Issue 4/2025

Full Archive

Methodology and Theory

Editors

Getting Out of Methodological Nationalism’s Tunnel Vision

4/2025

Zhanibek Akimbek

The Russian Language in Kazakhstan as History and Identity

Forum: The Prospect of Studying World Russian Languages, Literatures, and Histories: Part III

Nikolay Vokuev

An Apology for “Dirty” Language: A Linguopolitical Fantasy

Forum: The Prospect of Studying World Russian Languages, Literatures, and Histories: Part III

Kevin M. F. Platt

Pluricentric, Multiple, Minor: Russian Cultures and Culture at Large

Forum: The Prospect of Studying World Russian Languages, Literatures, and Histories: Part III

History

Yuki Murata

Kyivan Ausgleich? Ukrainian Autonomy Agreement in June–July 1917 as a Regional Compromise

Alan Barenberg

The Camp-City and Vedomstvennost’: Exploring a New “Interpretive Scheme” for Soviet History

Forum: Soviet Departmentalism (Sovetskaia vedomstvennost’ / Ed. I. N. Stas’. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2025)

Michael Brinley

A Promising Approach to the USSR’s “Non-Prospective” Cities

Forum: Soviet Departmentalism (Sovetskaia vedomstvennost’ / Ed. I. N. Stas’. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2025)

Oleg Khlevniuk

Departmentalism in the Soviet Political Process: New Contexts of Historiographic Return

Newest Mythologies

Ilya Vinitsky

Derzhavin’s Meme: The Specter of Ross in Friedrich Engels’s Political Historiosophy

Book Reviews

Heghine Barseghyan

Naira E. Sahakyan, Muslim Reformers and the Bolsheviks: The Case of Daghestan (Abingdon: Routledge, 2022). 184 pp., ill. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-1-032-21620-1.

Kåre Johan Mjør

Bernard Hubert, An Exceptional Dialogue, 1925–1948: Nikolai Berdyaev and Jacques Maritain, edited in English and with an introduction by Ana Siljak, translated by C. Jon Delogu (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025). 219 pp. Notes. Index. ISBN: 978-0-2280-2386-9.

Aleksandr Ivanov

Tyler C. Kirk, After the Gulag: A History of Memory in Russia’s Far North (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2023). 290 pp., ill. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-0-2530-6749-4.

Natalija Arlauskaitė

Oksana Sarkisova and Olga Shevchenko, In Visible Presence: Soviet Afterlives in Family Photos (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2023). 460 pp., ill. Index. ISBN: 978-0-262-04827-9.

Ab Imperio

Ab Imperio

Issue 4/2025

Methodology and Theory

Getting Out of Methodological Nationalism’s Tunnel Vision

The Russian Language in Kazakhstan as History and Identity

An Apology for “Dirty” Language: A Linguopolitical Fantasy

Pluricentric, Multiple, Minor: Russian Cultures and Culture at Large

History

Kyivan Ausgleich? Ukrainian Autonomy Agreement in June–July 1917 as a Regional Compromise

The Camp-City and Vedomstvennost’: Exploring a New “Interpretive Scheme” for Soviet History

A Promising Approach to the USSR’s “Non-Prospective” Cities

Departmentalism in the Soviet Political Process: New Contexts of Historiographic Return

Newest Mythologies

Derzhavin’s Meme: The Specter of Ross in Friedrich Engels’s Political Historiosophy

Book Reviews

Naira E. Sahakyan, Muslim Reformers and the Bolsheviks: The Case of Daghestan (Abingdon: Routledge, 2022). 184 pp., ill. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-1-032-21620-1.

Bernard Hubert, An Exceptional Dialogue, 1925–1948: Nikolai Berdyaev and Jacques Maritain, edited in English and with an introduction by Ana Siljak, translated by C. Jon Delogu (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025). 219 pp. Notes. Index. ISBN: 978-0-2280-2386-9.

Tyler C. Kirk, After the Gulag: A History of Memory in Russia’s Far North (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2023). 290 pp., ill. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-0-2530-6749-4.

Oksana Sarkisova and Olga Shevchenko, In Visible Presence: Soviet Afterlives in Family Photos (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2023). 460 pp., ill. Index. ISBN: 978-0-262-04827-9.

Miscellaneous

Letter to the Editors

List of Contributors

Our Authors

I Have Command of the Subject Matter, and I Expect You to Do the Same

In Search of a “Based” Socialist City and Alternatives to Departmentalism

The Key and the Doors of Departmentalism

Soviet Departmentalism: Its Ideology and Departments

The Departmentalist Approach to Sovietness

Anton Liavitski. Die Perestroika, die Intelligenzija und die Geburt des weißrussischen Populismus, 1988–1997. 271 S. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht Verlag, 2024. Literaturverzeichnis. Personenregister. ISBN: 978-3-525-30275-0.

Katie L. Stewart, Legitimating Nationalism: Political Ideology in Russia’s Ethnic Republics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2024). 293 pp., ill. Index. ISBN: 978-0-299-347-7.

Alena Pfoser, Tourism as Memory-Making: Russian Tourism in the Shadow of Empire (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2025). 221 pp., ill. ISBN: 978-3-031-83737-1.

Igor Dorfmann-Lazarev and Haroutioun Khatchadourian (Eds.), Monuments and Identities in the Caucasus: Karabagh, Nakhichevan and Azerbaijan in Contemporary Geopolitical Conflict (Leiden: Brill, 2024). 552 pp., ill. Index of Personal Names. Index of Place Names. ISBN: 978-90-04-67737-1.

Volodymyr Kravchenko and Marko Robert Stech (Eds.), The Unpredictable Past? Reshaping Russian, Ukrainian, and East European Studies (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2024). 462 pp., ill. ISBN: 978-1-894865-69-2.

Tim Beasley-Murray, Wendy Bracewell, and Michał Murawski (Eds.), Anti-Atlas: Critical Area Studies from the East of the West (London: UCL Press, 2025). 355 pp., ill. Index. ISBN: 978-1-80008-779-8.