Tag Archives: historiography

The Mongols and Russian Progress

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What struck me in tonight’s reading was the Mongols responsibility for effectively severing Russia’s historical and cultural ties to the West. We can only place so much stock in historians’ projections for what could have been, as Riasanovsky and Steinberg write, “it has been suggested that, but for the Mongols, Russia might well have participated in such epochal European developments as the Renaissance and the Reformation.”1  The Mongols imposed exacting financial punishments on the Russians, divesting an already poor society assets and property.… Read the rest here

Motherhood and Reproduction in the Fascist, Soviet, and Nazi Regimes

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In Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union, and Mussolini’s Italy, all three regimes emphasized the national importance of genetics and increased birth rates as a state resource. In Hoffman and Timm’s chapter on Utopian Biopolitics, Nazi eugenics that promoted selective racial hygiene and purity is contrasted with Soviet non-selective pronatalism.1 Wilson analyzes the woman’s role in Fascism in his article separately.2

Each regime attempted to characterize the woman’s role as a prolific mother in different ways.… Read the rest here

Blut und Boden — Primordialism in Schivelbusch’s Three New Deals

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Primordialism is an ancient form of nationalism that is rooted in mono-ethnic relations. As opposed to modernists who promote an imagined, mental conception of nationalism that is possible between multiple ethnic groups, primordialists assert that nationality is based on a common gene pool which creates physical attachments in a singular people. Beyond imagined community asserted by modernists, primordialists believe blood relations tie individuals together through the bonds of kinship, clanship, and tribalism founded on communal inheritance.… Read the rest here