Books that cannot be accommodated in our book review section but that are worthy of special attention are listed here with their tables of contents.

Junge, Mark, Viola, Lynne, and Rossman, Jeffrey, eds. Чекисты на скамье подсудимых. Сборник статей. Trans. Osokina, E.A. and Savin, A.I.. Moscow: Probel-2000, 2017. 679 pp. Notes. Index. ₽739, hard bound.

ВСТУПЛЕНИЕ. Линн Виола, Тäter, perpetrator, «исполнители», «палачи», «каратели». Марк Юнге, Историография, методы и источниковая база. МОСКОВСКИЙ ЦЕНТР. Владимир Хаустов, Новый заговор в НКВД. КИЕВ. Линн Виола, Дело Уманского районного отделa НКВД Киевской области. ЖИТОМИР. Сергей Кокин, Расплата. Сотрудники УНКВД по Житомирской области – исполнители Большого террора. ХАРЬКОВ. Вадим Золотарев, Страницы биографии «нарушителя социалистической законности». Давид Аронович Перцов. ОДЕССА. Андрей Савин, and Алексей Тепляков, «Чистка чистильщиков» как инструмент дисциплинирования НКВД. Сотрудники УНКВД по Одесской области на скамье подсудимых, 1939–1943 гг. НИКОЛАЕВ. Марк Юнге, «Козлы отпущения» защищаются. Процессы над нарушителями «социалистической законности» в Николаевской области, 1939–1941 гг. ВИННИЦА И КАМЕНЕЦ-ПОДОЛЬСКИЙ. Валерий Васильев, and Роман Подкур, Организаторы и исполнители Большого террора. Судьбы сотрудников Винницкого и Каменец-Подольского областных УНКВД. ДОНЕЦК. Ольга Довбня, Привлечение сотрудников УНКВД по Ворошиловградской области к уголовной ответственности за нарушение «социалистической законности». ДОРОЖНО-ТРАНСПОРТНЫЕ ОТДЕЛЫ НКВД. Джеффри Россман, Дело Георгия Кочергинского. Роль ситуативных факторов мотивации «грубых нарушений социалистической законности». КИШИНЕВ. Игорь Кашу, «Чистка» сотрудников НКВД Молдавской АССР после Большого террора. Дело Ивана Тарасовича Широкого-Майского. ТБИЛИСИ. Тимоти Блаувельт, «Какова была музыка, таков был и танец». Дело Серго Семеновича Давлианидзе.

Balík, Stanislav, Hloušek, Vit, Kopeček, Lubomir, Holzer, Jan, Pšeja, Pavel, and Roberts, Andrew Lawrence, Czech Politics: From the West to East and Back Again. Opladen, Germany: Barbara Budrich Publishers, 2017. 278 pp. Appendixes. Bibliography. Tables. Figures. $40.00, paper.

Andrew Roberts, Introduction: Czech Exceptionalism. Vít Hloušek, The Birth of Modern Czech Politics: 1848–1918. Jan Holzer, Politics in Interwar Czechoslovakia. Jan Holzer, Czech Lands under Dictatorships and Totalitarian Regimes 1938–1989. Stanislav Balík, The Velvet Revolution: The Causes and Process of the Decline of Communist Power. Lubomír Kopeček, The Velvet Divorce: The End of Czechoslovakia. Lubomír Kopeček, Czech Political Institutions and the Problems of Parliamentary Democracy. Stanislav Balík, Electoral Systems and an Obsession with Elections. Pavel Pšeja, Reshuffling the Party System: From Non-politics to Anti-politics. Lubomír Kopeček, Stanislav Balík, Market Reforms, Society and the Main Features of Czech Capitalism. Vít Hloušek, Europeanising and Westernising. Andrew Roberts, Five Ways of Looking at Czech Politics.

Hahn, Gordon M., Ukraine over the Edge: Russia, the West and the New Cold War. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2018. ix, 359 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Figures. Tables. Maps. $39.95, paper.

1. A World Split Apart: Geopolitical and Civilizationalist Sources. 2. The Historical Roots of Ukraine's Schism. 3. Western Expansionism: Operationalizing the Geopolitical and Civilizational Divides. 4. Democracy Promotion: The Dual-Use Technology of Color Revolution. 5. Ukraine's “Stateness” Problem: The Tectonics of a Faultline State. 6. Ukraine's “Perfect Storm.” 7. Maidan. 8. Putin's Crimea Gambit: From Revolution to Civil War. 9. Terror in Donbass: Putin's War or Civil War? 10. “Revolution of Dignity” or Revolution in Vain?

Banerjee, Anindita, Russian Science Fiction Literature and Cinema: A Critical Reader. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2018. xvii, 380 pp. Notes. Bibliographies. Index. $39.99, paper.

Introduction. Anindita Banerjee, A Possible Strangeness: Reading Russian Science Fiction on the Page and the Screen. I. From Utopian Traditions to Revolutionary Dreams. Darko Suvin, The Utopian Tradition of Russian Science Fiction. Mark B. Adams, Red Star: Another Look at Aleksandr Bogdanov. Anindita Banerjee, Generating Power. Asif A. Siddiqi, Imagining the Cosmos: Utopians, Mystics, and the Popular Culture of Spaceflight in Revolutionary Russia. II. Russia's Roaring Twenties. Dominic Esler, Soviet Science Fiction of the 1920s: Explaining a Literary Genre in its Political and Social Context. Eliot Borenstein, The Plural Self: Zamjatin's We and the Logic of Synecdoche. Andrew J. Horton, Science Fiction of the Domestic: Iakov Protazanov's Aelita. Yvonne Howell, Eugenics, Rejuvenation, and Bulgakov's Journey into the Heart of Dogness. III. From Stalin To Sputnik And Beyond. Michael G. Smith, Stalinism and the Genesis of Cosmonautics. Lynn Barker and Robert Skotak, Klushantsev: Russia's Wizard of Fantastika. Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., Towards the Last Fairy Tale: The Fairy-Tale Paradigm in the Strugatskys’ Science Fiction, 1963–72. Stephen Dalton, Tarkovsky, Solaris, and Stalker. IV. Futures at The End Of Utopia. Elana Gomel, Viktor Pelevin and Literary Postmodernism in Soviet Russia. Vlad Strukov, The Forces of Kinship: Timur Bekmambetov's Night Watch Cinematic Trilogy. Aleksandr Chantsev, The Antiuopia Factory: The Dystopian Discourse in Russian Literature in the Mid-2000s.

Laruelle, Marlene, Being Muslim in Central Asia. Eurasian Studies Library, vol. 9. Leiden: Brill, 2018. xiii, 327 pp. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Figures. Tables. $127.00, hard bound.

Marlene Laruelle, Introduction. I. What Does It Mean to Be a Muslim in Today's Central Asia? Galina Yemelianova, How “Muslim” are Central Asian Muslims? A Historical and Comparative Enquiry. Barbara Junisbai, Azamat Junisbai, and Baurzhan Zhussupov, Two Countries, Five Years: Islam in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan through the Lens of Public Opinion Surveys. Yaacov Ro'i and Alon Wainer, Uzbekness and Islam: A Survey-based Analysis of Identity in Uzbekistan. II. Islam, Politics, and the State. Tim Epkenhans, The Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan: Episodes of Islamic Activism, Postconflict, Accommodation, and Political Marginalization. Aurélie Biard, Power, “Original” Islam, and the Reactivation of a Religious Utopia in Kara-Suu, Kyrgyzstan. Alexander Wolters, Islamic Finance and the State in Central Asia. III. Islam in Evolving Societies and Identities. Wendell Schwab, Visual Culture and Islam in Kazakhstan: The Case of Asyl Arna's Social Media. Manja Stephan-Emmrich, Playing Cosmopolitan: Muslim Self-fashioning, Migration, and (Be-)Longing in the Tajik-Dubai Business. Rano Turaeva, Informal Economies in post-Soviet Space: Post-Soviet Islam and Its Role in Ordering Entrepreneurship in Central Asia. IV. Female Attire as a Public Debate. Emil Nasritdinov and Nurgul Esenamanova, The War of Billboards: Hijab, Secularism, and Public Space in Bishkek. Shahnoza Nozimova, Hijab in a Changing Tajik Society. Marintha Miles, Switching to Satr: An Ethnography of the Particular in Women's Choices in Head Coverings in Tajikistan.

Vatulescu, Cristina, Abramov, Tamar, Burgoyne, Nicole G., Chadaga, Julia, Emery, Jacob, Vaingurt, Julia, eds. The Svetlana Boym Reader. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. xii, 526 pp. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Plates. $39.95, paper.

Tamar Abramov, Nicole G. Burgoyne, Julia Chadaga, Jacob Emery, Julia Vaingurt, and Cristina Vatulescu, Luminosities: An Introduction. Julia Vaingurt, I. The Theater of the Self (1984–1991). 1. Osip Mandel΄shtam and the Drama of Writing. 2. Petersburg Influenza: Notes on the Egyptian Stamp by Osip Mandel΄shtam. 3. The Death of the Revolutionary Poet: Vladimir Maiakovskii and Suicide as Literary Fact. 4. Marina Tsvetaeva and the Cultural Mask of the Poetess. 5. Public Personas and Private Selves of Cultural Critics. Julia Chadaga, II. Living in Common Places and Rethinking What Matters (1992–1995). 6. The Poetics of Banality: Tat΄iana Tolstaia, Lana Gogoberidze, and Larisa Zvezdochetova. 7. Common Places. 8. Paradoxes of Unified Culture: From Stalin's Fairy-Tale to Molotov's Lacquer-Box. Jacob Emery, III. That Historical Emotion (1996–2001). 9. On Diasporic Intimacy: Ilya Kabakov's Ilstallations and Immigrant Homes. 10. The Future of Nostalgia. 11. Conspiracy Theories and Literary Ethics: Umberto Eco, Danilo Kiš and The Protocols of Zion. 12. Kosmos. Cristina Vatulescu, IV. Freedom, Subjectivity, and the Gulag (2002–2010). 13. My Grandmother's First Love. 14. How Is “Soviet subjectivity” Made? 15. “Banality of Evil,” Mimicry, and the Soviet Subject: Varlam Shalamov and Hannah Arendt. 16. Freedom as Co-creation. Tamar Abramov, V. The Off-Modern (2008–2016). 17. The Off Modern. 18. Scenography of Friendship. 19. Vernacular Cosmopolitanism: Victor Shklovsky and Osip Mandel΄shtam. 20. Cryptoarchitecture: Corbusier at 50, A Tour with Svetlana Boym. Cristina Vatulescu, VI. Afterimages: Svetlana Boym's Irrepressible Co-creations. 21. Touching Writing (Homage to Jacques Derrida, October 8, 2004). 22. Immigrant Hydrants. 23. Framing the Family Album. 24. Nostalgic Technology. 25. Cities in Transit. 26. Phantom Limbs. 27. Remembering Forgetting: Tale of a Refugee Camp.

Travin, Dmitry, Gel΄man, Vladimir, and Zaostrovtsev, Andrey, Rossiiskii Put΄: Idei, interesy, instituty, illiuzii. St. Petersburg: Evropeiskii Universitet v Sankt-Peterburge, 2017. 304 pp. Bibliography. Tables. ₽462.00, paper.

Введение. Глава 1. Ключевые идеи российских реформ. Ортодоксально- коммунистические идеи. Реформистско-социалистические идеи. Рыночно-капиталистические идеи. Национально-патриотические и имперские идеи. Промежуточные выводы. Глава 2. Ход реформ и влияние групп интересов. Экономическая реформа горбачевской перестройки. Экономическая реформа Ельцина и Гайдара. Проблемы пореформенной экономики в России. Промежуточные выводы. Глава 3. Исторический путь и торможение перемен. Отзвук великого землетрясения. Больной скорее мертв, чем жив. Больной скорее жив, чем мертв. Революция не простая, а перманентная. НЭП во враждебном окружении. Глава 4. Реформы 1990-х годов и современные институты. “Экспроприация экспроприаторов” по-новому. Посткоммунистическое мафиозное государство. Система патернализма. Глава 5. Общественные иллюзии и реалии российской жизни. Иллюзии прошлого. Новая эпоха — новые иллюзии. Крымская проблема. “Развод” империи с нацией. Глава 6. “Недостойное правление” в России: порочный круг? Russian Greatest Rent Machine. “Недостойное правление” как оно есть. “Недостойное правление”: почему? Длинная рука прошлого? “Вертикаль власти» как механизм “недостойного правления.” Глава 7. Policy versus politics: Tехнократические ловушки постсоветских реформ. Технократическая ловушка: диктаторы, “визири” и “евнухи.” Истоки и смысл постсоветской технократии. Технократия за работой: реформы под перекрестным огнем. “Заимствование” и “выращивание” институтов: есть ли шансы на успех? Альтернативы технократии: от плохого к худшему? Глава 8. Жизнь после 2013 года. Благосостояние, которое мы потеряли. “Мы за ценой не постоим…” Глава 9. Институциональный тупик? Российские институты и глобальная конкурентоспособность. Тающие права собственности: оценки и последствия. Погружение в бесправие. В плену “власти-собственности.”

Jakovljevic, Branislav. Alienation Effects: Performance and Self-Management in Yugoslavia, 1945–91. Theater: Theory/Text/Performance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016. xii, 369 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. $39.95, paper.

Introduction: Socialism and Sociality. Self- Management. Alienation. Performance. One. Bodywriting. Performance State. Choreography of Labor. Et in Illyria Ego. Socialist Baroque. Socialist Aestheticism. Labor's Other. Two. Syntactical Performances. Beyond the Performance Principle. Cracked Baroque. Performing Self- Management. Expanded Media / Constricted Politics. The Magician as Surgeon. The Surgeon as Stitcher. Alienating the Unalienable. 1968/86/89. Three. Disalienation Defects. A Federation of Interests. The Other Line. Did Somebody Say Alienation? The Strange. Money as the Medium. Postconceptualist Politics. The Use- Value of Postmodernism. The Management of the Self. Afterword: “A” is for …

Głębocki, Henryk, A Disastrous Matter: The Polish Question in the Russian Political Thought and Discourse of the Great Reform Age, 1856–1866. Trans. Bałuk-Ulewiczowa, Teresa. Jagellonian Studies in History Vol. 9. Cracow: Jagiellonian University Press, 2017. 332 pp. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $50.00, paper.

Introduction. Chapter I: The Polish Question in the debate on the modernization of Russia in the Great Reform Period, 1856–1861. 1) Russia gathers up its strength in the thaw after Sebastopol. The political and ideological geography of Russia. 2) Poland in the opinion of the ruling class of the Russian Empire. 3) The Polish example in the debate on the modernization of Russia. 4) Russian liberal concepts of Polish-Russian co-operation (before 1861). 5) A different Russia: The concept of an anti-tsarist alliance. 6) Poland in the opinions of the Slavophiles and Pan-Slavists. A) “Long live all the nations!” B) Between historiosophy and the policy of Pan-Slavism. Chapter II: An attempted policy of “reconciliation,” 1861–1863. 1) The Polish problem and the question of a Russian constitution. A) The discussion in the Russian elite on the Polish Developments. B) The reversal in the social mood, 1862. 2) The Slavophile programme on the Polish Question. A) From Slavophile ideology to policy. B) The lure of Pan-Slavism and an experiment to effect a “policy of reconciliation” with the Poles. C) The “dangerous party of legal reform.” 3) The Lithuanian and Ruthenian Territories in the dispute on the solution to the Polish Question. A) The Seized Territories in the Polish and Russian political thought to the mid-nineteenth century. B) The dispute over the Lithuanian and Ruthenian Territories in Slavophile journalism. C) An Empire of Many Nations? The Seized Territories in the light of concepts of autonomy and Russia's federalisation. D) Plans for an ethnic policy of Divide et Impera on the Empire's western peripheries. Chapter III: 1863 in the official propaganda. 1) Evolution of attitudes in Russian society. A) A reversal in public opinion. B) Causes of the change in the mood of Russian public opinion. C) Constitutional illusions. 2) “What to do about Poland?” The Polish Question in Mikhail Katkov's ideology of conservative nationalism. A) Fighting the Polish conspiracy. B) Conservatism and nationalism. 3) “The Poles are setting Russia on fire … ” The official Russian propaganda on the January Uprising. A) Propaganda: “The Most Powerful Tool of Our Times.” B) The Russian Truth and the Polish Grievance: Propaganda addressed to the common people. C) How the foreign propaganda worked. Chapter IV: Concepts of a final solution to the Polish Question, 1863–1866. 1) Russian liberalism and its attitude to the Polish Question, 1863–1866. A) Liberal attitudes after 1863: In defense of the State. B) Liberal attitudes after 1863: In defense of the agenda of reconciliation. 2) Plans to “Re-Slavicise” Poland. A) The “War on the West” and against “the Judas of Slavdom.” The Polish-Russian conflict as a clash of civilisations. B) How to “Slavicise” Poland. C) What the Russians are fighting for against the Poles. The Slavophile principles behind the Constituent Committee's agenda. D) The Okrainy (Borderlands) of Russia. Drafts for a new imperial policy on nationalities. E) “The Decomposition of Slavophilism.” The dispute over the Polish policy. 3) The crusade against “Polonism.” The Constituent Committee and its activities. A) The Tsar's commissars at work: the Russian “Peasants’ Empire” and a People's Poland. B) A Russian Kulturkampf. Epilogue.

Smirnov, Igor΄ Pavlovich, Ot protivnogo: Razyskaniia v oblasti khudozhestvennoi kul΄tury. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2018. 322 pp. Index. Photographs. ₽450, hard bound.

Предисловие. ТЕОРИЯ. Не-искусство в эстетической теории формалистов Как завершаются эпохи. ЭПОХАЛЬНАЯ СЕМАНТИКА. АВАНГАРД. Бессмертное искусство авангарда, или что остается после иконоборческого акта. Авангард−3. РАЗБОР ТЕКСТОВ. Логико-философский роман набокова “Дар.” “Дар” — берлинский роман. Немецкие источники текста. “Доктор Живаго” и литература сталинизма. Безумие в диалоге с самим собой (несколько замечаний о поэзии Иосифа Бродского). КИНО. Киноунивермаг: Как фильм программирует зрителя Апофазис и эволюция киноискусства. Вместо заключения: 1 + 3 измерения социокультуры.

Bergien, Rüdiger and Gieseke, Jens, eds. Communist Parties Revisited: Sociocultural Approaches to Party Rule in the Soviet Bloc, 1956–1991. New York: Berghahn Books, 2018. xii, 372 pp. Notes. Index. Figures. Tables. $130.00, hard bound.

Rüdiger Bergien and Jens Gieseke, Introduction: Communist Parties Revisited: Sociocultural Approaches to Party Rule in the Soviet Bloc, 1956–1991. Edward Cohn, The Paradox of Party Discipline in the Khrushchev-Era Communist Party. Michel Christian, “It Is Not Possible to Allow Past Mistakes to Come Again.” Recruitment Policy in the CPCS in the 1970s and 1980s Sabine Pannen, Behind Closed Doors: The Erosion of SED Party Life in the 1980s. Jens Gieseke, The Successive Dissolution of the “Uncivil Society.” Tracking SED Party Members in Opinion Polls and Secret Police Reports, 1969–1989. Frédéric Zalewski, On the Way to Party Pluralism? The PZPR and the Reform of the Socialist Party System in 1988–1989. Christoph Boyer, Communist Party Apparatuses as Steering Organizations: Paths of Development in East Central Europe. Alexander Titov, The Central Committee Department of Party Organs under Khrushchev. Rüdiger Bergien, True Believers Becoming Funded Experts? Personnel Profile and Political Power in the SED Central Committee's Sectoral Apparatus, 1946–1989. Andrea Bahr, Paternalism in Local Practice: The Logic of Repression, Ideological Hegemony and the Everyday Management of Society in an SED Local Secretariat. Jay Rowell, The SED Bezirk Secretaries as Brokers of Territorial Interests in the GDR. Krzysztof Dąbek, The Idea of Social Unity and Its Influence on the Mechanisms of a Totalitarian Regime in the Years 1956–1980. Mark Kramer, Foreign Policymaking and Party-State Relations in the Soviet Union during the Brezhnev Era. Martin Sabrow, Erich Honecker - The “Leading Representative.” A Generational Perspective. Jan C. Behrends, Inside the System The CPSU Central Committee, Mikhail Gorbachev's Komanda, and the End of Communist Rule in Russia. Padraic Kenney, The Ironies of Membership: The Ruling Communist Party in Comparative Perspective.