. -- by Samantha Lomb
Юрій Радченко. Допоміжна поліція, місцева адміністрація, СД та Шоа на українсько-російсько-білоруському пограниччі (1941–1943) / літ. ред. Ольга Дячук, Сергій Лунін. Київ: Фенікс, 2024. 288 с. джерела та література. ISBN: 978-966-136-985-5. -- by Kostiantyn Moharychev
Себастьен Альбертелли, Жюльен Блан, Лоран Дузу. История Сопротивления во Франции: 1940–1944 / Пер. с фр. Ю. В. Гусевой. Москва: Новое литературное обозрение, 2025. 424 с., илл. Источники и литература. ISBN: 978-5-4448-2705-5. -- by Степан Решетников
Pietro Shakarian, Anastas Mikoyan: An Armenian Reformer in Khrushchev’s Kremlin (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2025). 350 pp., ill. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-0-253-07354-9. -- by Александр Фокин
Birgit Beumers, Catherine Géry, and Zvonkine Eugénie (Eds.), Sexuality, Nudity and the Body in Soviet Cinema (Abingdon: Routledge, 2025). 254 pp., ill. Index. ISBN: 978-1-032-61532-5. -- by Dimitri Filimonov
Matthias Schwartz and Nina Weller (Eds.), Appropriating History: The Soviet Past in Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian Popular Culture (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2024). 316 pp., ill. ISBN: 978-3-8376-6077-7. -- by Viktoria Sukovataya
Ian Garner and Taras Kuzio (Eds.), Russia and Modern Fascism: New Perspectives on the Kremlin’s War Against Ukraine (Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2025). 350 pp. ISBN: 978-3-8382-2015-4. -- by Daria Reznyk
Kevin M. Schultz, Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals): A History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2025). 279 pp. Index. ISBN: 978-0-226-82436-9. -- by Cameron Timothy Melendez
Ab Imperio 1/2026, Forum "The Power of Soft Matter" discussing the book: Julia Vaingurt, Soft Matter: The Poetics of Weakness in Late Soviet Socialism (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2025)
Konstantin Mitroshenkov and Margarita Fedorova, "(Im)potentialities of Weakness: Introduction to the Discussion of Julia Vaingurt’s Soft Matter"
Jinyi Chu, "Soft Matter, Soft Power"
Sofya Khagi, "Weak Subjectivity: Potencies and Failings"
Ilya Kukulin, "Cult of the Will and Its Discontents: A Moral Genealogy of Late Soviet Poetics of Weakness"
Mark Lipovetsky, "Notes About Weakness"
Anton Svynarenko, "The Unpredictable Queerness of Soft Matter"
Ainsley Morse, "More Modest Than All the Rest: Julia Vaingurt, Soft Matter"
Lisa Ryoko Wakamiya, "Structures of Weakness: Julia Vaingurt’s Soft Matter"
Julia Vaingurt Response to the Forum
(Although VV serves as the book's antagonist, this perception was not shared by all of its protagonists).
20/05/2026
In Ab Imperio 1/2026, Forum: "Formalism: Rusian or Russian?"
Galina Babak, "Decentering or Recentering? On the Postimperial History of Russian Formalism"
Oxana Monteiro, "Rewriting Abai Kunanbaiev: Shklovsky, Translation, and Building Kazakh Soviet Literature"
Zaal Andronikashvili, "Decentering Europe from the Caucasus: Nikolai Marr and the Problem of Mapping Cultural Theory"
Александр Дмитриев, "Руина как фундамент: К археологии синтеза нового универсалистского знания в постимперском контексте"
Alessandro Achilli, "Ukrainian Formalism and Russophonia as Methods? Some Preliminary Observations, Proposals, and Doubts Regarding Possible Intersections"
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Galina Babak, "Feliks Iakubovs’kyi on Viktor Shklovsky’s Ukrainian Subtext"
Feliks Iakubovs’kyi, “Khokhlology” as a Form of Illiteracy
(see links in comment)
19/05/2026
In Ab Imperio 1/2026, three thematic forums are published, starting with the serialized forum “The Prospect of Studying World Russian Languages, Literatures, and Histories.” In this issue, Andy Byford, Connor Doak, and Stephen Hutchings revisit the concept of Russophonia as an alternative approach to decentering the Russian language itself. While the authors highlight that Russophonia has been posited as a framework to decenter Russianness and decolonize Russian Studies, they observe that such attempts can paradoxically end up reinforcing the centrality of Russia in its most negative aspects. Byford, Doak, and Hutchings advance an approach centered on strategic contextualization – that is, a persistent reflection of one’s positionality. Drawing on the quantum principle of the dynamic link between subject and object, they suggest that the concepts of “language commons” and the “planetary” can bridge the tools offered by “Russophonia” with a more complex, integrated framework, thereby resolving the aforementioned opposition.
Their essay is followed by an interview with Akshya Saxena, who uses this opportunity to introduce her book Vernacular English: Reading the Anglophone in Postcolonial India (2022). Saxena discusses an interesting precedent: the former hegemonic, imperial language – English – was not canceled in independent India but was instead “domesticated” as one of the country’s vernacular languages. See links in first comment!