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Abstract: O’Hanlon argues that NATO expansion has gone far enough. While not creating a military threat to Russia, NATO’s growth has predictably been seen quite differently, and more negatively, among Russians. In the West, history taught that nations in central Europe that had suffered too long through world wars and Cold War finally deserved their freedom. For Russians, by contrast, history taught of a long series of aggressions against them emanating from western Europe, and bred fear about the possibility that could happen again. Russian pride also was wounded, given that Russia’s strength in the 1990s and early 2000s was not what it had once been. In many Russian eyes, existing NATO countries then took advantage of that temporary Russian weakness in choosing to expand an alliance that arguably was no longer even needed. For all these reasons, we need a new security architecture for eastern Europe, and especially the former Soviet republics that are not now in NATO, that would not expand NATO further. This concept should not be offered as a “concession” or admission of guilt or apology to Moscow, however, and it should require Russia to protect the sovereignty of countries like Ukraine and Georgia as part and parcel of the overall new architecture.” Keywords: NATO, Kennan, Gorbachev, Perry, alliances, Article V, Article X Michael O'Hanlon is Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution, and author of The Art of War in an Age of Peace: U.S. Grand Strategy and Resolute Restraint. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021. James Wertsch, in his excellent study How Nations Remember, explains to us what we often already sense to be true yet rarely act upon—countries develop their own views of history, their own narratives, even their own myths. These are used not only to understand the past but to guide behavior in the present and shape the future. As the great American novelist William Faulkner said, writing in the Deep South of the United States but making comments of worldwide applicability, the past is never forgotten—in fact, it’s not even past. I think of these comments often in regard to NATO expansion. For the United States and many of its allies, bringing former members of the Warsaw Pact and even former republics of the Soviet Union into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—an innately defensive group of like-minded nation states—is a way to spread democracy and ensure that these countries do not have a future that resembles their past, when freedom and safety were denied them. For most Russians I know, however, NATO is a Cold-War anachronism that is psychologically insulting even if not militarily threatening, and that symbolizes the worldwide scope of American strategic ambition. My own view is that the Russian view is widespread enough that it should inform our future policy in a major way. Specifically, I do not favor bringing Ukraine or Georgia into NATO; indeed, I would rather not enlarge NATO any further at all, but instead seek a new security order for eastern Europe. In the 1990s and early 2000s, when Russia was weak, NATO enlargement was motivated by different considerations than had driven it been before. It took on a role of promoting democracy, and more generally a common European space and European identity, that was to extend to former Warsaw Pact nations and even former Soviet republics. I questioned these decisions at the time, and I still do now. That said, there was nothing about this enlargement process that was sinister, imperialistic, or aggressive. Russia should not have reacted the way it did. I will come back to this point at the end. Yet Russia’s reaction was predictable, and predicted—by the likes of George Kennan, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Bill Perry. Moreover, NATO’s concept of enlargement was not strategically consistent with the original purpose of the alliance, which was to fortify strategically crucial areas of the world (three of George Kennan’s original five centers of strategic/industrial/military capability) against a potentially hostile threat—a clear and present danger. NATO was not then seen as a tool of democracy promotion; nor was it seen as an instrument that should extend to cover or include every possibly worthy American partner in the region (for example, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, and Finland). But the overconfidence of the 1990s and early 2000s changed this logic, in my view, and made the enlargement process too much about soft power, when NATO’s core purpose should and must ultimately still revolve around Article V and the mutual-defense pledge. Some say that Article X is relevant here too—with its “open door” policy—and that European states are all entitled to choose their own future alliance preferences. Yes, but the United States is entitled a major say in which countries in faraway Eurasia it would promise the lives of its sons and daughters to help defend. There is no purpose or need to relitigate these past decisions—or to somehow give Russian colleagues succor in believing their angry reactions to previous NATO expansion have been justified. They have not been justified. And we should not dismantle NATO or weaken its security pledges to any existing member. However, as Thucydides taught us, nations go to war over greed, fear, and/or honor. Wounded Russian honor and wounded Russian pride is therefore a sentiment he would have recognized. So should we. Whatever its past merits, any further NATO expansion will have serious costs that are foreseeable. It will almost certainly produce a worsening of U.S.-Russia and NATO-Russia relations, a more tense European security theater, a more uncertain state of deterrence—and on balance a greater risk of war, the costs of which would be incalculable and fundamentally unacceptable. There are better paths to future European security integration and cooperation than any further growth in a NATO alliance that, with its 30 members today, is already nearly double its 1989-size. But in closing, while I may be making a policy argument that many Russians may like—or at least prefer relative to existing NATO plans to someday bring Ukraine and Georgia into the alliance (a plan dating back to the 2008 Bucharest NATO summit)—I would appeal as well to Russian friends to reconsider whether their own view of history should be challenged. Americans need more strategic empathy—we need to work harder to see how NATO expansion could appear in Russian eyes. But Russians should also rethink their historical narrative to understand why it was not wrong of Brussels, Washington, and other western capitals to want to help the likes of Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and yes even the Baltic states ensure they would not have to relive their history and again be subjected to domination by larger neighbors. If we all make such efforts, perhaps we can achieve the twin goals of not expanding NATO any further, while reducing the friction in U.S.-Russia relations that has resulted in the aftermath of its expansions to date.

Image: https://blog.rrc.co.uk/2019/06/05/world-environment-day-2019-why-it-is-important/ 23.05.2024 Annotation: This paper aims to propose an economic prism on the environmental agenda. It outlines a chronology of key agreements and explores the interconnection between consumerism and wealth growth. The text introduces concepts such as trade-offs, tragedy of the commons and externalities. It considers behavioral factors and the role of green ideology. The nexus between economic interests and environmental protection necessitates a pragmatic economic paradigm that includes a public policy framework with tailored provisions for entrepreneurs and an adopted system of education. Keywords: ESG, ecological economy, environment, political economy. Author: Misha Gipsman Zeldin, Ariel University (Israel). Email: mishag@ariel.ac.il.  ORCID: 0000-0003-1783-1604. – This is the thing that killed them all? No. Indeed, it was their own hubris that ended their reign, their belief that they were the pinnacle of creation that caused them to poison the water, kill the land and choke the sky. In the end, no nuclear winter was needed, just the long heedless autumn of their own self-regard… – Are you okay? – Yeah, sorry. Thought that would sound better than, "Nah, they just screwed themselves by being a bunch of morons." Love, Death & Robots series, s.1, ep.2. (2019). Robots. Introduction The issue of human activity and its impact on the environment is the subject of much alarm. However, it is difficult to ignore the sheer volume of light, arable land usage, fuel combustion, and other emissions that are generated on a daily basis. People are feeling the affects of pollution and climate changes. This led to a growing awareness of the need for sustainable practices and greater conservation efforts in order to mitigate the negative consequences of human activity on planet. Public policy and interdisciplinary research can benefit from a knowledge of economics prism. Even though economics is inept at precise predicting, it is dissecting already occurred phenomenons by strong models. Therefore, such modelled lessons of the past do not allow us to look into the future; instead, they direct a gaze in the right direction and establish a realistic framework for what is possible and applicable. It can provide valuable insights into how to manage resources better, how to create incentives for individuals, and how to create incentives for stakeholders. It can also help identify areas where interventions may be needed and how regulations should be designed. The recent scandals such as "Dieselgate", where VW used cars' software to cheat emissions testing, and "Batterygate", where Apple Corporation deliberately reduced the speed and resource of batteries in iPhones have raised concerns about the need for government involvement and social control. (Bouzzine 2020, Hotten 2015, Romm 2020). By the end of the 20th century, developed nations had recognised the consequences of industrialisation and commercial competition. It is difficult to imagine a leading university, scientific journal, or even parliament today in which the topic of sustainable development does not take one of the central fields. (Hallinger, P. 2019; Vergura, D.T. et al. 2023). The 21st century has come with environmental pollution, emissions, animal extinctions, exploited or polluted soils, climate change and many others. Governments of leading countries are entering an environmental race of existential significance for humanity, where there is still no optimistic outlook. There is a striking example of the importance of a balanced non eco-populistic solution in Sri Lanka, where the ban on chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides increased the price of rice by 50% and agricultural yields by about 25% and eventually led to the country entering into default (Jayasinghe 2022; Rodrigo 2022). Chronology of Key Agreements The formal recognition of environmental problems at an international level occurred only 50 years ago. Below is a timeline of the most important events and agreements. ●      1949 – International Convention for the Protection of Birds: One of the earliest international agreements focused on nature conservation. ●      1968 – UNESCO Biosphere Conference in Paris: This conference brought attention to the importance of biodiversity conservation. ●      1972 – United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm: The first major international conference dedicated exclusively to environmental issues. ●      1973 – Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES): Regulation of the international trade in endangered animal and plant species. ●      1977 – Tbilisi UNESCO-UNEP Intergovernmental Conference on Environmental Education: Establishment of the field of environmental education. ●      1987 – Montreal Protocol: Aimed at reducing and eventually eliminating substances that deplete the ozone layer. ●      1989 – Basel Convention: Regulates the transboundary movements of hazardous wastes and their disposal. ●      1992 – United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): The primary international platform for climate change discussions. ●      1992 – Convention on Biological Diversity: Conservation of biological diversity and sustainable use of its components. ●      1997 – Kyoto Protocol: Establishing legally binding targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions for developed countries. ●      2005-2014 – United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development: A decade dedicated to education in sustainable development. ●      2009 – UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development in Bonn, Germany: Transitioning into the second half of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. ●      2015 – Paris Agreement: A global climate agreement aimed at keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius. ●      2019 – UN Climate Summit: The summit focused on enhancing ambitions and accelerating actions under the Paris Agreement. ●      2021 – United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow: Discussions on efforts to achieve carbon neutrality and adaptation to climate change. It is important to mention that there are some criticisms regarding the effectiveness of the implemented measures, the level of autonomy of control organization and the consistency between different countries. Economic Growth and Consumerism The sciences, and especially economics, have increasingly influenced society. John Maynard Keynes' pre-World War II theory of economic growth identified aggregate demand, specifically consumption, as a primary driver of economic activity. Consumption has been suggested to trigger a multiplier effect, which should drive economic growth and promote a broad-based satisfactory quality of life, leading to widespread well-being. Although Keynesians criticise colleagues for their oversimplification of his works, it is evident that governments and businesses have embraced the acceleration of consumption. Further outcomes reflect Keynes's famous quote from his book “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money” (1936): “But apart from this contemporary mood, the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.” The best or even only correct policy decision was seen as a means to increase the number of goods and the frequency of their consumption. All marketing and sales tools for increasing payments and improving presence in customers' journeys are even more natural for businesses. Then, lifelong services thus took precedence over manufactured goods. One of the first authors who raised the issue was Vance Packard, who characterised consumerism as excessive materialism and creative waste (Packard, V. 1960). Later, the social scientist Jean Baudrillard documented consumption as the new foundation of social life in his work "The System of Things" (1968). In the paradigm, mass production is grafted by limitation in quality, intentional obsolescence, and planned failure of products (Whiteley, N., 1987; Slade, G., 2006). But the issue of planned obsolescence cannot be assessed in a single manner. Bisschop et al. (2022) reframe it as corporate environmental crime. However, Iizuka (2007) showed that intentional obsolescence alone could not explain the decision to release products. Furthermore, economics industrial organisation school has shown that because of the development costs, achieving technological innovations or market survival may require planned obsolescence as a necessary condition (Coase, R.H. 1972; Bulow, J. 1986; Fishman, A., et. al. 1993; Waldman, M. 1993; Choi, J. P. 1994; Grout, P. A. 2005). The global apparel manufacturer and retailer Zara epitomises a quintessential example of the unimaginable in the past super rapid consumer market. This company removes unsold items every two weeks for recycling or redirection to secondary markets. Zara employs real-time analysis of sales data and trends to guide consumer behaviour towards timely purchases of new products strategically. The company's process for launching a new model, encompassing design, production, and distribution to stores around the world, takes no more than 15 days, with the number of collections per year reaching up to 40 (Aftab,  M., 2017;  Ferdows, K., 2004; SCM Globe., 2016). The doubling of clothing production between 2000 and 2020 emphasises environmental repercussions (Niinimäki, K. et al. 2020). Each stage of clothing production, from raw material sourcing to manufacturing and distribution, contributes to environmental degradation, pressing the need for a sustainable paradigm shift to ‘slow fashion’ industry (Bailey, K. et al. 2022; Raj, M, & Bajpai, P. 2022). Sustainable fashion is growing fast and prioritises the recyclability of garments, as well as responsible consumption practices. This transition advocates for quality, longer-lasting design, and a closer connection between the consumer and the creation process over quantity. However, fashion brands such as ASOS and Boohoo have been scrutinised for misleading sustainability claims, suggesting a prevalent issue of greenwashing within the industry (Smith & Lee, 2023; Johnson et al., 2023). Responding to these challenges, Kering company (which includes Gucci, Kenzo, Balenciaga, Brioni etc.) has introduced a special "greenwashing" guide to foster transparency and ensure genuine sustainability efforts are recognised (Davis, 2023; Thompson, 2023). Prior to the international agreements in the 1980s, the establishment of specialised journals in the 1990s, and the publication of numerous special issues, mainstream economics paid insufficient attention to the irrationality of unsustainability. Ecological economics, like many other multi- and transdisciplinary eco studies, is rapidly expanding and aims to provide hope for the possibility of a sustainable breakthrough. Dilemmatic Situation The occurrence of the environmental issue can be conceptualised as the lateral side of a coin, with the other side encompassing the attainment of well-being, life expectancy, and the spread of education. The issue in economics is aptly termed ‘Externalities,’ as it represents side effects, indirect, unexpected, and unpaid results that accompany and have proliferated with the milestones of growth. The opposite example of externality is the batteries of electric cars, which are designed to reduce human influence on nature but are getting a new threat. The pursuit of growth has often coincided with what is known as the 'Tragedy of the Commons'. It is a situation where rational competition of independent agents for self-interest, involving unrestricted resource exploitation, clashes with the long-term interests of society (all agents). This concept reflects the conflict between individual actions, motivated by immediate personal gain, and their broader impact on communal resources, leading to their overuse and depletion, ultimately undermining collective welfare. See Hillman's book, "Public Finance and Public Policy" (2019), which comprehensively explains economic concepts and the basics of political economy. The green movement was enriched by Carson, R. (1962) and her seminal work, which brought global attention to the “silent tragedy” unfolding across the fields where lethal poisons like DDT were utilised. Under significant public pressure, new regulations concerning chemicals entering the soil and water systems were established. However, even more terrifying is "The Great Tetraethyl Lead Scandal.” For 70 years, the planet suffered from the use of lead in fuel, causing widespread health issues, IQ level decreases, psychological health deterioration, and environmental contamination. Despite widespread knowledge of the issue among scientists, politicians, and businesses, the fuel industry defended its interests for decades until the 1990s, when mandatory ecological standards were transitioned (Needleman, 2004; Nevin, 2007; Kovarik, 2021; Hannah, 2022). Looking at it objectively, modern-day governments and businesses are not deliberately trying to cause harm to the planet. It does not align with their objectives or interests. However, the challenge lies in balancing economic progress with environmental protection, known as the 'environmental-profitability trade-off.' In the short term, adopting sustainable practices could increase infrastructure expenses and require giving up specific sources of profit that are considered 'toxic,' which can make it difficult for entities that prioritise predicted financial gains. National energy production is an example. Trade-offs can lie not only with profits but also with alternative social goods that also require resources (Gradus, R., 1993). Entrepreneurs or officials often face the challenge of balancing economic, social, and ecological value due to competing objectives in acquiring funding and resources. This can be particularly challenging for minorities, necessity entrepreneurs and those who struggle to align business goals with shareholders. Additionally, consumers may prioritise affordability over sustainability, making it difficult for entrepreneurs to develop a sustainable business model that the same time meets their financial and social goals. The new conditions imply a balance in dimensional trade-offs that integrates economic, social and environmental outcomes (Rashid, L., 2022; Neesham, C., 2023). A green transition can be delayed by ventures with market power and political lobbying, but they can achieve it more confidently if they expect benefits. Meanwhile, those with less entrepreneurial capital may view it as a potential threat to their short-term revenue. It cannot be guaranteed that the expenses incurred for certain eco components of the ecosystem or business will necessarily lead to enhanced performance, and most probably, such costs are often viewed as detrimental. Many illustrations exist worldwide, including EU candidate countries, “Global South”, etc. A worrisome question arises regarding how to motivate adherence to green norms among autarkic or predatory countries, particularly when their elites are insulated from external influences (Morrison-Saunders, A., 2012; Nand A.A., 2022). China, initially perceived as a laggard in terms of the number of agreements prior to the Glasgow 2021 conference, deserves particular attention. Contrary to journalistic scepticism, China has not remained on the sidelines. It has emerged as a leader in the production of batteries, solar panels, and wind energy components. As one of the fastest-developing nations in renewable energy, China has made a significant shift and, in recent years, has supported green standards and restrictions. Similar paradoxical processes are observable in countries from the Persian Gulf or Norway, which, unlike much of the world, do not experience a shortage of energy resources (Gallagher, K. S., 2014; Campbell, E. 2018; Cohen, R., et al. 2022). Behavioral Factors Environmental trade-offs are not popular in public discourse. It makes development less rational and more dependent on psychological and cultural factors. From a behavioral perspective, particularly in terms of biases, hyperbolic discounting emerges as a predominant issue. This bias entails an overvaluation of the present moment and an undervaluation of the future, representing a major obstacle in the behavior of politicians and entrepreneurs. The tendency to prefer immediate, smaller rewards over complex and delayed benefits often hampers long-term planning and sustainable decision-making. This is compounded by the fact that the willingness to adhere to sustainable principles is directly linked to personal traits. This is a wide field. Traits like agreeableness, openness, and extraversion promote social and sustainable entrepreneurship (Nga & Shamuganathan, 2010). Resilience and power distance positively affect consumer perceptions of sustainability (Vizcaíno et al., 2020). Perceived behavioral control, empathy, and assertiveness shape entrepreneurial behavior, and managing behavior and emotions is key to integrating sustainable practices (Gast, J., 2017; Baciu et al., 2020; Rosário, A.T., 2022). Ecocentric Ideology Classical economic theory traditionally distancing itself from ideologies, focusing primarily on the material-mathematical aspects. However, contemporary economics, particularly within institutional and behavioral schools, acknowledges that decision-making, including environmental policy, occurs with cultural norms, attitudes and values (North, D. C. 1990; Costanza, R. et al., 2014). This is particularly evident in environmental policy, where recent decades have witnessed a paradigm shift and a heightened awareness of societal choice in ecological matters. The adoption of green values among generations did not happen by chance. In fact, the most eco-friendly countries in the world started promoting environmental awareness and advocacy campaigns in schools as early as the 1970s (Gough, A. 2014., 2016; Ardoin, N., 2020; . For social changes, it may be necessary to educate not only children but also them as the generation of actually future parents of the next generation of people, who will strictly adhere to the principles of waste segregation and strive to reduce their carbon footprint. Modern science recognises Earth as a holistic complex, chaotic network system, validating some previously disregarded non-technical, archaic panpsychistic concepts (Swimme, T. & Berry, T., 1992). The outcomes of the Anthropocene, an era marked by human domination, prompt a reassessment of affect on the planet. Consequently, there is an increasing interest in elements of previously inadmissible concepts, such as transcendentalism. Biocentrism or social ecology theory, representing a radical shift, has become mainstream and increasingly influential, potentially competing with traditionally capitalist mercantile individualism. This ideological niche was previously occupied by socialist theories advocating for fair labour and gain distribution. Approaches such as feminist ecology, ecological collectivism, and ideas of Gaia, permaculture, deep ecology, as well as more radical ‘green religions’, are gaining traction in political and public discourse (Taylor, B., 2010). They have become integral to the platforms of many green political parties and movements (Merchant, C., 1980; Bookchin, M., 2005; Wall, D. 2010; Klein, N. 2019). Contemporary debates no longer revolve around the necessity of changing humanity’s relationship with nature but rather focus on choosing a caring, organic approach. This includes conservationist isolationism, paternalistic stewardship, strategies of gradual sustainable development, or ecological collectivism (Naess, A., 1989; Worster, D., 1994). It seems worth noting that the question of the ratio of economic literacy and populist, unrealistic "stop ecocide" slogans and ecotopian ideas, sometimes combined with “unmake civilisation”, which do not compare with reality, remains disfavoured (Pepper, D. 2005; Franco, M. P. V. 2020; Żuk, P. 2020). It is utopian to attempt a simple ban on what is supposedly not environmentally friendly. Moreover, additional regulations do not always lead to a stronger state or society. Nonetheless, they are more likely to incur additional public costs, particularly due to the presence of stakeholders of changes. Drawing on experience, it can be inferred that the green idea will not replace but permeate all spheres in the form of Hayek’s catallaxy: its principles will become one of the foundations of economic relations’ efficiency. For the most influential green works and books, see: (Carson, R. 1962; Lovelock, J. 1979; Bookchin, M. 1982; Naess, A. 1989; Shiva, V. 1993; Hawken, P. 1993; McKibben, B. 1989; Paech, N. 2012). Conclusion Many environmental issues did not arise from human intent, but studying their roots can provide insight into present and future. It remains uncertain whether humanity will continue relying on quasi-utilitarian principles or whether a novel economic model or a more stringent ecological doctrine will take shape. 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19.07.2023 Harrison Ruffin Tyler Department of History in the College of William&Mary in Virginia. E-mail: mgalmarinikaba@wm.edu. Authored books: The Right to Be Helped: Entitlement, Deviance, and the Soviet Moral Order. Northern Illinois University Press, 2016. Ambassadors of Social Progress. A History of International Blind Activism in the Cold War. Cornell University Press; Northern Illinois University Press, 2024. 1) Dear Cristina, the specialisation of our journal is memory studies. In interviews we are testing the hypothesis of Jan Assmann stating that the usual span of communicative (family) memory of modern people includes three generations (80-100 years). How deep is your family memory? Family memory, in my opinion, is determined by factors such as class, location (urban versus rural), education, and gender. I come from a family of Northern Italian farms hands. This is a part of Italy where mandatory elementary education was implemented only in the post-WWII years and even then in scattered ways, at best. In that context, literacy was not a prime value as people struggled with everyday issues of material nature. It was a culture of scarcity and, while everybody in the village recognized each other and knew each other’s families, nobody seemed to have the time and the energy to remember the past. My personal memory does not go farther back than my grandmother and grandfather on my mother side. As for my family memory, I would say it extends back 2 generations and is constantly subjected to change because it does not rely on any written documentation. 2) The family memory of most modern people includes the tragic events of the Second World War. How is this reflected in your family memory? There is a story that circulates in my family about my grandfather Giuseppe, my mother’s father. According to this story, nonno Giuseppe was made prisoner in Austria and saved from labor camp life by a local family of butchers who needed help with their business. Since the couple of butchers did not have children, they went to the POWs’ camp in search for free labor. My grandfather knew how to slaughter animals and was therefore chosen for the task. As I told you before, we do not have any documentation about this, but only my mother’s and aunts’ vague memories of their father cursing in German when he was angry and of parcels with sausages arriving to their address every Christmas for the first years after the war. 3) Slavic studies are not very popular among Western academics. Why are you involved in that field? Do you have East European ancestors? I do not have East European ancestry. I studied Russian language in college, in Milan. In 1998 I visited Saint Petersburg for the first time and in 2001 I spent some time in Moscow. I felt a strong attraction to Russian language, culture, and society, and wanted to learn more about the country’s history. Mine was a young woman’s fascination for complex and seemingly paradoxical historical processes. Of course, I could have directed my intellectual curiosity at other historical subjects (which country in the end does not have a complex and paradoxical history?), but life had brought me to Russia and the experiences I had there, especially the personal connection, kept me tied to it. 4) You speak Russian fluently and I noticed that your pronunciation is close to Russian people. How did you achieve that? The Italian phonetic system is not so distant from the Russian one. My language has a different melody and, after over 20 years, I still largely speak Russian with Italian melody. The years spent living in Russia, the frequent visits, the daily interactions that I have with Russian speaking friends – all this helped with acquiring fluency. 5) Your books and papers are focused on the history of disabled people in the Soviet Union. Why did you choose that subject? The subject came to me while I was doing research for my first book The Right to Be Helped. For that project I was interested in the question of how the concept of “help” and having rights to it evolved in the post-revolutionary and Stalinist Soviet Union. To address this question, I had decided to select groups of people that needed help more than others in Soviet society. It is in this way that I came across VOS and VOG, the All-Russian Societies of the Blind and the Deaf. Since then, I spent many years researching the activities of these organizations, especially VOS, and expanded the scope of my research to other socialist countries. I became interesting in understanding if there was any space for blind advocacy in the socialist countries of Eastern Europe and, after discovering there was, I wanted to see how different their disability activism was from the protest-centered one that American society is used to. 6) In the Soviet Union and even now in Russia to be disabled person is a kind of stigma. Maybe there are some prejudices in our society based on superstition. Ablebodied people not only avoid communicating with disabled people but even acknowledging their existence. Therefore, in our public space, the number of wheelchair ramps and other devices to help the disabled is very limited. How do you explain that lack of compassion? Is it really an “archaic heritage” resulting from the forceful and fast modernizing that the Soviet people underwent, or are there other reasons? I would not say that disability stigma comes from lack of compassion, and I would disagree that this is exclusively a Soviet phenomenon. There are multiple reasons why people with disabilities are stigmatized and the nature of this stigma has changed over the centuries and across the geographies. Focusing on Russia today, I have to say that societal attitudes have become increasingly more accepting of human diversity, including differences in bodily abilities (the stigma is still huge when it comes to disabilities of the mind). There is a lot to do, of course, but I when I look at initiatives such as those promoted by the museum Garage in Moscow, I see the seeds of positive change at least at the level of culture and representation. A different matter is that of accessibility: here we should ask why the government does not want to invest funds in changing infrastructure or, when it does, why the changes are always implemented poorly and ineffectively. Who are the engineers who plan ramps that lead into walls? This is not a joke but a reality that anybody can see in Russian cities if they start paying attention to issues of accessibility. 7) Could you talk about your new project, the publication of correspondence between the former Italian prisoner of war, who was captured on the Eastern front in 1942 and the Russian nurse? I am currently working on two projects related to the story of an Italian POW who spent 3 years in a Soviet military hospital in Mordovia and was then repatriated to his native country in the Fall of 1945. One project is the transcription and annotated publication of the correspondence he held with a Russian woman, former employee of the military hospital, 50 years the war. The two found each other by a stroke of luck in February 1992 and immediately began an intense correspondence that lasted until 1999. In their letters they straddled the line between memory of the past and reflections on the present. The complete set of letters has immense value to understand not only issues of memory and nostalgia but also understandings of old age, health, and family relations in two such different countries as Russia and Italy in the 1990s. The second project, instead, is a reconstruction of the life of the Italian POW, from his youth as a young Fascist man to his troubled adaption to peaceful life in postwar Italy. This project is based on the unpublished memoirs left by the protagonist, and I will write it in English for an American audience of students and scholars interested in European history. Thank you very much for the interview!

29.09.2023 William H. Hill, is a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute. A retired Foreign Service officer, Dr. Hill is an expert on Russia and the former Soviet Union, east-west relations, and European multilateral diplomacy. He served two terms – January 2003-July 2006 and June 1999-November 2001 – as Head of the OSCE Mission to Moldova, where he was charged with negotiation of a political settlement to the Transdniestrian conflict and facilitation of the withdrawal of Russian forces, arms, and ammunition from Moldova. Authored books: Russia, the Near Abroad and the West: Lessons from the Moldova-Transdniestria Conflict. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2012; No Place for Russia: European Security Institutions Since 1989. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. Questions: Sergey Ehrlich and Mark Tkaciuk Dear Prof. Hill, the specialisation of our journal is memory studies. In interviews we are testing the hypothesis of Jan Assmann stating that the usual span of communicative (family) memory of modern people includes three generations (80-100 years). How deep is your family memory? Do you mean memory of generations before me, or including those after me? I am a grandfather, and tell my grandchildren about their great-great-grandparents, who were born between 1877 and 1891. My grandfather told me stories about his grandparents in Maine, in the mid-19th century. My mother’s grandparents came to the US from Sweden in the 1860s-1870s, and I heard stories about them. The family memory of most modern people includes the tragic events of the Second World War. How is this reflected in your family memory? My father was in the US Army somewhere in Belgium or Germany when I was born in 1945. He enlisted in the US armed forces on December 8, 1941, and served first on active duty and then in the reserves until 1950. He told me many stories about the western front. Some of Western academics, who were born in the 1940s and 1950s, said that they were attracted to Russian language and Slavic studies by Sputnik and Gagarin events. Why were you involved in that field? Do you have East European ancestors? My ancestors come from Britain and Sweden. I became interested in Russia when I took a course in Russian history from Professor Richard Pipes at Harvard. He was a brilliant lecturer, and made imperial Russian history sound fascinating. Were there any Russian emigrants among your American university professors? My dissertation advisor, Nicholas Riasanovsky came from a Russian family, although he was born in China and grew up in the US. While studying in US universities I met a number of students of Professor Mikhail Karpovich, who trained many of America’s Russia specialists in the 1940s and 1950s. American and Russian people often speak only one language. We can call you a polyglot. How many languages do you know? Many Americans study languages other than English, but do not speak them regularly because most of the world now speaks English. I learned Latin first, then German, Russian, and French in school. I studied Spanish and Dutch by myself, and learned Serbo-Croatian, Bangla, and Romanian while working as a diplomat. From my work in university libraries, I can read all of the Slavic languages. Could you tell about your experience during academic stages in the Soviet Union? What was especially striking when you lived in the post graduate hostel in Leningrad, a kind of regimny obiect, where entrance was strictly prohibited after 11P.M. I was a student at Leningrad University in 1971-72, as a participant in the official US-Soviet exchange of graduate students and young faculty. I lived in a dormitory on Vasilevskii island. I met many Soviet students, but not Vladimir Putin, who entered LGU in 1971. What can I say about student life? I lived like a Soviet – ate in stolovye, shopped in Soviet stores, and lived in the dormitory (obshchezhitie), which was a standard five-story Khrushchevka. Our Soviet fellow students told us where to find shelter if we failed to get home before curfew, or before the bridges over the Neva were raised in the middle of the night. Who were your Russian professors at Leningrad University and who among your Russian peers became famous in politics, business and Academia? My professors at LGU and MGU are probably not known to anyone who is not a specialist in Russian history. My advisor in Leningrad was N.G. Sladkevich. I also benefitted from the advice of N. Mavrodin in Leningrad and S.S. Dmitriev and V.S. Nechaeva in Moscow. Other than Mr. Putin, I am not aware of anyone who was at LGU at the same time as I was who subsequently became famous. You were a post graduate in Leningrad University at the same time when Vladimir Putin was a student there. Recently you said that when you read his essay regarding Ukraine (“Russians and Ukrainians are one people”), it reminded you of your PhD theses where you analyzed ideas of the Russian “progressive thinkers” of XIX century like Belinsky who rejected claims of Ukrainians to have their own language and ethnicity separated from the Russians. Why do you think Putin resurrected that obsolete ideological “heritage”? Unfortunately, the Russian nationalist view that sees Ukraine and Belarus as part of a single Russian nation has never really died out. This strain of thought arose in opposition to the emergence of a Ukrainian nation in the 18th and 19th centuries, and Russian nationalist thinkers continue to propound such ideas. This is a complex subject, and it is not possible to explain fully the mingling of nationalism with other Russian thought over the past three centuries. Suffice it to say that there is still debate within contemporary Russia over what it means to be Russian, what is the extent and nature of the Russian nation, and how does Russia relate to its neighbors. I think President Putin’s writings speak for themselves, and these views are reflected in his actions. There is a legend that when you worked in the US embassy in Moscow one of your duties was to reconstruct an agenda of Politburo meetings in accordance with the registration plates of limousines entering the Kremlin. If it is not classified information and it is a true story could you tell how your academic experience (maybe ideas of Vladimir Propp and Claude Lévi-Strauss) helped to do that? As Iurii Andropov once remarked, one important task of any diplomat is to gather information about the country in which she or he serves. I served in the Political section of the US Embassy in Moscow, and as such was responsible both for conducting political relations and reporting to Washington on political developments. The USSR was a closed society, and Soviet authorities did not publish much information about domestic political affairs. Foreign diplomats therefore tried to use every legitimate source of information in compiling their reports. One sign of important political meetings, for example, might be an unusually large number of certain types of automobiles in or around Staraya Ploshchad’. Our basic aim was to understand what was going on in the USSR, so that we could perform our diplomatic functions more effectively. During your service in the US embassy you also were responsible for contacts with Andrey Saharov exiled by Soviet authorities to Gorky. Could you tell about that outstanding person and how the KGB counteracted your meetings? Indeed I became close friends with the family of Andrei Sakharov, and later with Sakharaov himself. During the time I served in the US Embassy in Moscow, he was in exile in Gorkii, a city closed to foreigners. However, Elena Bonner was allowed to travel to Moscow, and I met with her at least once a month. In this way I communicated with Sakharov indirectly, and later met with him in person. He, Bonner, and their colleagues in the Helsinki Committee and other critics of the Soviet regime were exceptionally brave people, who took great personal risks and made great sacrifices in the hope of reforming their country and striving for freedom and peace. It was a real honor and privilege to get to know them. On two occasions you were the Head of the OSCE Mission to Moldova (1999-2001 and 2003-2006) and often visited the separatist Moldavian region of Transnistria. But first time you were there during Soviet era. There is a fantastic story about your first trip to Bendery and a local taxi driver whom you met again during your OSCE Mission. Could you tell that story? I first visited Moldova in February 1983, with a colleague from the US Embassy. During our visit, we attempted to see a dissident who had been exiled to Bendery. KGB plainclothes officers would not let us visit this person’s home, so we asked a taxi driver to show us interesting sights in Bendery. After we saw the fortress, he invited us to his home to sample Moldovan wine. It turned out his home was in Parcani, which was closed to foreigners. We spent several hours in his village, being entertained by his neighbors. When we returned to the train station, we were detained by military officials, who eventually released us to take the train back to Chisinau. When I arrived to Moldova in 1999 as Head of the OSCE Mission, the taxi driver saw my picture in the newspaper, and called me. We met and had a long, interesting conversation about our meeting in 1983, and how the world had changed since then. You wrote a book Russia, the Near Abroad and the West: Lessons from the Moldova-Transdniestria Conflict (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2012) where you analyzed the so called Kozak memorandum, the failed attempt to solve that conflict in 2003 with the assistance of the Russian Federation. Your interpretation of events is close to the Moldavian perspective (https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/631793). There still exists some gossip that the then Moldavian president Vladimir Voronin was blackmailed by the American ambassador Heather M. Hodges. She allegedly threatened to expose Voronin’s offshore accounts and finally he refused to sign an agreement with Transnistria. What is the truth and lies in those accusations? My book relates what I saw and thought during the process of negotiation and rejection of the Kozak Memorandum. The OSCE, EU, and US, among other international actors, all had serious reservations about the Memorandum, especially after the articles on a long-term Russian military presence were added. There was no “blackmail” by Ambassador Hodges, or anyone else for that matter. President Voronin was faced with overwhelming international disapproval and domestic opposition to the Memorandum. As far as I know, that is basically what convinced him not to accept it. Current Moldavian authorities do not support the idea of solving the Transnistrian problem using the instruments of Federalization. In 2002, when you were the Head of the OSCE Mission to Moldova, OSCE suggested a plan of Federalization. In 2003 American diplomats Stephan H. Minikes, Rudolf V. Perina and Pamela Hyde Smith strongly advocated that idea (see: It Takes an International Effort to Unify Moldova // The Wall Street Journal. Aug 5, 2003. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB106003444914260800). How do you think the Federal models are still relevant for Moldova? And why have they been rejected by the Moldavian right politicians? I come from a country with a federal system, and I thought it natural to suggest to my Moldovan interlocutors that a federation might be a solution to the Transnistrian question. In fact, President Voronin asked in early 2003 whether the OSCE would support a solution involving a new, federal constitution for Moldova. I responded that I thought we could support such an initiative. However, for such a proposal to succeed, a majority of Moldovans would need to support it. For a number of reasons, that did not happen, and many Moldovans actively rejected a federal solution. The experience of a pseudo-federation in the USSR may have something to do with such popular attitudes in Moldova. In any case, my perception today is that most Moldovans do not want or support a federal solution, so that is not a viable option. There are, in my view, other acceptable approaches to resolving the conflict, and Moldova and its international partners will simply have to find one that is acceptable to all and which does work. Russian propaganda argues that one of the main reasons for the so-called “Military special operation” against Ukraine was the expansion of NATO towards the Russian borders. In 2021 on the eve of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine the author of our journal Michael O’Hanlon writes in his essay NATO Expansion, the U.S.-Russia Relationship, and Memory: “In many Russian eyes, existing NATO countries then took advantage of that temporary Russian weakness in choosing to expand an alliance that arguably was no longer even needed. For all these reasons, we need a new security architecture for eastern Europe, and especially the former Soviet republics that are not now in NATO, that would not expand NATO further” (https://www.istorex.org/en/post/michael-o-hanlon-nato-expansion-the-u-s-russia-relationship-and-memory). You wrote a book No Place for Russia: European Security Institutions Since 1989 (Columbia University Press, 2018), where you treat the subject of NATO expanding among other problems. What is your opinion, it was a mistake to include East European countries to NATO, or a mistake was not to include Ukraine and Georgia ensuring their territorial safety? I do not believe that NATO expansion caused Russia to attack Ukraine. Russia basically accepted the additions to NATO in 1999 and 2004, and collaborated closely with NATO, including joint military exercises, until late 2013. I believe the greater problem has been Russia’s desire since 1991 for a special relationship and “privileged sphere of interests” in the former Soviet republics on its borders. That has made Moscow sensitive to western penetration and influence in these countries, including Moldova. Ukraine is the largest and closest to Russia of these countries, and Russia-Ukraine relations have been troubled since the early 1990s. Remember that it was not NATO membership, but Ukraine’s desire to sign an association agreement with the EU that provoked the crisis of 2013-2014, and eventually annexation of Crimea and war in the Donbas. As you point out, in my book I analyze many problems, including NATO expansion, which have brought the Euro-Atlantic region to its current state of crisis. I believe critics who assert that reversing NATO expansion will solve all our problems with Russia are greatly mistaken. Most East European states asked to join NATO because Russia made them feel insecure, not because the US or other western European states forced them to do so. US and western policies may not always have been perfect, but Moscow surely needs to ask itself why its neighbors feel insecure and desire protection in the form of a NATO guarantee. The continuing war in Ukraine only increases these neighbors’ sense of insecurity. And the last traditional question, what are your academic plans? Are you going to write a new book regarding Eastern Europe or maybe memoirs? I am working on an article on Moldova’s political transformation since 1991, and I am involved in several projects on the future of European security. I have also been working on a comparative study of the views and practices of governance of the US, EU, Russia, and China. I do not know when I will finish. Thank you very much for your interview!

27.02.2023 Ivan Katchanovski is a Ukrainian-Canadian political scientist based in Ottawa. He teaches at the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa. E-mail: ikatchan@uottawa.ca Authored books: Cleft Countries: Regional Political Divisions and Cultures in Post-Soviet Ukraine and Moldova. Ibidem-Verlag, 2006. Nina Virchenko, Ivan Katchanovski, Viktor Haidey, Roman Andrushkiw and Roman Voronka (editors), Development of the Mathematical Ideas of Mykhailo Kravchuk (Krawtchouk). National Technical University of Ukraine, Kyiv and Shevchenko Scientific Society (USA), New York, 2004. Seymour Martin Lipset and Noah M. Meltz, Rafael Gomez and Ivan Katchanovski The Paradox of American Unionism: Why Americans Like Unions More Than Canadians Do, But Join Much Less. Cornell University Press, 2012. Ivan Katchanovski, Zenon E. Kohut, Bohdan Y. Nebesio, Myroslav Yurkevich, Historical Dictionary of Ukraine. Scarecrow Press, 2013. Dear Prof. Katchanovski, the pretext of our interview is an upsetting case when two reviewers and an editor approved your article regarding the Maidan massacre, but the editorial board of an academic journal (you hide its name) rejected the publication by political reasons. Before to discuss that scandalous event I suggest to put it in a broader context: what a honest researcher should do in the current situation of Russian invasion into Ukraine, is it possible to criticize wrongdoings of Ukrainian politicians if the Russian propaganda will use them against Ukraine? My research of the Maidan massacre is purely academic. Honest researchers cannot censor or falsify results of scholarly studies for any political reasons in order to cover up or whitewash mass murderers. The Maidan massacre is a major human rights violation and a case of political mass murder. Those oligarchic and far-right Maidan politicians, who were involved in the Maidan massacre of the protesters and the police, bear not only responsibility for this grave political crime but also significant responsibility for its extremely damaging consequences to Ukraine. It led to the overthrow of the Ukrainian government and ultimately led or contributed to the Russian annexation of Crimea, a civil war in Donbas, Russian military interventions in Crimea and Donbas, and international conflicts between Ukraine and Russia and the West and Russia. Russia drastically escalated these conflicts by invading Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Russian propaganda concerning the Maidan and this war is not based on research by scholars. Moreover, research by scholars, including my own academic studies, show that that claims of the Russian government and the media concerning the fascist coup in 2014, the neo-Nazi regime, and genocide in Ukraine are propaganda. I do not give interviews to the media in Russia. I refused before the Russian invasion to testify as an expert at the special meeting of the UN Security Council concerning the Maidan massacre in Ukraine. As I wrote in my American[1] and Canadian[2] media publications before the war, the peaceful resolution of the civil war in Donbas and the Ukraine-Russia conflict was impossible without identifying and bringing to justice the perpetrators of the Maidan massacre. This can also help achieve peaceful resolution of the Ukraine-Russia war and the proxy war between the West and Russia. At least the de facto backing by the US and other Western governments of the violent overthrow of the Ukrainian government by means of the Maidan massacre shows that the US and the West in general had a crucial role in the start of the conflict with Russia and is using Ukraine since the Maidan, in particular, during the current Ukraine war, as its client state or a proxy to contain and weaken Russia. The truth concerning the Maidan massacre could have saved Ukraine from the de facto break-up, the civil war, the Ukraine-Russia war, and the proxy war between the West and Russia. You are one of the leading experts in the current Ukrainian politics, but I am not sure that many of Russian academics know your research of Maidan massacre. Could you provide a succinct report of it including your sources, methodology and main conclusions? My studies concerning the Maidan massacre were presented at major academic conferences in the US, Sweden, and Canada and published as an article[3] by a US peer-reviewed journal and as a book chapter[4] by a major British academic press. My research combines content analysis of all publicly available videos, photos, and audio recordings of the Maidan massacre in English, Ukrainian, Russian, Polish and other languages with analysis of several hundred testimonies concerning this massacre based on qualitative interviews methodology. It also examines revelations[5] from the Maidan massacre trial in Ukraine that is streamed on YouTube. Seven online video appendixes, which are posted on my YouTube channel[6], created for this study include brief relevant segments of videos of the massacre and testimonies of 51 wounded Maidan protesters and some 150 witnesses concerning the Maidan snipers. My analysis[7] found that the Maidan massacre of the protestors and the police was a successful false flag operation, which was organized and conducted with involvement of oligarchic and far right elements of the Maidan opposition and snipers in order to overthrow the government and seize power in Ukraine. The evidence is overwhelming. Ten videos show Maidan snipers, in particular from a far-right-linked group, in the Hotel Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled buildings aiming or shooting at the Maidan protesters, and 8 videos show them aiming and shooting at the police. Synchronized videos demonstrate[8] that specific time and direction of shooting by the Berkut, whose members were charged with the massacre, did not coincide with killings of specific protesters. The absolute majority of wounded Maidan protesters testified at the trial and the investigation that they were shot by snipers from the Hotel Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled buildings and witnessed snipers there. There are several hundred witness testimonies and admissions by 14 self-admitted members of the Maidan sniper groups concerning Maidan snipers and involvement of specific Maidan leaders in this mass killing. Medical examinations by government forensic experts show that almost all protesters were shot from steep directions from sides or the back that match Maidan-controlled buildings while facing Berkut on the ground. Onsite investigative experiments with government forensic ballistic experts determined that many specific Maidan protesters were killed or wounded from Maidan-controlled buildings or areas. The Maidan government and the far right engaged in stonewalling of the investigations and trials and in cover-up of Maidan snipers. The story of the “Sky hundred” played an important role in overthrowing the regime of Yanukovych. Could you tell how Maidan massacre is functioning in Ukrainian national memory through commemoration rituals, monuments, toponyms and so on? Is that memory still alive or is it expired? The Maidan massacre is a key element of the politics of memory in Ukraine. While it is now superseded by the Russian invasion, it remains an important element. For this reason this crucial case of mass killing and its perpetrators and organizers are misrepresented in Ukraine. The Maidan massacre memorial under construction would literally cover-up and erase key evidence of the massacre. This is done deliberately in spite of protests from family members of the killed Maidan protesters. Your findings contradict to the dominant narrative of Western media that snipers were proxies of Yanukovych. What response did your publications receive among a) specialists in Ukrainian studies, b) Western, Ukrainian and Russian media, c) Ukrainian prosecutors investigating the Maidan massacre? There was varying response from scholars in Ukrainian studies. Some supported my study and its findings, while some others resorted to ad hominem attacks and attempts to censor my research for political reasons because they did not like what my research found and could not challenge its findings based on research and evidence. While in his 2014 blog post, David Marples criticized my study, he since cited my studies of the Maidan massacre in his own academic publications[9]. He recently tweeted that he changed his views concerning the massacre as a result of my studies. Marples also recently wrote[10] that the Maidan massacre was carried out primarily by “snipers firing from the rooftops of nearby buildings” and that responsibility for it “remained unclear.” My studies of the Maidan massacre have been cited[11], overwhelmingly favorably, by over 100 scholars and other experts, such as the last US ambassador in the Soviet Union, replicated in a book by the American political scientist Gordon Hahn, and corroborated by BBC and German investigative TV reports, as well as Italian, Israeli and U.S. TV documentaries. A number of major American, Danish, Dutch, German, Spanish, and Swiss media outlets reported or cited my Maidan massacre studies findings, overwhelmingly favorably. But most of the mainstream Western media simply did not report my Maidan massacre studies and evidence that they revealed. This was done even though my research-based interviews, comments, and publications were reported by over 1,000 media in over 60 countries. And such major Western media as Associated Press, BBC News Ukrainian, Fox 9 News, France 24, France Télévisions, the Daily Beast, the Guardian, Reuters, the Radio Svoboda, Vice, the Voice of America, the Washington Post, ABC Radio, OpenDemocracy, Radio National, Sky News Australia, Canadian Press, CBC, CBC News, CBC Radio, CTV, CTV News, Global TV, Globe and Mail, La Presse, the National Post, Radio Canada International, and Yahoo News Canada reported my research concerning other conflicts and political violence in Ukraine. I gave interviews concerning my Maidan massacre studies to several Ukrainian TV channels, including a number of interviews to Avers TV in my native Volyn Region. My interviews concerning my Maidan massacre research and reports about these studies were published by a number of Ukrainian newspapers and online media. In total, several dozen Ukrainian media of different political orientation reported concerning my Maidan massacre studies, overwhelmingly favorably. A similar number of the Russian media also reported concerning this research, even though I declined all requests for interviews for 8 years with two exceptions. However, most of the Ukrainian media simply did not report my Maidan massacre studies for political reasons. The Ukrainian prosecutors stated that they examined my study during their investigation of the Maidan massacre. A publicly available video appendix of my study with testimonies of over 80 witnesses concerning Maidan snipers was accepted as evidence and shown at the Maidan massacre trial even though I was not involved in this trial. The fact that not a single person is convicted or arrested for the Maidan massacre of the protesters and the police is telling and revealing about the failure of the government investigation. Could you tell the story how your article was recently rejected? Did you receive the support of your colleagues? How are you going to react to that shameful case of violation of freedom of academic research? My Maidan massacre paper was initially accepted with minor revisions by the journal editor following peer review by two anonymous experts. The editor stated in the acceptance decision[12] that “the evidence that the study produces in favour of its interpretation on who was behind massacre of the protesters and the police during the “Euromaidan” mass protests on February 18-20, 2014, in Ukraine, is solid” and that “on this there is also consensus among the two reviewers." The reversal is extraordinary. In the email to the journal's editorial office, the editor who made the decision to accept my article, stated that he only learned that his decision was overturned from my tweet. He is Professor of International Relation in a British university. His email is another proof that the reversal of his decision by another editor was highly irregular and political. In the acceptance decision, this editor basically stated that rejecting my article would be based on politics and not its scholarly merits and its “solid evidence.” After he learned about this decision, Jeffrey Sachs, a world-renowned American economist, wrote in his letter of support[13] for my appeal of this decision that this is “a very important, rigorous,” “substantial,” and “thoroughly documented” article “on a topic of great significance” and it “should be published for reasons of its excellence, rigor, and prior acceptance by the journal with minor revisions.” He also regarded this reversal as political. I made the editor’s acceptance decision, its politically-motivated and outrageous reversal, and the letter of support from Jeffrey Sachs public on my Twitter. This story attracted a lot of interest. My tweet[14] had more than 300,000 views, and a number of American, British, and Dutch media outlets reported or in process of reporting about this act of political censorship and violation of academic freedom[15]. What are your academic plans? I plan to publish my Maidan massacre study as another peer-reviewed article or as a book by a Western academic press. I also plan to publish a book concerning the Ukraine-Russia war and its origins. Another my book concerning Ukraine is under contract with a major academic press in the US. Thank you for the interview! [1] Katchanovski, Ivan. Lies About Ukraine Conflict Are Standing in the Way of a Peaceful Resolution. URL: https://truthout.org/articles/lies-about-ukraine-conflict-are-standing-in-the-way-of-a-peaceful-resolution/ [2] Katchanovski, Ivan. The hidden origin of the escalating Ukraine-Russia conflict. URL: https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/the-hidden-origin-of-the-escalating-ukraine-russia-conflict [3] Katchanovski, Ivan. The far right, the Euromaidan, and the Maidan massacre in Ukraine. Journal of Labor and Society. 2020. 23(1):5-29. URL: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337947623_The_far_right_the_Euromaidan_and_the_Maidan_massacre_in_Ukraine [4] Katchanovski, Ivan. The Maidan Massacre in Ukraine: A Summary of Analysis, Evidence and Findings. The Return of the Cold War: Ukraine, the West and Russia. Editors: Joseph Laurence Black, Michael Johns. London: Routledge, 2016. URL: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280134889_The_Maidan_Massacre_in_Ukraine_A_Summary_of_Analysis_Evidence_and_Findings [5] Katchanovski, Ivan. The Maidan Massacre in Ukraine: Revelations from Trials and Investigation. 10th World Congress of the International Council for Central and East European Studies. Montreal, August 2021. URL: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356691143_The_Maidan_Massacre_in_Ukraine_Revelations_from_Trials_and_Investigation [6] URL: https://www.youtube.com/@IvanKatchanovskiPhD [7] Katchanovski, Ivan. The "Snipers' Massacre" on the Maidan in Ukraine. Annual Meeting of American Political Science Association. San Francisco, September 2015. URL: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266855828_The_Snipers%27_Massacre_on_the_Maidan_in_Ukraine [8] Katchanovski, Ivan. The Maidan Massacre in Ukraine: Revelations from Trials and Investigation. 10th World Congress of the International Council for Central and East European Studies. Montreal, August 2021. URL: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356691143_The_Maidan_Massacre_in_Ukraine_Revelations_from_Trials_and_Investigation [9] Marples, David R. Russia's perceptions of Ukraine: Euromaidan and historical conflicts. European Politics and Society. 2016. 17(4): 424-437. URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23745118.2016.1154129 [10] Marples, David R. The Maidan Revolution in Ukraine. E-international Relations. 2020. 1 July. URL: https://www.e-ir.info/2020/07/01/the-maidan-revolution-in-ukraine/ [11] https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=PtRnfFQAAAAJ&hl=en [12] https://twitter.com/I_Katchanovski/status/1611196287122116609 [13] https://twitter.com/I_Katchanovski/status/1611201789893697537 [14] https://twitter.com/I_Katchanovski/status/1611196287122116609 [15] Noah, Carl. Maidan Massacre Study Accepted and Then Rejected by Journal. URL: https://dailysceptic.org/2023/01/09/maidan-massacre-study-accepted-and-then-rejected-by-journal/?fbclid=IwAR0nOgN-mfc4TNpfqxp8g25rCZbYJ1Ms8WXfjAjCC_hMYZWKbHEKLRGuG_A; Eric van de Beek. Regering Kiev en westen negeren ware toedracht Maidan-bloedbad. URL: https://www.deanderekrant.nl/nieuws/regering-kiev-en-westen-negeren-ware-toedracht-maidan-bloedbad-2023-01-31?fbclid=IwAR3XBTSwjbkVczfoTcZ-0v0k77rnOazCI80FaIjpHLh_EXo65XwjLmc9RUI

01.03.2023 During the 54 years Charles Ruud taught at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, he made over 40 trips to Moscow and St. Petersburg to conduct research In Russian archives. His books have concentrated on the the influence of liberal ideas in an authoritarian society. Email: ruudchuck@gmail.com Authored books: Fighting words: imperial censorship and the Russian press, 1804-1906. University of Toronto Press, 1982. Russian entrepreneur: publisher Ivan Sytin of Moscow, 1851-1934. McGill-Queens Presss, 1990. Русский предприниматель московский издатель Иван Сытин. М.: Терра, 1996. Fontanka, 16: the tsars' secret police. McGill-Queen's University Press, 1999. Фонтанка, 16: Политический сыск при царях. М.: Мысль, 1993. The constant diplomat: Robert Ford in Moscow. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2009. My life for the book: the memoirs of a Russian publisher by Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2012. Jan Assmann argues that the usual span of communicative (family) memory of modern people includes three generations (80-100 years). How deep is your family memory? We Ruuds are from the Mid-West, from Minnesota. It is a Scandinavian area. My grandfather came from Norway; my grandmother, from Germany. Their eldest son, my father, became a printer. He wanted me to become a printer, but I chose to become a Russian historian and so learned to speak the Russian language that I love because it is so systematic, so predictable. And I think my English became better because of studying Russian. And the other great success in my early life was to marry Margie. Margie comes from Swedish background. I have concentrated on the Russian Empire censorship and I have to date written six books. Why were you involved in Russian studies? Great question. I wonder myself why did I do that? I think possibly I came along when was a particular interest of Americans we discovered at least we thought this that Russians and Americans are very much alike. Most Russians and most Americans share a sense of humor. Maybe you agree, maybe you do not, but I thought that harmony between two great peoples was interesting to understand how did that happened, what did that produce, what are the results, what are the effects on the World. These similarities I think were a reason why I was attracted in Russian studies. First and foremost I decided to make Russian studies when I decided to be a scholar. When I made choice I decided that for me Russian studies were most interesting. So I started concentrated on Russian studies. And gradually I found myself concentrated exclusively on Russian studies. Other subjects were interesting, but Russian studies were compelling. And that is all I have been thinking since that time. I like Russians. I started my university studies at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon in 1951 was graduated from there in 1955. Were there any Russians among your University professors? Yes. Eventually the most interesting professors were the émigrés. They went up to America and turned to universities to teach and became very influential scholars and professors. I think particularly about Mikhail Mikhailovich Karpovich. What a great man, a great fellow! I went to his classes at Harvard with great enthusiasm. He was fascinating. Following the February Revolution of 1917 Karpovich went to work for the new Provisional Government. After Bolsheviks took power he became a professor at Harvard. And I have been at Harvard where was Karpovich. That was fateful getting together of an evident student and superb scholar. I had never encountered anyone like Karpovich who had a quest of mind and ability to understand and in the same time to be humorous. I have decided since that time that humor is a characteristic of democratic people. And I think we all have the experience of speaking to others. At once you talk to democrats have present conversation. At once you talk to authoritarians have very doubtful conversation. Can you imagine for example having a good conversation with Donald Trump? That is impossible. Did Karpovich tell to the students any details regarding his experience during the Russian revolution? Karpovich did not speak about himself. His course was advertised basically about Russian literature. Russian literature was a part of my awakening as a scholar. I simply was floored by Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and countless other Russian authors. What a magical world that was. And in my own courses I spent a lot of time urging my students to read Tolstoy or Gogol. I find Gogol the funniest author I have ever read. He is extraordinarily clever and amusing. What a great outlook on life! Could you tell about your academic stages in the Soviet Union? I went to Russia under the IREX exchange in 1966, a year after I earned my Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley, and have since returned about forty times. And I found it an absolutely fascinating place. It was after I had earned my PhD. The Americans thought we were going to loosen up to the Soviets. I discovered later that some of the Russians thought they were going to loosen up up to the Americans. We had similar ideas. When I first got to the Soviet Union I was thinking that ‘well, I know the language,’ but I did not really know it well enough to converse fluently with it. So it surprised me to hear spoken Russian all around me and then I had to master. So the first year was learning of conversation with Russians, learning how to work in Russian archives, learning how to enjoy myself in Moscow. In all worked out and although some people thought that I am crazy I decided to go another time and I got absorbed in Russian studies. And I began to go back just to read in archives. That was a challenge but it was worth doing. Censorship was the main subject which I took with me into the Soviet Union. When I got there I met a Bulgarian and he said ‘You know you are a departure. It is interesting that the Soviets let you in when you are studying censorship.’ There was a kind of indicative of the changes that were taking place in Russia. So they let me in and let me working in archives and there is the beginning of the story. Who was your Russian tutor? We each had a language tutor as exchange students. Mine was named Boris Konstantinovich Zareanko. and we encountered different kind of teaching Russian. In America we were all together in one class. We took up a different problem at every meeting and worked on it until I mastered it. It was an a approach I thought very valuable. Who were the Soviet professors you collaborated during your first stages in the Soviet Union? Piotr Andreevich Zaionchkovsky was my supervisor. He gave me some guidance but not much. It was up to me to find my way. Piotr Andreevich met with us. More or less I decided to meet with him. He was an expert in the archives. So he was a great resource and I followed his lead. So that was really valuable. It was a different approach to academic life. In the Soviet Union of course was very hard on liberal scholars, but Piotr Andreevich was a liberal scholar. How did he manage to get along in the Soviet Union? He did. He wrote interesting books. They were books that were quite different from the books we wrote. They were extremely profound, detailed, searching and I learned a lot from him. So he was in a way of my inspiration and guide into Russian research. Was your communication with Zaionchkovsky and other Soviet academics limited only by professional subjects or did you discuss other subjects as well? As I recall we had a human connection and it was not characteristic of official Soviet relations. And we all called the pun to be careful not to push it too far recognizing the restrictions and the limitations under which Soviet scholars had to work. And what I really found valuable was how it was possible to accomplish good things under a bad system. This was a revelation to me because a had gone to the Soviet Union thinking that it is a dictatorship where I had to be careful, we could not do anything much and then I discovered that we were doing a lot. This I guess is a Russian characteristic, you can one side show yourself to be in favour of the regime and the other side you show that you are not in favour of the regime. I love that experience. Was it possible to discuss with your Soviet friends the problems of Soviet life, for instance the restrictions of freedom of expression? It was not impossible but as I recall was always suggestive. I did not ask them to declare themselves to be liberal, but our conversation nonetheless went off in liberal direction. And if they were asking me about life in America when I answered I would try to talk without seeming I denounce life in the Soviet Union. So we had a subtle game going on all the time and it was a great fun. Some of the Americans got in the trouble because they went too far. One or two were actually expelled from the country. So I guess it was a lesson to all of us: pay attention to business, do what we admitted to do, do not mess around. So I was very careful in Russia. I did not go beyond the limits of the program under which I was studying. This was not the Russians. This was the Soviet government imposing these orders on us. I think you met in the Soviet Union some young scholars, your peers. Did some of them become your friends? Let us see. That is a tough one. I remember my roommate in Moscow University, Yuri. He spent his days fooling around. Yuri was a Soviet ex-military officer and every afternoon he would go and drink beer with his friends. One day his mother came over to visit us in the dormitory and she said: ‘Yuri why cannot you be like this American?’ He did not want to be like an American. I do not blame him, he was having a good time. I often wandered what happened, but alas I cannot tell you. So he was I suppose my closest contact since we lived together in a room at Moscow University an academic year. I do recall that I went away to visit my family in Germany during the Christmas break. I came back and turned out that Yuri had using my bad because he had invited a certain lady to live with him in my room and they had shared my bad. This made life very interesting I think. Then I got my bad back and lived on the rest of the year in Moscow and I also would get permission to go to Leningrad because there was a good archive there. In fact Leningrad had the better archive than Moscow for me because the government documents are in that archive. Do you remember your colleagues from Leningrad? I do remember one. His name was Boris Lvovich Kandel and we became very friendly. We would get together from time to time and had a chat in the Saltykov-Schedrin library. Kandel was a sort of person who wanted to be close to an American but in the same time he was a little bit afraid of the American. I remember one time we met in the library and we were having a chat by the window and he suddenly changed the subject because an orthodox priest had come close to us and Kandel said ‘You have to be careful. You never know who is close to you, what are their up to.’ It was a great lesson to me. The priests could also be in hands of KGB. You see how much I learned about Soviet life, about Russians. Just my being there. And I remember that we used to have lunch in the library. I remember too we used to stand in line. And to get into a library sometimes you would have to wait for a half hour. And when you got into a library you had to be very careful because they were a general collection and a special collection (Slujebnyi katalogue). One day by mistake I got into a special collection and started looking through the card catalogue and one of the librarians came up to me and said ‘You are not allowed to be in this part of the library.’ It was very strange. And then I also remember in reading rooms every hour library attendants (dejurnye) would come up and opened the window leaf to let a fresh air inside and in that point most people would go out and have a cigarette. I also remember the Russian papirosy. I tried one once. It is not worth (Ne stoit). And I never could use to the idea of going out and have a beer in the middle of the day like my dormitory’s neighbour did. Russians like beer I think. In later years speaking of different ways doing things I invited some friends to come visit me in Saint-Petersburg. They came over and it was clear that they are not enjoying life. They did not really appreciate how to do things in Russia. We decided to go from Moscow to Saint-Petersburg and I wanted to go on the train and one of my friends said ‘can we fly?’ I said ‘no you have to see Russia on the ground not from overhead’. And we went on the ground. You were many times in the Soviet Union. Could you predict Perestroika when not the dissidents but the leader of Communist party initiated the process of capitalist transformation of the Soviet society? Or was it a big surprise for you? It was not entirely a surprise. I thought Russians are now able to be themselves. My fundamental conclusion was that Russian personality is now coming out and is becoming honest itself. It was a sort of the vindication of my thinking that the Russians really were much like Americans. We had a lot to say to one another, we could talk easily to one another; we need not as Americans think that the Russians were dedicated to our destruction. It was wonderful! It has been the great experience of my life. I was very interested in the reactions of Russians. I recall in particular that it was an archive attendant (dejurnaya). While the Soviet Union was still holding a country in its grip she wore dark close, she had her hair done back in a bun. When thing began to relax the same woman was still there but she had a dress harbored with flowers, her hair hanging done loose, no more bun, she had on a bit makeup. It was a different person. Her personality had begun to emerge. It was incredible alteration of people’s personality. Unfortunately, the time of freedom was very short in Russia. Now we are witnessing how the ‘Brezhnev-style’ moderate authoritarian rule of early Putin has been replaced by the quasi ‘Stalin-style’ dictatorship of the late-Putin regime. Some Western intellectuals and even academics believe that Russian classic culture, including Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, and Brodsky, is a transmitter of anti-liberal values and blame them for the atrocities committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine. In their opinion the ‘toxic’ Russian culture must be canceled everywhere. What do you think about that? That is nonsense. I think Russian literature is the protector and the nurturer of democratic ideas. All you have to do to read them carefully. I do not think that Russian culture somehow protects authoritarianism. Not at all. Quite the contrary, as I think Mikhail Karpovich would argue. He was a great Russian liberal, he understood Russia on the inside. Yes, I think that what is still to happen. So we have the authoritarians like Putin. They got a wrong message. They did not understand what the true Russian is. The problem is I think Putin is not a reader, he does not know Russian culture, he does not feel the Russian soul. It is a great tragedy for him, for his country, and for the World. I think Russians understand otherwise. Here was Zaionchkovsky, giving a talk to the students at Leningrad University. Everybody knew that Zaionchkovsky was a liberal person somewhat limited by the environment but he was nonetheless a man of true Russian spirit. That what we need keep in touch I think. And the last traditional question, what are your academic plans? My first book was on censorship. Then I began to look for liberals and I found them. Here is Ivan Sytin a famous Russian entrepreneur in the field of publishing business. He did the great things and a great typography in Moscow. He published a wonderful newspaper Russkoie slovo. This happened in Russia. But he understood how to operate under strict conditions. He had a wonderful writer Vlas Doroshevich, who was a great journalist. His works is filled with democratic ideas. I think he was a true Russian intellectual. And Sytin brought together in his paper a wonderful collection of writers and illustrators. One of them Grigory Petrov was a writer and a priest in the same time. He was able to do two things to worship God and to write wonderful articles. And Doroshevich wrote wonderful articles. He was a satirist, very clever writer, he wrote in a way which his ideas became clear. His sympathies were clear, but still he was writing inside an authoritarian regime. These writers whom Sytin hold together and Sytin himself were liberals. These gentlemen were extremely interesting, attractive and I thought they are Russians. And now I am working on a book about another great Russian, Nicolai Pirogov. He started out a firm believer in ideas of the eighteen century Enlightenment. These were rational people, very good people and they saw the world as a series of mechanisms. And then Pirogov felt in love and his outlook began to change, he became a romantic and philosopher. So he has slightly changed his point of view. He was still a great doctor but also a philosopher. I find this point very interesting combination both a doctor who specialized on amputations and a philosopher who has a positive view on the world. So he did not lose his capacity to be reasonable to understand problems but injected into this into this point of view was an appreciation for ideas. He married a good woman, unfortunately she died early, so he married another one. He had two children by the first one and he had an estate outside of Moscow. He knew how to live, he knew how to work with women, he was a wonderful guy who solve the complexity in the world and appreciated it. I guess that is I mean. And now I am pursuing this fellow in my recent book and the manuscript is now in the hands of the publisher. And we will see what happens. Thank you very much for your interview!

25.03.2023 Karl Schlögel is a historian, essayist, and professor emeritus at Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. E-mail: karl.schloegel@web.de His books include: Moskau lesen, Berlin 1984, (transl. English, French, Russian); Jenseits des großen Oktober. Petersburg 1909-1921. Das Laboratorium der Moderne, Berlin 1988; Das Wunder von Nishnij oder die Rückkehr der Städte. Berichte und Essays, Frankfurt am Main 1991 (transl.Italian, Dutch); Berlin Ostbahnhof Europas. Russen und Deutsche in ihrem Jahrhundert, Berlin 1998 (transl. Russian, French); Promenade in Jalta und andere Städtebilder, München/Wien (transl.French, Dutch, Polish) Moscow 1937, Cambridge 2012 (transl.Russian, Lithuanian, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Swedish, Dutch2012); Ukraine – Nation on the Borderlands, London 2016 (transl.Ukrainian, Russian, Swedish, Spanish); To Read Time in Space. History of Civilization and Geopolitics, Chicago 2016 (transl.Italian, Spanish, Polish); The Scent of Empires. Chanel No.5 and Krasnaya Moskva, London 2022 (transl.in many languages); The Soviet Century. Archeology of a Lost Civilization, Princeton 2023 (transl.Italian, Spanish) Serguey Ehrlich: Dear Prof. Schlögel I am very grateful that you agreed to have an interview with our journal “The Historical Expertise” (https://www.istorex.org/), which was relocated to Moldova after the beginning of Putin’s aggression against Ukraine. The first question is traditional because the specialization of our journal is memory studies. Jan Assmann points out that family (communicative) memory of modern people extends up to three generations or 80 to 100 years. How deep is your family memory? Did you try to find the archival documents regarding your ancestors? I come from a farming family in southern Germany. The history of the farm where I grew up goes back to the Peasants' War of the 1520s and the 30 Years War. In the cemetery of our church there are monuments to the soldiers who died in the French-German War, in the First World War and in the vast spaces of the Eastern front between 1939 and 1945. I grew up after the war and in our family there were the typical conflicts of the generation of 1968 with the generation of parents — my father was in the war, most of his time on the Eastern Front. Serguey Ehrlich: The Soviet studies are not very popular in Western academia. Why were you involved in that field? Maybe you have the Russian ancestry? As I said, I had no family connections. But I met my wife in Moscow while studying and our daughter grew up in Moscow. It was biographical coincidences why I became interested in the East and Russia. In our village there were displaced persons who had to flee from the Eastern provinces after 1945. I went to a Catholic gymnasium where we had Russian lessons because the teacher was from Bialystok. I went to Prague very early because I was interested in Kafka, and our school class organized a bus trip from Munich via Kiev to Moscow and back in 1966. Those were very strong impressions and I always felt comfortable among the people, simple veterans and dissidents in the Moscow kitchens or in exile in Paris. I traveled a lot in the vast spaces of the former empire. Serguey Ehrlich: How do you think the Putin’s aggression against Ukraine will affect the East European studies? Definitely. In the late 1980s and 1990s, we had an enthusiastic cohort of students going to Poland, to Russia, learning the languages, and we all had ideas about what we could do now: Scientific projects, travel, cooperations. We went to conferences, joint expeditions on the Volga, on the Belomor Canal, on Solovki. We learned so much from the soratniki of Memorial, many of whom had to leave Russia now. Now the possibilities to travel, visit archives, organize conferences in Russia have practically stopped. Contacts with friends remain, as best we can. But how we can afford to support the new diaspora, that is a big task (I have done a lot of work on Russkij Berlin and German exile in America). There will be a whole re-start or Russian studies - reflection, reconsidering —, as well as a new re-start of Ukrainian history, of which most historians of Eastern Europe knew little or nothing before 2014. What is Putinism, what is deep history behind the war, how to understand the longue durée of Russian history. I have just finished my book on the American Century, parallel to the Soviet Century. It will be published in the fall, and it is a parallel history, because I was always in the U.S. simultaneously with my Russian travels. And I finished my history of the Volga — which was interrupted due to the war against Ukraine — as a history of Russia — it was almost finished when Putin occupied Crimea. So the Volga will have to wait — but it will continue to flow when Putin is already gone. Serguey Ehrlich: I asked my colleague Alexey Golubev (he is an associate professor of history in University of Houston) to compose a few questions regarding your fundamental research. Alexey Golubev: Dear Karl, I really appreciated the opportunity to read your fabulous The Soviet Century: Archaeology of a Lost World. My recently published book, The Things of Life: Materiality in Late Soviet Russia (based on my 2016 PhD dissertation) discusses some of the same spaces and objects of late socialism, including staircases, collections, and museums, so it was fascinating to read your masterful discussion of Soviet material, visual, literary, and symbolic relics, even though in the end we pursue two very different research agenda. Needless to say, I would rather prefer to have this discussion as a live conversation. Our current format reminds of me “correspondence chess” (as opposed to “over-the board chess”), although there is still an important difference: you are getting all of my “moves” at once. Nevertheless, I look forward to reading your responses! There are always spirits thoughts, exploring the world independently from one another. That is wonderful. And at some point they come together — inevitably. Then there are paradigm shifts, Thomas Kuhn's turn and dream of scientific revolutions. Alexey Golubev: The root metaphor of the book is organistic: the Soviet Union as “a form of life with its own history, maturity, decline and fall.” And this lifeform is apparently extinct; hence the subtitle of your book, “Archeology of a Lost World.”What kind of heuristic and analytical value is provided by this conceptualization of the Soviet Union in terms of a location and event (a chronotope) that is gone forever? Does it help us ‘defamiliarize’ the Soviet historical experience? Is it an opportunity to break away from the reductionist totalitarian framework? I have no systematic theory, no method worked out as a plan, but follow my own intuition, approach. I follow the material — stuff? — and take all freedom — even it is called eclectic. My ideal figure is the well-trained, all-round interested flâneur, the phenomenologically trained eye, he uses all disciplines, he is "eclectic" and dilettante. In my mind and experience space and place are underestimated — and there will be no history of Russia properly if it will not overcome the dimension of space and the space-time-relation .From taking on this problem new Forms of telling the Story, new modes of narrations will emerge - but this we should discuss in Houston or somewhere. Alexey Golubev: This is a continuation of the previous question: what are potential risks of this understanding of the Soviet historical experience in terms of a lost world in need of an archeological excavation? A quick comment on the question: when archeologists discover or excavate objects and place them in a real (or virtual) exhibition, this is always an operation of decontextualization: the public is offered to perceive and consume these objects as curious signs of the past that are not really relevant for us here and now. We don’t visit an exhibition about Pompei for inspirations on how to overcome the racial segregation and violence in today’s United States; we visit it to consume the spectacle of the “ancient past” of the human civilization. If we take Lenin as an example: his writings on imperialism and his strong belief in the right of nations to self-determination were definitely part of the “Soviet century,” yet The Soviet Century focuses more on his debilitating disease and mummification. Or another example: The Short Course in the History of the VKP(b) features rather prominently in your book but not Mikhail Pokrovsky’s strong criticism of Russian settler colonialism and epistemic violence of Russian imperial historical scholarship (Klyuchevsky and Co) that preceded the postcolonial turn in Western academic by at least half a century. Would you agree – or disagree – that your root metaphor, in a way, determined these choices? Maybe I did not get your point. Decontextualization is only the first step in de-composing, ana-lysing, and re-composing, making the discovered “golden nugget” so strong to include the whole universe of the time. To crystallize the whole universe or situation in one point, the hardest. You may call it an “anecdotical” approach, to demonstrate l’histoire total in one moment or object. You have to find the type of material – to find the proper object in my experience take 80 percent of research, the rest is diligence, hard working with the material. Alexey Golubev: And the last question related to the overall framework of your book:is my understanding correct that you wrote The Soviet Century as a story of historical exceptionalism? There was one and unique Soviet Union; its traces can be excavated through material objects in a Benjaminian manner, through textual analysis in a Foucauldian fashion, or through analysis of images like what Roland Barthes offers in Camera Lucida. The reason I am curious in this question and your answer is that the Soviet century can also be understood as part of the global twentieth century. The barakholka in Izmaylovsky Park reminds me of the flee market in Bielefeld that I frequented while a fellow there and where I purchased a Nazi good housekeeping book with an inlet featuring the Nuremberg racial laws. Having lived in Houston, TX, for almost six years, I see a lot of similarities between russkaya glubinka (chapter 38) and the rural communities in Texas and Louisiana wetlands. And I really appreciated your reference to the Soviet Union as a “museum empire,” yet I cannot help thinking that the Soviet state came into possession of its vast museum collections in the same way as European imperial museums: through dispossession of local communities. All regional and most local museums in Russia have rich collections of Eastern Orthodox icons that were forcedly taken from local communities in an act similar to the looting of indigenous art by English colonizers that resulted in the beautiful British Museum. You speak of the “western museum” as distinct from their soviet counterparts (p. 21) – yet if we add this (post)colonial perspective, are they so distinct? Your observations and commentaries are entirely correct. I agree, but this brings us to a far reaching or radical question about the function of museums beyond muzeality, muzealization – I just can recommend reading the essays and results of research in Peter Millers Book on material culture (Miller, Peter N. History and Its Objects. Antiquarianism and Material Culture since 1500. Cornell University Press, 2017). Material objects as realizations, incorporations of the social, cultural etc. life, that is of the Weberian search and theory building. Read the objects, the artifacts of all kinds of embodiments of social structures, values, etc. Alexey Golubev: Your book is spectacularly attentive to social relations in Soviet society: you show how, despite proclaiming itself since the time of Stalin as a classless society, class still mattered there (e.g., the chapter on the staircase). In the light of this attentiveness to the complex, hierarchical, and diverse social landscape of the Soviet Union, including its last decades,what is your take on Yuri Levada and Lev Gudkov’s concept of “Soviet Man”? I am an admirer of Jury Lewada whom I had the chance to meet personally and I am full of admiration of the powerful strength of the work of his disciples and scholars he has formed and educated. I understand the formative power of the Soviet System, which seduces a bit the idea of the genesis of an anthropological type, of an entirely new person — but which I do not believe in. I prefer a bit less Max Weber and a bit more Georg Simmel. Alexey Golubev: If you were to write this book now, with the Russo-Ukrainian War ongoing, would imperialism feature more prominently in it? If yes – how would you explain its resilience from the late Russian Empire through the “Soviet century” to Putin’s Russia? Were those three separate imperialisms, or is there a genealogical relationship between them? The situation of the dissolution of this biggest formation of a continental empire is so unique, we can learn a lot from the fall of other empires – British, Spanish etc. – but the dissolution of the Soviet empire is entirely new and demands new approaches and probably answers. Thank you for the interview!

03.02.2024 Emily Wang, Assistant Professor of Russian at the University of Notre Dame (Indiana, USA), Faculty Fellow at the Nanovic Institute for European Studies; Faculty Affiliate, Initiative for Race and Resilience. Email: ewang3@nd.edu. She is the author of the book: Pushkin, the Decembrists, and Civic Sentimentalism. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2023. 224 p. Serguey Ehrlich, the interviewer Dear Emily, the first question is traditional for our journal, because its specialization is memory studies. In all interviews we test the hypothesis of Jan Assmann stating that the usual span of communicative (family) memory of modern people usually includes three generations (80-100 years). How deep is your family memory? When and from where did your ancestors immigrate to the US? I’m not sure when my mother’s family (white southerners) came to the United States. My father’s mother traces her ancestry back to the pilgrims. My father’s father came over from China in 1946 to attend graduate school at Columbia University. He stayed because the Revolution meant that it was not safe for him (a member of the upper class) to return home. Luckily, he met and married my grandmother, which made it possible for him to stay in the United States. This kind of relationship – international and interracial – was very rare at the time and illegal in many states. Some family documents trace the Wuxi branch of the Wang family’s roots back to the 1st century BCE, though I’m not sure that all the stories going back that far are true. There is a popular metaphor of the US as a melting pot where people of different descents create the common American identity. I read that the Chinese community is most resistant to cross-cultural interactions. Chinese immigrants have preserved their language and culture for more than one century, because a significant part of them lives in the numerous so-called Chinatowns. Does that information correspond with the current reality? There are Chinatowns all over the United States and all over the world. Interestingly, they don’t all use the same Chinese language. Immigrants from different regions of China speak different dialects that are essentially different languages, though I think in the PRC state policy has strengthened the standard dialect of Mandarin. My grandfather preferred the Wuxi dialect. That said, not all Chinese Americans live in a Chinatown. In the United States, second-generation immigrants tend to know English better than Chinese and consider themselves quite American (though other Americans sometimes regard them as “perpetual foreigners”). States like California and New York have ethnic enclaves of Chinese and Chinese Americans, but there were not as many Asians in St. Louis, Missouri, where my family settled. Both my father and I grew up in white neighborhoods. From another side there are some publications that leading American universities create impediments for integration of Asian American people introducing unofficial quotas for them. The current situation looks similar with the discrimination of Jewish students from the 1910s to the 1950s. Some journalists referring to that shameful episode of the American past call the Asian-descent students the “New Jews”. Did you meet any sort of discrimination in your experience? Discrimination still exists today, but first half of the twentieth century was a particularly dark time in American culture. Jerome Karabel, a sociologist who has researched [https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/11/harvard-jewish-quotas-asian-americans-supreme-court.html] the use of anti-Semitic quotas in American higher education, argues (persuasively, in my view) that Asian Americans today don’t face the same discrimination that Jews dealt with in those decades. (It was a bad time for Asians, too: in that period my great-grandfather came to the United States to study at Harvard but left for the University of Michigan because Harvard was racist.) Personally, I didn’t have difficulties getting into college and I support affirmative action, though I also think that American universities should change their legacy admissions policies. From the interviews I know that many among the older generation of specialists in Slavic studies were involved in their field because they were impressed by Sputnik and Gagarin. The next generation was inspired by Perestroika. What is the reason for your generation of Western academics to be involved in Slavistics? Why did you decide to learn Russian and to study the Russian culture? I went to college in the first decade of the 2000s. Most American Slavists my age became interested in Russian because of Russian literature and culture, though many of us also had Russian friends. Many of the students at my college were children of third-wave immigrants. My closest friend had moved to New York from Leningrad at age five. We lived in a house with other Russian students and made friends with a band specializing in East European music. International culture was cool, so Russian culture was also cool. Immigrants like Matvei Yankelevich (the grandson of Elena Bonner) and Eugene Ostashevsky were very involved with the American avant-garde, especially poetry. In fact, quite a few immigrants who came to the US as children have now become Russian Studies professors themselves. Who taught you the Russian language and literature? Were there any Russians among your professors? Three of my professors were Americans (Susanne Fusso, Priscilla Meyer, and Duffield White). One was a Russian-speaking woman from Lithuania, the wife of the writer Yuz Aleshkovsky – Irina Aleshkovskaya. There weren’t many Russian scholars in the United States during that generation of professors. Now, two scholars from Russia teach at Wesleyan University, as well as the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants and several Westerners. The Russian stars of the global cultural heritage are Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov. Pushkin is appreciated as a genius only on the national scale. Why did you choose his writings as the subject of your studies? I became interested in Pushkin because of Dostoevsky! All of Dostoevsky’s characters read Pushkin, so I had to read Pushkin, too. I thought Pushkin would be like Dostoevsky, but even more so. Of course, Pushkin turned out to be himself. I should mention that I was very interested when I learned that Pushkin was what Americans call “mixed race,” like me and my sisters. In fact, I remember calling my sisters to tell them about it. In your first book Pushkin, the Decembrists, and Civic Sentimentalism, which was published in the series of the Wisconsin Center for Pushkin Studies edited by David M. Bethea, you argue that the concept of the Soviet researchers that Pushkin was a Decembrist “fellow traveler” is not relevant for understanding the relations between our genial poet and his mediocre colleagues from the secret societies. Why do you think a lot of Russian academics continue supporting that ideologically motivated concept until now? Alyssa Dinega Gillespie edited a volume of essays called Taboo Pushkin, dedicated to violating the scholarly taboos of the Soviet era, which was now more than three decades ago. One of those essays, by Igor Nemirovsky, tackles the subject of Pushkin and the Decembrists. The first version of that essay was published in Russia in the 1990s, but the taboo seems to have persisted. Maybe that’s the way Pushkin would have wanted it! Elsewhere, Nemirovsky writes that many of the stories of how Pushkin almost joined the rebellion can be traced back to the poet himself, so the poet wanted people to think that he was almost a Decembrist. During the Cold War the American Slavic studies grew up tremendously because the US government had aimed to prepare more specialists who know the Russian language and understand the Russian mentality. Did Putin’s invasion into Ukraine produce similar effects or is it working in the opposite way marginalizing Slavic studies in American academia? The US government would love to encourage more Americans to study Russian and Ukrainian. In fact, undergraduates who are enrolled in the ROTC junior officer training program can earn a generous monthly paycheck for studying one or both of those languages. The problem is that Putin’s invasion has made Slavic Studies seem scary to Americans. They’d rather not think about that part of the world. On top of that, American students studying a foreign language want to be able to travel to a country that speaks that language, and Americans are now discouraged to go to Russia and Ukraine. Without students, it is hard for professors to offer new and interesting courses, creating a vicious cycle. And the last question is traditional as well, what are your academic plans? I’m working on a sourcebook with an American historian, Korey Garibaldi (https://americanstudies.nd.edu/faculty/korey-garibaldi/), about Pushkin and the United States. Pushkin was an important figure for African Americans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and we are putting together a collection of primary sources about Pushkin in America and Pushkin writing about America. Thanks a lot for your interview!

Catriona Kelly. ‘Encyclopaedia of [Lost] Russian Life.’ Rev.: Karl Schlögel, The Soviet Century: Archaeology of a Lost World, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Oxford and Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2023). 04.06.2023 Abstract: This review of Karl Schlögel’s encyclopaedic compendium on Soviet material culture argues that the book is representative rather than exhaustive – for example, most of the material relates to Russian Soviet culture specifically -- and organised in a way that depends on associative, rather than strictly rigorous classifications. While a few entries seem to have been composed more out of duty than real engagement, overall, the book is an essayistic tour de force, even if academic readers may miss a strong analytical drive, and detailed attention to recent secondary literature. Key words: Soviet history; Stalinism; material culture; visual arts; urban studies Catriona Kelly, Senior Research Fellow in Russian, Trinity College, Cambridge, UK Honorary Professor of Russian, University of Cambridge, UK. Email: ck616@cam.ac.uk This enormous book attempts nothing less than an all-encompassing panorama of Soviet (or more accurately, Soviet Russian) historical realia, from the city spaces on and in which the October Revolution took place, to the ‘Moscow kitchens’ in which members of the oppositional intelligentsia mounted their clandestine, countercultural discussions. The book’s organisation eschews obvious classifications (exterior versus interior spaces, rural versus urban, leisure versus work and home). For instance, Part VI of the book addresses living space, Part VII ‘public spaces’, but the dacha, which could have fitted into Part VI, appears in ‘Oases of Freedom’ (Part V, Chapter 24), while the enormous territories created by the crash building programmes of the late 1950s-early 1980s figure in Part VII, Chapter 37. Naturally, the individual topics break out of their confining categories – a ‘border’ is of course not just a space of ‘rituals’ (Part IX, Chapter 41), but also a ‘public space’, and indeed, by 1991, as Vladislav Zubok described in his recent tome on the Gorbachev era, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2021), it would equally well belong in Part I, ‘Shards of Empire’, since on New Year’s Eve, none of the border guards at Sheremetevo had actually turned up to man passport control. However, this sense of ‘unclassifiability’ is plainly Schlögel’s intent. Such deliberate waywardness is characteristic of a book that, as the publisher’s blurb suggests, is as much a ‘museum’ and ‘travel guide’ as an academic analysis. It would be straightforward to list omissions from this ‘encyclopaedia of [lost] Russian life’, twenty-first-century style. Trains and stations have their own section (Part XVI, ‘The Railroads of Empire’), but airports (already heavily used by the late Soviet period) do not. Several mini-essays deal with labour camps and prisons, but none with hospitals (as opposed to sanatoriums) or schools (as opposed to informal intellectual gatherings for adults). On the whole, these omissions are not systematic. Yet the discussion of dachas with primary attention to the opulent structures of the Stalin era (as evoked for celluloid by Nikita Mikhalkov in Burnt by the Sun, 1994) rather than sadovodstva, and the focus on communal apartments rather than the one-family khrushchevki and their nameless successors of the Brezhnev era, bespeak Schlögel’s relative lack of interest, the dissident world aside, in the late Soviet period. Noticeable also is the tendency to ‘follow the literature’: if Schlögel’s discussion of food is more or less limited to the flagship Book of Tasty and Nutritious Food, overlooking canteens, cafés, and indeed most of the fare (grenki and salat oliv’e aside) served in ‘Moscow kitchens’, then that is because there is a copious literature on cookbooks (bigger, in fact, than his minimal notes would suggest), while to date relatively few sources address other aspects of food culture (though Erik Scott’s ‘Edible Ethnicity: How Georgian Cuisine Conquered the Soviet Table’, Kritika, vol. 13, no. 4 (2012), pp. 831-58, represents a substantive contribution published several years before completion of the German edition that could have sent Schlögel down another rabbit hole if he had wanted). This dependence on extant historiography does not mean that Schlögel’s treatment of his material is inert or unoriginal. If cooking is an area where his discussion seems more dutiful attention to an obviously important topic than an expression of genuine interest, elsewhere there is often a stronger sense of personal involvement. ‘Magnitogorsk, the Pyramids of the Twentieth Century’ (Part II, Chapter 7) interweaves the author’s own visit to the city in 1993 with the history of its construction, drawing explicitly on Stephen Kotkin’s Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Princeton, NJ and London: Princeton University Press, 1995). However, the tribute to ‘the peculiar beauty of industrialised and planned landscapes’ (p. 144) and evocation of how ‘the ruins of the megamachine lie all over the country’ (p. 154) are Schlögel’s own. Several of the chapters are essayistic tours de force: for instance, ‘DniproHES: America on the Dnieper’ (Part II, Chapter 6), or ‘Wrapping Paper, Packaging’ (Part IV, Chapter 16), or the tributes, in other chapters, to china ornaments and pianos. An especially striking aria addresses the ‘toilet [in the sense, water closet] as a civilising space’, if also the repellent and disgusting features of this amenity – a luxury for many Russians (as Schlögel does not point out) until recent times. Schlögel’s phenomenological eye takes in underappreciated entities such as dioramas, as well as ones that are extremely familiar from belles-lettres, journalism, and historical discussions (the queue, Communist parades, the ‘special sections’ of banned books in major libraries). He seems defeated only where the nature of the material slips out of his personal reach: an awkward section on the provinces, ‘Russkaya glubinka – The World Beyond the Big Cities’ (Part VII, Chapter 38) combines regurgitation of other people’s observations with his own out of the window of a speeding bus. The compensation even here, though, is a capacity for effective phrase-making: whether or not a political geographer would approve the description of modern Russian agroholdings as ‘latifundia’ (p. 447), it certainly sticks in the mind. At one level, Schlögel’s panorama is restricted, in that parts of the USSR beyond the RSFSR are to all intents and purposes absent. The main exceptions, rather unluckily, given present circumstances, are Donbas and Crimea. At the same time, the spread is ambitiously wide, reflecting both the size and variety of Russia’s terrain, and the scale of the historical events concerned. In such a broad-brush treatment, some detail inevitably gets smudged. One reason is the limited use of primary sources. Describing ‘Red Moscow’ perfume, Schlögel relies on retrospective evocations, rather than the recipes of Soviet industrial chemists or the regulations of Gosstandart (some of which are locatable from one’s desk using legal databases online). Another is the overall tone. Schlögel’s standard mode is the enthusiastic riff, sometimes, perhaps, a little too enthusiastic. While all of us might agree, relative to the illustrations in The Book of Tasty and Nutritious Food, 1952, that ‘the colour quality is amazing’, not all of us would give that insight as positive a slant as Schlögel. Occasionally, he gets carried away completely. One amusing instance is the choice of Galiullin Khabibulla, ‘the illiterate Tatar woman [sic.] who learned how to build a blast furnace’, to illustrate the insight that in the 1930s ‘the young woman who made a career as a shock worker was no longer the bride who could be married off to the man who made the best offer’. This gaffe is all the odder given Schlögel’s extended discussion of Magnitogorsk and Khabibulla’s status as primary local hero (definitely not heroine). More often, the slips are simply careless: ‘the end of communal apartments’ certainly did not coincide with ‘the end of the Soviet Union’ (p. 325), and to claim that ‘there was no house without books nor where books were not read’ (p. 167) is testament to mythology (samyi chitayushchii narod v mire) rather than to the first-hand reports of Soviet librarians. Specialists in Russian history may also grumble at the relatively restricted range of secondary literature that is acknowledged. While acknowledgement of at least some historiography in Russian is a plus, the Notes and List of Further Reading published with the original German edition, Das sowjetische Jahrhundert (München: Karl Beck, 2018) have not been updated to replace or augment the 18 out of 47 recommended books that are available only in German with comparable sources in English, or reflect publications in any language that have appeared over the last five years. It would be a pity, however, if minor flaws of this kind distracted attention from what Schlögel has achieved in putting together his sweeping ‘archaeology of a lost world’. Thought-provoking and written with panache (here Schlögel has also been lucky with his translator, Rodney Livingstone), the book is a pleasure to read. Other studies may provide more information about why and how the components of Schlögel’s phenomenology came to exist in the way that they did, and about their existence outside a certain ‘snapshot moment; they may also more effectively convey the sense of what was specifically ‘Soviet’ about the phenomena excavated from the past. But few can boast the imaginative force and narrative sweep that Schlögel commands at his best.

Олег Лейбович: «Бывший офицер Сибирской армии молчал, красные партизаны говорили, и много». Аннотация: О.Л. Лейбович рассказывает о своем пути в исторической науке. Об учебе в университете, работе в школе, а затем на кафедре научного коммунизма в политехническом институте. О написании двух диссертаций и их защитах. О том, как З. И. Файнбургу удалось привить ему вкус к исследованию социальных сюжетов. Это разговор о смысле, перспективах гуманитарного знания и социальной истории в России. Ключевые слова: социальная история, история повседневности, историческая наука в России, политическая история XX века. Автор: Лейбович Олег Леонидович, профессор, доктор исторических наук, заведующий кафедрой культурологии и философии Пермского государственного института культуры. Email: oleg.leibov@gmail.com Автор книг: Реформа и модернизация в 1953—1964 гг. — Пермь: Изд-во Пермского ун-та. — ТОО ЗУУНЦ, 1993. 182 с.; В городе М.: очерки социальной повседневности советской провинции в 40 — 50 -х гг. — Москва: Российская политическая энциклопедия (РОССПЭН), 2008. – 295 с.; «Включен в операцию». Массовый террор в Прикамье 1937-1938 гг. – Москва: Российская политическая энциклопедия (РОССПЭН), 2009. – 318 с.; Охота на красного директора – Пермь: ИЦ «Титул», 2017. – 320 с.; «Я вырос в сталинскую эпоху». Политический автопортрет советского журналиста. — Москва: Издательский дом ВШЭ, 2019. — 364 с. Беседовала Анна Шадрина. Oleg Leibovich: "The former officer of the Siberian Army was silent, the Red partisans spoke, and a lot". Abstract: In the interview O. L. Leibovich tells about his path in historical science. About studying at the university, working at school and then at the Department of Scientific Communism at the Polytechnic Institute. About writing two dissertations and their defense. About how Z. I. Feinburg managed to instill in him a taste for the study of social subjects. This is a conversation about the meaning and prospects of humanitarian knowledge and social history in Russia. Keywords: social history, history of everyday life, historical science in Russia, political history of the XX century. Corresponding author: O. L. Leibovich - Professor, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Head of the Department of Cultural Studies and Philosophy at the Perm State Institute of Culture. Email: oleg.leibov@gmail.com А.Ш.: Олег Леонидович, признайтесь, чем вас привлекла историческая наука? О.Л.: Двумя обстоятельствами. Прежде всего тем, что я вовремя, т.е. в возрасте 10– 11 лет, стал читать хорошие книжки. Дело было так: я вырос в семье служащих. Отец был прокурорским работником, откомандированным на Урал из Донбасса. Прокурор УССР Роман Андреевич Руденко объяснил своему бывшему подчиненному, что после оккупации приходится украинизировать кадры, и людям с еврейскими фамилиями лучше работать в другом месте. Отец согласился, приняв назначение в г. Чусовой Молотовской области, где я и родился. Мама была родом из деревни Вожаково Сивиниского района (все той же области). Помимо них в семье жил дедушка, в прошлом скромный бухгалтерский работник, а в еще более далеком прошлом – гимназист из Одессы. Как-то раз он отправился получать высшее образование в Йенский университет. Однако, в 1914 г. с летних вакаций ему уже туда вернуться не удалось, поэтому он с чистой совестью писал во всех анкетах – «образование среднее». В отличие от своего сына, он был книгочеем. Именно он уговорил подписать меня на «Библиотеку приключений», издававшуюся в 1955–1959 годах. Я не все книги осилил, но «Три мушкетера»» читал, перечитывал, да и товарищам по классу пересказывал. Читал за завтраком – утром (если родители не видели), иногда ночью (под одеялом с жужжащим фонариком) и, наконец, полулегально, сидя у окошка (днем). Собственно, с этой книги А. Дюма и пробудилось во мне историческое чувство. Тем временем, семья кочевала по Молотовской области из райцентра в райцентр: с. Карагай, пос. Октябрьский вблизи железнодорожной станции Чад, затем добралась до г. Перми. Мама работала в библиотеке, и, помнится, как-то раз она принесла домой списанную за ветхостью книжку Е.В. Тарле «Наполеон» издания 1941 года, без первой тетрадки. Я ее прочел. Потом еще раз прочел. А уже потом с ней годами не расставался. До сих пор под нахожусь под ее обаянием, хотя больше уже не перечитываю. Эта биография Бонапарта была первой книгой, в которой привлек меня почему-то не герой, а как раз сам автор, обладавший неповторимым даром рассказчика. И другой потрясающий рассказчик (Юрий Олеша), весьма скептически отозвавшийся о литературных и исторических талантах академика, меня так впоследствии и не переубедил. Постепенно складывалось убеждение: история – это интересно. А потом, перебирая книги на отцовской этажерке, я случайно наткнулся на том в твердом, строгом переплете. Это были «Судебные речи» А.Я. Вышинского – последнее советское издание, уже посмертное, 1955 г. Отец специально поставил его во второй ряд, как раз перед тем, чтобы навсегда убрать с глаз долой. Он оставался человеком, сформированным сталинской системой. Поэтому к книжкам у него было отношение настороженное. Опасные это были предметы. Помню, в университетскую пору я часто покупал издававшиеся в СССР массовыми тиражами брошюрки про китайскую «Великую пролетарскую культурную революцию». Про ганьбу, хунвейбинов и цзяофаней (по-русски, это приблизительно кадровые работники, красногвардейцы, учащихся и рабочие). Однажды отец, увидев у меня в руках тонюсенькую книжку К. Симонова (он тоже подвизался на идеологическом фронте борьбы с маоизмом) закатил мне истерику. Я никак не мог понять, чем плоха книжка-то. Сперва я подумал, что ему было жалко потраченных на брошюрку четырех копеек. Но это, вроде, было не в его правилах: деньги были явно мизерные. Потом мне матушка объяснила. «Вот ты видишь, она совсем тоненькая. Где-нибудь там затеряется, ты её потом не найдёшь. А другие найдут» – сказала она, выделив голосом слово «другие». И посмотрела на меня оценивающим взглядом: все ли понял, сынок? Но вернемся к тому, как я стал читать речи Вышинского на трех процессах 1936 – 1938 годов. Судебный оратор своей нарочитой грубостью симпатий отнюдь не вызвал, но содержимое его речей открывало какую-то совсем иную историю страны Советов: заговоры, покушения, шпионские страсти, даже какие-то странно звучавшие имена подсудимых: Ратайчик, Розенгольц, Радек. Маячила в отдалении зловещая физиономия обер-бандита Троцкого… Что-то тайное и тревожащее виделось мне в этих разоблачениях. Что-то уводящее в область недосказанного, непроизносимого... Но дома имелась книжка Джона Рида «Десять дней, которые потрясли мир» 1957 года издания. Она стояла на полке, годам к 12 я до неё дотянулся. А там обнаружились те же самые имена, но словно бы совсем других людей: не заговорщиков, а революционеров. При этом, согласно школьным учебникам, Октябрьскую революцию делали иные люди. И вот тогда я сам догадался, что существуют две советские политические истории: правильная и подлинная. И если тебя пичкают правильной, то подлинную от тебя почему-то скрывают. А запретный плод сладок. Подростков таинственность привлекает, я не был исключением. И в старших классах, и в университете пытался разгадать эту загадку, приучил себя читать стенограммы партийных съездов (кроме XIV-го все были налицо в свободном доступе). Догадался, как извлекать информацию из биографического указателя к синим томам пятого издания сочинений В.И. Ленина. Если имярек «состоял в партии с 1901 г.», значит не реабилитирован, а если «член партии», то реабилитация уже состоялась. Навыки правильного чтения открыли мне многое. Стенограммы съездов ВКП(б), при пристальном рассмотрении, тоже предъявляли иную историю. Вот, к примеру, XII партийный съезд: все персонажи вузовских учебников на месте, но говорят они что-то совсем другое, не то, что им полагалось бы. Заключительное слово Сталина на XII партийном съезде, 1923 год: «Товарищ Осинский похвалил меня, похвалил товарища Каменева и лягнул товарища Зиновьева. Если товарищ Осинский будет лягать Ленинское ядро ЦК, то не сносить ему головы», — это про Григория Зиновьева, если вы понимаете. Быстро понял, что в университете на занятиях по истории партии вопросов задавать не стоит – ну, если только не из желания покрасоваться. Помню, один из моих соучеников назвал как-то на семинаре Николая Бухарина «товарищем». Преподаватель это заметил и сказал, что так не надо делать. На что, естественно, дерзкий первокурсник возразил: «Для Ленина он был товарищем, а для вас почему нет?» Ответом была ухмылка, немножко циничная, немножко понимающая, мол не о чём тут разговаривать. Но книги – это только одно основание сложившегося интереса к истории. Другим, как ни странно, было дворовое сообщество. Советская эпоха с ее многочисленными переходами, зигзагами, прорывами и откатами, насыщенная событиями как никогда прежде, оказалось спрессованной в жизнь одного поколения. Моими соседями по двору были фронтовики Отечественной войны, но также красноармейцы и партизаны войны гражданской. И не только они. Едва ли не каждый день я встречал маленького сгорбленного старичка в стоптанных валенках, всегда чем-то занятого по хозяйству – дедушку моего одноклассника. И однажды он показал мне под большим секретом старую выцветшую кабинетную фотографию: три бравых офицера в казачьем обмундировании позируют, выставив вперед, как полагается, шашки в ножнах. На обороте надпись – март 1919. В центре фото – молодой, щеголеватый будущий дедушка с подворья. Количество звездочек на погонах я не разглядел. Кем он был – хорунжим или сотником, где и кем было сделано это фото? Хотел было спросить, но понял, что не нужно. Бывший офицер Сибирской армии молчал, а красные партизаны говорили, и много. Боец полка «Красных орлов» – отец, а не дедушка моего близкого приятеля Вани Ф., был человеком словоохотливым. И все объяснял, что мы-де никакой истории не знаем, в книжках все врут, Красную армию создавал товарищ Троцкий, а отнюдь не Сталин. На кухне у него висел парадный портрет К.Е. Ворошилова в мундире при всех орденах. Под этим портретом он и рассказал нам историю, как взбунтовался их полк (скорее всего, не «Красных орлов»). Красноармейцы требовали обмундирование, главным образом – обувь, и без него отказывались выступать на фронт. Вышли на площадь, велели звать начальство. Мятежный полк окружили, выставили пулеметы. И тогда приехал председатель Реввоенсовета республики, поднялся на трибуну, громко приказал убрать пулеметы: здесь бойцы Красной армии, а не бунтовщики, – и начал говорить. Говорил долго. А мы, знай, кричали: «Ура!». Потом поклялись тут же идти на фронт и передать свое имущество новой формирующейся части. Потом я эту историю без упоминания Л.Д. Троцкого прочел в рассказе В.П. Аксенова «Дикой», вошедший в сборник «На полпути к Луне». Только Трофим Иванович рассказывал свою историю года за два до его издания, к тому же современных литераторов он не читал вовсе. Зато регулярно радио слушал сквозь скрип и скрежет. В 10 классе мне стало ясно – пойду в историки. И отправился в Пермский госуниверситет. Конкурс был, представьте, 14 человек на место. Вступительный экзамен принимал профессор Лев Ефимович Кертман. Выслушал, поставил отличную оценку. Других экзаменов мне сдавать было не нужно (как золотому медалисту), так что уже на следующий день меня отправили на хоздвор, где была оперативно создана бригада из трех отличников: двух химиков и одного историка. Нам выдали лошадь, телегу и белые халаты. Поставили задачу: перевезти оборудование кафедры химии из одного корпуса в другой. Нам доверили даже перевозку имеющегося на кафедре спирта. Потому что знали, что мы его пить не будем – по молодости и неопытности. Помню, заведующий кафедрой, будущий ректор, напутствовал нас так: «Так, ребята, берите и никому не давайте». Когда наша импровизированная бригада поравнялась с расположением приемной комиссии, в нас стали тыкать пальцами мамы абитуриентов. Приведя родное дитё к порогу узких врат в счастливое будущее, дамы окидывали нас презрительными взглядами и назидательно говорили своим чадам: «Вот если ты не поступишь, будешь как эти. Придется год у них работать грузчиком, хлам на лошади возить». Мы радостно так головой покивали: «Да-да, будешь грузчиком» и дальше на поехали. Со спиртом во флягах. Истфак произвёл впечатление очень разное. Мы знали, что там есть великие люди. Вот, к примеру, Лев Ефимович Кертман. Аспирант Евгения Викторовича Тарле, да, того самого. Большой знаток английской истории и культуры, литературно одаренный, с мягкими аристократическими манерами. Он выделялся на общем фоне – и тогдашнем и сегодняшним – своим увлечением исторической методологией, умел работать с теоретическим текстами, выдвигал гипотезы, предложил новую концепцию исторической ситуации. Мы встретились с ним на 5 курсе, до этого уважали издали и читали его книгу «География, история и культура Англии» На кафедре всеобщей истории он бывал достаточно часто. Запомнились большое старинное (и просто старое) кресло, сигареты «БТ», чашечка нерастворимого кофе, мягкий грассирующий голос, хотя мягким человеком он отнюдь не был. А.Ш.: А у кого Вы тогда писали курсовые? О.Л.: Поначалу нас не спрашивали. На первом курсе все мы должны были писать работы на кафедре всеобщей истории. На доске объявлений был вывешен листок с темами. Я опоздал – и многие темы уже разобрали, взял, что осталось: «Военное искусство древних греков в эпоху греко-персидских войн». Научный руководителем стал Ю. М. Р. Я уже представлял, как он выглядит, зато он не представлял, как выгляжу я. Вот год проходит, я пишу курсовую работу, читаю Геродота и обобщающие труды по истории военного искусства советских авторов. Про Г. Дельбрюка знать ничего не знаю. Помню, я что-то написал, принёс, ему отдаю; он, в свою очередь, вежливо спрашивает: «А кому передать, у кого пишите?». Узнав, что у него, удивился, но не слишком. Прочел за пару дней и пообещал поставить «хорошо». Перед защитой мне попалась книжка Ф. Меринга «Очерки по истории войн и военного искусства», в ней был хороший пересказ соответствующих глав из «Истории военного искусства в рамках политической истории» Г. Делбрюка. Перед защитой я придумал объяснительную «теорию», что-де это греки напали на персов, истребили их, а потом придумали историю войны, на ходу ее сочинив. Мне поставили пятёрку. Не знаю за что, видимо, за нахальство. А дальше было любопытно. Где-то на втором курсе к нам пришёл заведующий кафедрой истории КПСС Я. В. Волин и говорит: «Я создаю кружок о борьбе против ревизионизма. Нужны люди, которые хотят изучать иностранные языки, сразу отправлю в Москву в библиотеки». Слово сдержал. Человек 5 с курса подались. Поскольку я был уверен, что знаю немецкий язык, я выбрал внутриполитическую борьбу в Социалистической Единой партии Германии. Четыре года я этим занимался. Язык, естественно, подучил. Случались довольно смешные казусы. «Мы не потерпим никакого дери, никакого хая» - было написано в докладе секретаря ЦК СЕПГ товарища Ульбрихта на очередном пленуме. Я перерыл все словари, выясняя, что такое «хай» и что такое «дери». Не смог перевести. И только через несколько лет (к своему стыду) узнал, что партийный секретарь говорил об известных венгерских литераторах: Тибори Дери (Déri) и Дьюла "Юлиус" Хайе (Gyula Háy). Диплом я, естественно, писал у Я.В. Волина. Чем я ему благодарен, так  это тому, что я научился работать в спецхране – с литературой, признанной идеологически вредной, или из-за тематики, или из-за автора. В Москве она имелась в Библиотеке иностранной литературы, в ИНИОНЕ,  и в ленинке. В спецхране было 3 уровня. У меня был доступ к самому нижнему, а про второй и третий я только догадывался. Я напал там на сборники документов по истории КПГ, которые выпускали в 1960-е годы. Они были очень интересными. Иначе я бы умер, так и  не узнав, кто такой Вольфганг Харих и чем Карл Ширдеван  был лучше Вальтера Ульбрихта. А.Ш.: И чем же он лучше? ОЛ: Ширдеван был секретарем ЦК СЕПГ, членом ее политбюро, намеревался десталинизацию проводить в ГДР, но потерпел поражение в аппаратной борьбе, а по-другому он действовать уже не умел. Мой диплом, честно говоря, представлял собой довольно банальный текст, написанный по методу «было – стало». Его главным достоинством являлось то, что он основывался на аутентичных документах – не только на восточногерманской прессе. И его опубликовали целиком. На 50 страницах. А: А можете уточнить – где? ОЛ: В ученых записках Пермского госуниверситета: «Из истории борьбы против оппортунизма» / под ред. Волина Я. Р.» в 1974 г. В каких-то библиотеках он сохранился, надеюсь, что ненадолго. В аспирантуру меня не взяли. Мне выдали казённый документ, назывался он «Почетный диплом СНО (студенческого научного общества)». Выдали мне его в курилке горьковской библиотеки, но это неважно. В нём было написано черным по белому: «Вне конкурса в аспирантуру». Я прихожу в деканат перед распределением и говорю: «У меня диплом есть». А у нас в это время ректор сменился. Вместо Ф. С. Горового стал В. П. Живописцев. Зачем химику всякие историки в аспирантуру? Тем более, наш лошадиный подвиг он, естественно, позабыл. Меня в аспирантуру хотел взять Л. Е. Кертман. Он меня даже за руку водил к ректору. Но даже у него не получилось. Причем, поскольку у меня всё вертелось вокруг аспирантуры, в распределении я не участвовал. Аспирантура «отлетела», а я остался. Нашел место в 123 школе. Им нужен был учитель истории, и меня взяли. Неожиданно для себя я стал классным руководителем четвертого класса. Моей самой главной головной болью, как оказалось, стала большая перемена. Дело в том, что я должен был прервать свои уроки, найти мой четвертый класс, где бы он не находился, и отвести его в столовую. И, если я где-то запаздывал, то они, конечно, рассеивались по территории, после чего обнаружить их не представлялось возможным. Продолжалось это недолго, недели три. Прихожу я как-то на занятия к старшим классам, а они мне сообщают: «Олег Леонидович, там приказ вывешен, вы уволены». Я подумал, шутят, замечательно, сейчас тоже буду шутить, а они мне: «Да не-не, правда. Мы к директору ходили, сказал, распоряжение Облоно [Областного отдела народного образования]». Я иду к директору, он мне и говорит: «Да зачем ты мне нужен, ты, наверно, всё равно историю плохо ведешь, у тебя же нет педагогического опыта». В общем, выдали мне кучу денег, я за эти две недели получил зарплату чуть ли не за два месяца, и поехал я в поселок Бисер историю преподавать. А она там, как выяснилось, преподавалась и без меня. Мне директор говорит человеческим голосом: «Понимаешь, в чем дело, есть у нас тетенька, мы её не показываем в отчетах. У неё образование среднее, но она местная и у неё двое детей. Она тут историю преподает, а немецкий вести некому. Вот ты и будешь». Вот с тех пор по этой окольной дорожке я всю жизнь бегаю. То есть мне так и не случилось попреподавать историю, разве что один-два семестра, или два-три года в школе. Я пытался определить, кто я в истории? Через отрицание хорошо получается: не вузовский преподаватель, не академический исследователь, вроде бы не дилетант. Конференц-историк? Исторический писатель? Куратор диссертационных работ? То и другое, что-то еще? Нет ответа. А.Ш.: Как вам удалось вернуться в систему высшего образования? О.Л.: Из поселка Бисер я позорнейшим образом бежал через год, когда мне на руки выдали приказ о назначении меня директором школы. Становиться директором я не хотел наотрез. Прибежал в Облоно и говорю: «Я историк, молодой специалист, а мне в Бисере историю не дают». Мне ответили: «Да никаких вопросов, поезжай в Ильинск». Старое село – районный центр. Приехал в школу, но там не оказалось полной нагрузки. Поэтому 10 часов в неделю мне дали в ПТУ №67, где я вел обществоведение. В ПТУ было интересно до невозможности. Это было сельхоз ПТУ, механизаторов готовило. Можно себе представить, какие там были мальчики, их надо было держать. Я их держал. Во всяком случае, никаких конфликтов и никаких скандалов не случалось. Но через семестр у них всё кончилось, и я остался с 17 часами в неделю. Тогда мне директор начал вежливо намекать, что у меня ведь не хватает нагрузки, и он меня удерживать не намерен. Отпустил. Приезжаю в город Пермь, а у меня уже ребенок родился маленький. Жить могу только с родителями в двухкомнатной квартире. Жизнь, как вы догадываетесь, весела до невозможности. Денег, естественно, нет никаких. Я летом бегал то по учебным заведениям, то по райотделам образования, то в Камском речном пароходстве лектором служил. Неплохо, между прочим. Платили мало, но ты утром уходишь, тебя катают на пароходике, кормят. Но вечером все равно приходилось возвращаться домой. Естественно, по дурости своей, пошел в университет. В университете меня встретил декан, завел в комнату: «Только никому не говорите, что это я сказал. В Фарминституте есть место старшего лаборанта». Подумал я, сказал «спасибо», и больше на истфак не заходил. Добрался до Сельхозинститута. По кафедре расхаживал сильно пожилой мужчина. Ему, может, лет 40 было. Он мне сходу говорит: «Выходи на работу послезавтра». В общем, я попал в сельхозинститут, взяли читать научный коммунизм. «Свят-свят-свят» - подумал я. Это было 29 августа, 1 сентября у меня была лекция. Она оказалась поточной. Прихожу, огромный зал, много людей, избыточно много. Тема «Утопический социализм – источник научного коммунизма», читать надо полтора часа, я столько не знал. Но я работал в школе, читал методически правильно, то есть с паузами, риторическими вопросами. Естественно, не частил и оставил время на вопросы. В конце подходит ко мне пожилой человек и говорит: «Я секретарь парткома сельхозинститута. Я вас не знаю, почему вы не проходили через партком?». Но лекцию одобрил, сказал-де хорошо, что не частишь. Мне даже составили расписание, только почему-то в отдел кадров не позвали. Я ездил на факультет механизации. Продолжалось это дней 10 или 12. На двенадцатый день прихожу я на кафедру, где мне говорят: «Вы знаете, у нас изменения в структуре нагрузки. У вас нет нагрузки. Как будет, вы обязательно приходите». Кстати, ни копейки не заплатили. Какой-то добрый человек, уже другой, сказал: «Зайдите в политех, у них только что сбежал ассистент». Прихожу в Пермский политехнический институт, нахожу кафедру. Входит невысокого роста старичок и спрашивает меня: «Читали ли вы книгу «Толпа одиноких»?» «Нет» – говорю я. Я до сих пор ее не прочел. «А читаете ли вы по-польски?» «Нет» – говорю я. «А по-французски?» «Нет» – говорю я. «Понимаете ли, – говорит мне Захар Ильич Файнбург, это был он, – у меня голова давно болит от недоучек, которые ничего не знают. Но занятия вести надо, поэтому приходите в понедельник, берите расписание и работайте. Но на кафедру я вас не возьму. Зайдите в лабораторию порошковой металлургии». Захожу, мне говорят: «Да, знаем. Пишите заявление – инженер-исследователь лаборатории порошковой металлургии, 100 рублей оклада жалования». Я Захару Ильичу через четыре месяца говорю: «Может я когда-то перейду на кафедру?» «Куда ты торопишься? Чем тебе там не нравится?» Но мне там почему-то не нравилось. Я написал заявление на конкурс и пошел подписывать в разные инстанции. Все подписали, в политехе всегда всё подписывали. Настал день заседания совета кафедр общественных наук. Шеф, т.е. Файнбург, некстати заболел. Я стоял у торца стола, а сидевшие за столом ученые-гуманитарии должны были мне задавать вопросы. Секретарь парткома института спрашивает: «Что вы здесь делаете? Мы же договаривались, что мы вас брать не будем, вы будете работать в лаборатории порошковой металлургии. Как вы вообще сюда попали?» Я говорю: «Так мне же подписали заявление». И это было, как выяснилось, правильным ответом. В результате я был избран ассистентом кафедры научного коммунизма. И проработал там с 1974 по 2010. У меня было свободное время, я ходил в Горьковскую библиотеку и журналы читал. В библиотеке был журнал «Коммунистический интернационал», все номера с 1919 года по 1943. В Ленинке статьи врагов народа в нем были вырваны, здесь к ним никто не прикасался. Ни в каком спецхране они никогда не были, но их не было в каталоге. Я читал «Коммунистический интернационал», читал «Красный архив». Читал «Большевик», был весь комплект с 1924 года по 1952, без всяких изъятий, без всяких зачеркиваний. В столичных спецхранах (две недели в году) читал немецкие книжки, потом французские стал читать, потом польские. Тему взял такую, чтобы давали всё – «Идеологическая борьба от 1917 по последний год». А.Ш.: Вы сразу начали работать над диссертацией, когда попали на кафедру? О.Л.: На кафедре научного коммунизма тогда работал Захар Ильич Файнбург, которого я считаю своим настоящим и, может быть, единственным учителем. У него была слабость – он не любил готовить кандидатов наук, а где-то защищенных старался не брать. Историков он терпеть не мог. Считал, что после М.Н. Покровского у нас их не было. И его на всяких совещаниях, естественно, шпыняли с вопросом: «Где кандидаты наук?». Он меня как-то поймал: «Ты же писал у Волина диплом? Иди и по диплому напиши кандидатскую». Я написал, конечно, но поскольку уже был отравлен социологией, то знал слова «социальная структура», «статусы», «социальная идентичность». В диссертацию я всё это вставил. Мне казалось, что так будет проблематичней, что партийные конфликты отражают социальные конфликты, которые, в свою очередь, отражают конфликты культурные. Шеф говорит: «Я руководить этой диссертацией не буду. Иди к Волину». Я прихожу к Якову Рувимовичу, отдаю ему текст. Через неделю прихожу ещё раз, он говорит: «Что ты написал? Где ты нашел слова «социальная структура»? Их же нет у Ленина!» Я отвечаю: «Есть». «Если ты там у Ленина что-то нашел, ты это неправильно понял». И прогнал. Шеф говорит: «Поезжай в Москву, там есть институт мировой социалистической системы, там и будешь защищаться. Я поговорю с научным секретарем». Отправился я в Москву, и институт этот нашел. Почему-то сумел уговорить товарища в штатском у входа, прорвался к ученому секретарю, дал ему текст, передал привет от Захара Ильича. Он головой кивнул, спросил, почему Захар Ильич не позвонил. Я ему сказал: «Вы же знаете Захара Ильича» - «Да, я знаю Захара Ильича. Идите, через дней 8 приходите». Приезжаю я туда, уже не к нему, а к какому-то молодому человеку. Он задает мне вопрос: «А где вы взяли этот материал? Кто вам разрешил это писать?» Позвал к заместителю директора по науке, обрисовал проблему: дескать, мы можем принять к защите эту диссертацию, но только её засекретив, но мы не можем её засекретить, потому что она на открытых источниках. Посмотрел на меня замдиректора по науке, и сказал: «Я посоветуюсь с ЦК». До сегодняшнего дня советуется. Шеф махнул рукой: «Правильно, зачем тебе защищать всякую ерунду? Есть реальные социальные проблемы – культуры, коллективности, образа жизни. Вот ими и занимайся». Захар Ильич Файнбург в последние десятилетия своей жизни пытался социологизировать большую марксистскую идею. При кафедре работали две прикладные лаборатории, в том числе одна по хозяйственным договорам с предприятиями и городскими администрациями. Я с ними сотрудничал, естественно, не в качестве историка, готовил инструментарий для исследований, организовывал работу по сбору информации, писал отчеты и защищал их в небольших, но весьма требовательных собраниях. Это была работа. В конце концов, я защитил диссертацию в философском совете, поскольку социологических советов не было. Речь шла о формировании социально-культурной идентичности жителей новых городов, главным образом г. Норильска. История превратилась на время в хобби: интересное чтение, не связанное с определенной тематикой. А.Ш.: Как родилась идея докторской диссертации? О.Л.: Работал межбиблиотечный абонемент. Книжки спецхрановские не выдавались, но тут были интересные и без спецхрана. Их полагалось читать только в библиотеке, но в политехе мне их давали домой на месяц. У меня были собеседники – М. Н. Л. и А.Д.Б., с которыми можно было это всё обсуждать. В конце 1980-х годов я заинтересовал шефа. Захар Ильич, повторяю, историков не терпел, историю наукой не считал. Но тема культа личности была ему очень близка. Он предложил парткому политеха прочесть курс лекций по культу личности. Двери в клубе сломали. Он читал три вечера подряд. Переполненность – это не то слово. К этому времени я стал немного интереснее для Захара Ильича, потому что выступал в роли справочника. Вот, к примеру, ему хочется рассказать что-нибудь про Эйсмонта и Толмачева, он у меня и спросит. Рейтинг у меня, естественно, резко повысился. И шеф мне сказал: «А прочти лекцию про хрущевские реформы». Я до вечера читал, никто двери не сломал, но человек 100 было. После чего я решил –  напишу статью по теме лекции. Ещё ничего не рассекретили, но книжки времен Никиты Сергеевича были, по ним и написал. Отправил в «Вопросы истории». Статью уже готовили к печати, я потом её получил с редакторскими правками, но к этому времени «Вопросы истории» получили разрешение на публикацию мемуаров Хрущева, так что мою статью выбросили. Я твердо знал, что в архив ходить не надо, потому что те, кто ходили в архив, плевались, ругались, махали руками. Работаешь под присмотром, тетрадку сдаешь на проверку, оттуда вырезают, что ни попадя. Потом, где-то в 1991-1992 мне кто-то сказал, что в архиве стало посвободнее, и я пошел в архив. Тем более, у меня появилось свободное время, потому что менялись курсы и, как всегда, моего курса не оказалось. Меня отправили в старшие научные сотрудники. Там зарплата была меньше, но ничего делать не надо, можно писать диссертацию. Игорь Константинович К. – университетский историк мне рассказал про теорию модернизации. Книжку подарил Гюнтера Розе «Прогресс без социальной революции». И парочку других книг я успел выписать и прочитать. Идея показалась многообещающей, и я написал книжку «Реформа и модернизация в 1953-1964 году». Название, прямо скажем абсолютно идиотское, там даже «СССР» нет. Тираж был 1000 экземпляров, но я так и не знаю, где он разошелся. В московские библиотеки она попала, я случайно находил сноски. Причем, в это время я занимался практической работой. Был такой Западно-Уральский учебно-научный центр, частная организация, несмотря на красивое название. Они проводили консультативные работы для школ и для предприятий. Проблемно-целевые семинары и всякого рода игры. Я в этом активно участвовал. За это Западно-уральский учебно-научный центр издал за свой счет мою книжку. Когда меня перевели в старшие научные сотрудники, я решил, что напишу докторскую диссертацию по хрущевской эпохе в контексте теории модернизации. Книжку издали, надо и на защиту выходить. В Перми советов нет, в Свердловске есть. Дальше начинается обычная история. Ты сдаешь рукопись, тебе говорят: «Посмотрим». Никто ничего не смотрит. Проходит два месяца, сдаешь рукопись кому-то ещё. Только в одном месте мне сказали правду, в Институте философии и права Уральского отделения Академии наук. Директор института сказал, что эту пошлятину защищать никто не будет, слово «модернизация» им казалось плохим. Мне даже один оппонент по этому поводу длиннющий трактат написал. Я уже считал, что, может, всё забыть, в конце концов, почему бы мне не быть доцентом кафедры социологии и политологии. Но тут совершенно нечаянно мне пришло письмо от Льва Наумовича Когана: «Мы хотим принять вашу диссертацию к защите, приезжайте». Я приехал. Он мне показывает заключения эксперта: «Диссертация не обладает научным содержанием, абсолютно неверно оформлена, не имеет ни предмета, ни метода, ничего, поэтому никакой защите не подлежит». Сказал идти к нему, убеждать. Еду к эксперту. Сидит джентльмен за столом, стол большой, джентльмен осанистый. Минут 15 я проболтался в коридорчике, прежде чем к нему попасть. Он говорит: «Я тебе всё написал, зачем приехал? Думал, я что-то другое могу написать?» Подумал и сказал: «Вот, если Н.Н. одобрит, я, может быть, пересмотрю». И я решил на кафедру зайти к этому страшному Н.Н. Вид профессорский, взгляд недобрый. И происходит между нами такой диалог: – А вы зачем ко мне? – Послали, и я зашел. – Что, у меня своих дел нет? И ждет, когда я уйду. И тут я вижу, у него на столе лежит моя книжка, причем вся истрепанная, с закладками. Я спросил про нее. Собеседник оживился, сказал хорошая-де книжка, у нас вся кафедра работает по ней уже год». Я говорю: «Так я и есть тот самый Лейбович». Пауза. «Вы?» - «Я». – «А вы у нас выступите?» Нет, мне, говорю, рецензент сказал, что у меня всё антинаучно, ненаучно, историография плохая, источниковедение не по правилам. «Кто сказал?» Берется за телефон, звонит рецензенту: «Это ты будешь учить людей историографию писать? Ты на свою-то диссертацию посмотри. У меня нет никаких претензий к этой работе». После чего отзыв мне тут же переписали. Защита длилась три часа, если не больше. Второй оппонент обиделся на меня за модернизацию «У нас всегда была великая культура, её не надо модернизировать». Ко мне Л.Н. Коган подошел перед защитой, я его честно спросил: «И вот что я буду делать с этим?». Он мне: «Не надо ничего делать, ты все его 30 замечаний проигнорируй, на парочку ответь. На одно вежливо, а на другое невежливо, и всё». Стоило мне только защититься, как я получил письмо из института социологии, где секретарь ученого совета объясняла мне, что я глубоко неправ, что защищаться я должен у них, что она наконец-то увидела мою книжку, и все за. Так что сейчас я мог бы быть доктором социологических наук, но было уже поздно. А.Ш.: Как изменилась ситуация на рабочем месте после защиты диссертации? О.Л.: Я приехал доктором исторических наук, и меня тут же выгнали с кафедры социологии. Кадровые сюжеты прихотливы – надо было замещать должности на кафедре культурологии, про которую на тот момент я почти ничего не знал. Сообщили мне о назначении в июне. В сентябре надо идти на поток в 100 человек. На второй год я пригласил А.Н. К. за мной семинары вести. Он мне сказал: «Вы знаете, я ничего не слышал о культурологии. Может быть, вы методичку напишете?» Так появились «10 лекций по культурологии». Методичку мы писали так: я вел занятия на специальности матмоделирование, курс попался небольшой и при этом очень сильный. Там были девочки, которые умели конспектировать. Короче говоря, я получил в конце полный курс лекций, написанный от руки. Сначала я его прочитал, потом отредактировал, потом позвал А.Н., мы его отформатировали и отдали в печать. В конце концов, кафедральные дамы, объяснявшие мне, что я поступил совершенно бестактно, придя на эту кафедру, читали курс по 10 лекциям. Идейно я их завоевал. А.Ш.: Как вам это удалось? О.Л.: Во-первых, набором молодежи. Их гоняли сначала как зайцев, это надо было пережить. Историей мы на кафедре не занимались. Зарплаты были мизерные, и мы участвовали в избирательных кампаниях. Там позволительно было заниматься социологией. Какие вопросы выставлять в анкеты, это было наше дело. Материала хватило лет на семь. Мы обо многом узнавали «в поле». В общем-то тогда и произошел известный поворот в моих исторических штудиях. Благодаря шефу, Захару Ильичу, который нас на социологию направлял, я бы сказал, железными прутьями, возникли социальные сюжеты. И вот где-то в 1990-е для меня стала интересна социальная история. Хотелось узнать, что происходло внизу, за пределами больших институтов советской эпохи. Концепция модернизации – это концепция социокультурной истории, где способы поедания хлеба или способы получения жилья имеют куда большее значение, чем какие-то высказывания начальников. И в начале у меня была известная раздвоенность. Повторяю, политическую историю я всегда любил, а социальная история, она бессобытийна и не очень, на первый взгляд, увлекательна. Как, собственно говоря, и социология. Интерес к политической истории не пропал.  Сначала мы с коллегами сделали сборник документов «Репрессии в Прикамье», а потом коллективную монографию «Включен в операцию». Нас стали приглашать на приличные конференции. И где-то к году 2008 я статус историка, по-моему, завоевал. Тогда возник этот треугольник интересов –это социальная история, история культуры и политическая история XX века. Историю репрессий мы с коллегами стараемся переработать в историческую «инквизиторскую антропологию», то есть пытаемся из архивно-следственных дел извлекать материалы о жизненном мире подследственных. Тут возникает известный сюжет. Когда ты занимаешься политической историей, ты в тренде. Когда ты занимаешься безлюдной социальной историей, тоже всё менее ясно. А вот когда ты вдруг входишь в повседневность, ты опять оказываешься на обочине. Ты открыл закономерность? Не открыл. Ты обнаружил какой-то большой тренд? Не обнаружил. Узнал ты, например, чем для рабочих такого-то завода стало открытие душевых кабинок после длительного перерыва. И что? Выяснишь, чем для горожанина являлась банка зеленого горошка – и вызовешь скептическую улыбку. Опубликовал я статью «Милицейская норма» о том, как пили сотрудники милиции, какие нормы, какие ритуалы сложилась в их среде вокруг алкогольных практик. К тебе приходят люди и говорят: «А причем здесь город Молотов? Сравни его с городом Керчью, Новосибирском, много ведь ещё городов. И тогда ты составишь общую картину. А так, ты что-то подобрал, и зачем вообще в этом копаться? Они же выполняли важную задачу, эти функции и опиши». По пермской милиции есть несколько книжек, они там раскрывают преступления, повышают раскрываемость, кто-то жертвует собой, кто-то отдает всего себя народу, но про то, что пьют, там ничего нет. Если ты стремишься изучить, как работает этот институт, какие функции исполняет, по каким нормам, по каким принципам идет в него набор, как эволюционирует техника расследования, понятно, что такой подход никому не нужен. Если ты пытаешься посмотреть на них изнутри, на то сообщество, которое расположилось внутри этого самого института, то ты не можешь взять его целиком. Ты берешь какую-то его часть, смотришь на них и говоришь, у них там много раскрываемости, но при этом они ведут себя как мужской клуб. И мы не знаем, может где-то еще был милицейский мужской клуб, но здесь они вели себя так, ищите. Если найдем разницу, это будет замечательно, мы увидим многоцветие. Тогда исторический процесс раскроется как индивидуализированный, множественный и объемный. Не найдем разницу – значит мы вывели некую институциональную норму, которую они почему-то в своих отчетах не указывали. Пока это всё-таки маргиналии. Несмотря на то, что наши статьи уже есть в вузовских программах, это ещё чепуха. Ситуацию трудно переломить, потому что прежняя освоенная методология заключается в следующем: есть закономерность, истмат ее изучает, историки используют. И ты должен попасть в эту закономерность, обнаружить её. Ты можешь её переписать и сказать: вот не было роста влияния трудящихся масс в истории, было падение. Это, на самом деле, про одно и то же. Но, к примеру, если ты увидишь, что возможности рабочих до стахановского движения были вот такие, а после стахановского такие же, то это повод задуматься. Закономерности здесь, пожалуй, не зафиксируешь, но можешь написать, что Кизеловские рабочие своего большого значения как-то не заметили, не осознали. Да и условия, в которые они были поставлены, наверно, как-то не действовали. Ну, не совсем, скажем, бытие определяло сознание. А.Ш.: Олег Леонидович, вы преподавали немецкий, будучи дипломированным историком, занимались социологией, числясь ассистентом кафедры порошковой металлургии, защитили докторскую по истории – и оказались заведующим кафедры культурологии. Куда еще приведут вас эти «кривые и окольные» пути? О.Л.: Главное, чтобы они не заканчивались. Буду двигаться вперед, пока есть силы. "Историческая экспертиза" издается благодаря помощи наших читателей.