In Ukraine’s Resistance, Echoes of Past Struggles

The Defiance to Putin’s Invasion Highlights the Nation’s Long, Multigenerational Drive for National Self-Determination

Ukrainians refer to Russian TV and its viewers as “Zombieland,” having long ago developed an immunity to the main talking points of Vladimir Putin’s mindless propaganda war. They know the absurdity of his claims that Kyiv is run by Nazis and drug addicts, that NATO is threatening to destroy Russia, and that Ukraine’s Russian speakers are victims of a genocide.

Putin has supported these talking points by laying out his own version of Ukrainian history. In his telling, Ukraine has only been independent since 1991 and over the last 30 years …

by Myroslav Shkandrij | March 14, 2022

A mural on a wall in the former Jewish ghetto of Vilnius

Where I Go: Lithuania’s Vanished Center of Jewish Life

In Vilna, Where Thousands Were Murdered, I Learned How Difficult It Is to Mourn an Absence

By David Nasaw | October 18, 2021

I did it all backward. Instead of taking my research trips before writing my book, like any normal historian would have, I’d waited. Only after I had completed my first …

A Letter From Kyiv, Where Reality Is Being Papered Over

In Ukraine’s Capital, the COVID-Era Accentuates, and Hides, Big Divides

by M. Dane Waters | May 17, 2021

Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital and the seventh-most populous city in all of Europe, is governed by a strange combination of a Soviet and a post-Soviet mentality. Many have no trust in …

The U.S.-China Rivalry Isn’t a New Cold War; It’s Bigger Than That

The Fact That the Two Countries Are Interdependent Makes Both War and Peaceful Cooperation More Possible

by Joe Mathews | February 12, 2021

The rivalry between China and the United States is not a new Cold War, but it involves profound competition along economic, technological, and economic lines that create dilemmas for other …

The Damning Silence of Polish Americans

My People Protested Tyranny in the 1980s. Why Didn’t They Step Up in 2020?

by Justine Jablonska | January 4, 2021

I march in the anti-police brutality protests in New York following the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

These aren’t my first protests—far from it. As the child of Polish …

The (Actual) Communist Agents Who Lurked Among Us

American Fears About Soviet Spycraft Never Seemed to Match Reality

By Jonathan Haslam | September 26, 2016

Russian spies held a morbid fascination in the minds of Americans dating back to the Red Scare in 1919, following the Bolshevik Revolution and the creation of the Communist International, …

Soviet Union