My first book is out! It’s published by Cambridge University Press and entitled Soviet Russians under Nazi Occupation: Fragile Loyalties in World War II.
For the short version, you can head over to War on the Rocks and read my piece Fragile Loyalties: Soviet Russians between Hitler and Stalin.
A recent piece in Rossiiskaia Gazeta, the Russian government’s official newspaper and one of Russia’s largest, portrays Norway as a country that, while nice in many ways, is unfortunately about to be capsized by a wave of multicultural tolerance set in motion by Breivik, the right-wing terrorist. This rather ludicrous charge is not new, but echoes previous and similarly bizarre commentary about the Breivik attacks in the mainstream Russian press.
Since Russia annexed Crimea and sent troops to bolster the Donetsk and Lugansk “People’s Republics” (the DNR and LNR) in Eastern Ukraine, thousands of Russian volunteers have traveled to the Donbass to take part in the fighting. While a few of them have teamed up with the Ukrainian side, the vast majority joined the irregular DNR/LNR forces. A recent Russian study asks what made these volunteers tick. The core motivation, the study claims, was a desire to defend one’s own people. As one would expect given the current domestic climate, the findings certainly suit the official story about the conflict. But that doesn’t mean they are wrong.
East Germany, that bygone anti-fascist state of workers and peasants, appears to have left behind an enduring legacy of right-wing violence.
If you want to be a serious activist in contemporary Russia’s neo-Nazi movement, you do not drink, you do not smoke, and you do not do drugs. You exercise to build physical strength, and, not least, you read in order to train the mind and develop your intellect.
