The Eurasian Knot

Marc Bennets has been reporting from Russia for over two decades. He’s covered Putin’s rise and consolidation of power, assassinations of oppositionists, mass protests, daily life, and even Russian football. It’s a storied career filled with zipping back and forth between Moscow and its regions. Marc also planted roots. He got married and became a dad. But then everything changed in February 2022 with Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine. Should he stay and keep reporting and risk arrest or worse? Or should he pick up his life and family and leave like so many of his colleagues? Marc finally settled on the latter when word came he might be arrested. Now he focuses most of his reporting on the war and Ukraine. How did this all happen? How did Russia descend into madness? Marc’s new book looks to answer that question with personal fire and passion. Is Russia really saturated with Putin? Is there any way back? It’s been a decade since the Eurasian Knot spoke with Marc. So, we caught up and discussed his new book, The Descent: Witnessing Russia's Spiral Into Madness Under Putin, and how the war has irrevocably changed his life, profession, and Russia itself.

Guest:

Marc Bennetts spent 25 years as a foreign correspondent for The Times and The Sunday Times in Russia. He left in May 2022, after the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He has since made over a dozen reporting trips to Ukraine. He’s the author of The Descent: Witnessing Russia's Spiral Into Madness Under Putin published by Bloomsbury.

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On the night of 27 February 2015, assassins gunned down Boris Nemtsov as he crossed the Bolshoi Moskvoretskii Bridge. Shock quickly spread throughout Russia, particularly among its political opposition. Not because Nemtsov was so brazenly gunned down. Such are the risks of being politically active in Putin’s Russia. Nemtsov had been a fixture in the movement since its earliest days, and in many ways one of its founders. That such an internationally well-connected figure could be wiped out in central Moscow signaled a grim turning point. Hindsight has proven this correct. A decade later, Russia is a very different place. But it always wasn’t like that. In the 1990s, Nemtsov was a young liberal darling, the charismatic hope to succeed Boris Yeltsin. That didn’t happen, as we all know. And another, totally different figure became President. As Mikhail Fishman writes in his political biography, The Successor: Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Putin, and the Decline of Modern Russia, Nemtsov’s life and death had a profound influence on the political consciousness of his generation and nascent Russian liberalism. Who was Boris Nemtsov? How did he rise so quickly to political prominence in the 1990s only to be politically marginalized in the 2000s? Why was he murdered and who murdered him? The Eurasian Knot spoke to Fishman about Nemtsov, his life, and how it reflected Russia’s post-Soviet political development.

Guest:

Mikhail Fishman is one of Russia’s leading independent journalists, liberal thinkers, and political commentators. He’s the author of The Successor: Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Putin, and the Decline of Modern Russia published by Penguin.

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I met the graphic artist, Victoria Lomasko, about 10 years ago when she was a resident at the City of Asylum in Pittsburgh. I emceed an event with her back then. So I was happy when Victoria recently returned to the city to give a few talks at the University of Pittsburgh. Of course, the Eurasian Knot dragged her into a studio for an interview. A lot has changed for Victoria over the decade. Her graphic novel, Other Russias, represented the marginals of Russian society, and she won a Pushkin prize for the work. She got invited to speak, to show her art, and teach. She then went to Belarus to chronicle the mass protests. More art. More shows. But then Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. The invites dried up as everything Russia became toxic. And political art forced her into exile in Germany. These experiences have caused her to question the efficacy of political art, and even her graphic style. Today, she’s embraced symbolic art that speaks to her political disillusion and difficulty in representing our current conjecture. Where does Lomasko stand today when it comes to art and politics? Tune in and find out.

Guest

Victoria Lomasko is a graphic artist and has lectured and written widely on graphic reportage. She lived in Moscow until March 2022 and now lives in exile. She is the author of Other Russias which received the Pushkin House Best Book in Translation award. Her latest book is The Last Soviet Artist published by N+1 Books

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When I opened Facebook this morning, as I do every morning, I learned that Alexander Rabinowitch died at 91 years old. Rabinowitch was arguably one of the most important historians of the Russian Revolution. It's hard to state how much Rabinowitch's work influence our understanding of 1917. Before him, it was assumed that the Bolsheviks were a highly disciplined, unpopular political party that came to power through a coup. What Rabinowitch repeatedly showed in his four books on Revolution, the Bolsheviks had popular support, most importantly in factories in Petrograd and in other large cities and at the front. Lenin's slogans, particularly, "Peace, Land, Bread!" had mass support, and by October 1917, successfully rode a wave of revolution into power.

And now that Alexander Rabinowitch has left us, I figured I’d dig out my old interview with him from 2017, clean it up, and re-release it to commemorate the life and work of this scholarly giant.

Guest:

Alexander Rabinowitch was a Professor Emeritus of History at Indiana University, where he taught from 1968 until 1999. He’s the author of four books on the Russian Revolution: Prelude to Revolution: The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July 1917 Uprising; The Bolsheviks Come To Power: The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd; The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd; and finally his fourth and last book which was just published in April, The Bolsheviks Survive: Petrograd 1919 published by the University of Pittsburgh Press.
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How Stalin personally ran the Soviet Union has rightly received much attention. Less discussed is the small group of men that served as his top lieutenants. They carried out his orders, and after his death, were instrumental in establishing the post-Stalin order. This week, the Eurasian Knot features a discussion with Pietro Shakarian about his new book Anastas Mikoyan: An Armenian Reformer in Khrushchev's Kremlin. We mostly know Mikoyan as a statesman and political survivor who successfully navigated Stalin’s Kremlin. But who was Anastas Mikoyan beyond that? What did he believe? What was his role as Stalin’s henchman? How did he push for de-Stalinization after the leader’s death in 1953, particularly on Soviet nationality policy. Shakarian tells us that in the end, Mikoyan was more than a survivor. He was a critical player in shaping the post-Stalinist Soviet Union.

Guest:

Pietro A. Shakarian is a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union and a lecturer at the American University of Armenia in Yerevan. He’s the author of Anastas Mikoyan: An Armenian Reformer in Khrushchev's Kremlin published by Indiana University Press.
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