SUMMARY:

Martin Aust assesses the effect of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine against the field of East European history in Germany, ranging from the possibility of reversing the archival revolution of the 1990s to prioritizing new topics and regions of study, including Ukraine. Historians also face the question of whether Russia’s history has had a direct influence on the Putin regime’s policies, and whether the scholarship of the past thirty years can contribute to explaining these policies. Aust disagrees with Martin Schulze Wessel’s thesis about the role played by empire studies in the promotion of imperialism by catering to imperial nostalgia and trivializing the oppressive nature of empires. He suggests that empire remains a useful analytical frame for registering the heterogeneity of Russia’s history.