In this short essay I discuss two new translations of Helmuth Plessner’s work, “Political Anthropology,” translated by Nils F. Schott (Northwestern University Press, 2018), and “Levels of Organic Life and the Human: An Introduction to Philosophical Anthropology,” translated by Millay Hyatt (Fordham University Press, 2019).

In July 1944, the Red Army was advancing through Eastern Poland when they discovered the first traces of the camps. On reaching Lublin they found an enormous compound behind barbed wire in the city’s suburb of Majdanek. Embedded with the Soviet army were film crews, who made the first images of a Nazi camp, among them the “flight survivors” Olga a…[Read more]

This book aims to uncover and assess changes in the EU’s foreign policy towards Ukraine in the times of wide-scale social protests in Kyiv. To accomplish this task, this book enlists and analyses documents, agreements, and treaties which establish the frameworks for EU-Ukraine cooperation. It also identifies the interests of lobbying groups in…[Read more]

This article examines the link posited by Virilio and others between the camera shot and gun shot, arguing that this link operates differently in the context of Soviet vs. Western fantasies of agency, community and technology. Comparing THE LOST PATROL (USA 1934, John Ford) with TRINADTSAT (THIRTEEN, UdSSR 1936, Mikhail Romm), it asks what kind of…[Read more]

The political system of early socialist-era Mongolia, established by the first Constitution in 1924, can be interpreted as a vernacular version of the Soviet system, in which the formally supreme representative body, the State Great Khural (“assembly”), was sidelined by the standing Presidium of the Small Khural and the Cabinet and eclipsed by the…[Read more]

In the early part of the reign of Alexander I (1801-1825), the emperor sought to reform Russia through the creation of new European-style institutions. The aim was to ensure that Russia’s great-power status would be retained through updating its institutions, in line with a reform impulse dating back to Peter the Great and before. Among the new i…[Read more]

Highlights and insights from the author’s unique Global Faculty Development position at Kansai University in Osaka from 2016-2020. The article, published in Australia, summarizes data on the expressed needs of faculty clients, cites international research on English-Medium Instruction programs, and shows how globalization pressures reach the level…[Read more]

Housing as a trophy: the housing issue in bureaucratic practices and personal strategies of the Soviet military administration in Germany (1945-1949)

Collected volume review. Paweł Kowal, Georges Mink and Iwona Reichardt (eds.) “Three Revolutions: Mobilization and Change in Contemporary Ukraine.” Volume one. Stuttgart, Ibidem Verlag, 2019.

At the end of late Stalinism: the cult of vigilance and secrecy rituals (based on the materials of the Soviet military administration in Germany, 1945-1949)

In 1970, a television-show dance contest in a small California town ended abruptly when the studio was briefly plunged into darkness because of an apparent power failure. The media coverage of the event eventually helped uncover criminal activity at the studio; over the course of this reporting, the narrative was accompanied by select genres of…[Read more]

Soviet consumer practices in the “small USSR”, 1945-1949 (based on the materials of the Soviet military administration in Germany)

Late Stalinism as an Ideological Practice. Party Life of Soviet Communists in Occupied Germany. 1945-1949 /

“Outrages” as a management concept.
Understanding the military-bureaucratic culture of the Soviet occupation regime in Germany (1945-1949)

This book first proves that the rationale behind Russia’s aggressive actions in its neighborhood resides in its goal of achieving certain geostrategic objectives which are largely predefined by the state’s imperial traditions, memories, and fears that the Kremlin may irretrievably lose control over lands which were once Russian. In other words,…[Read more]

The term “Intermarium” has a long historical tradition and was commonly used to define the area between the Baltic and Black Seas. With its regular re-appearances in contemporary academic and political discourses, this book explores and assesses a variety of its connotations. In order to do this, it applies a multi-dimensional approach to the Int…[Read more]