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Juliane Fürst @jcaf.bsky.social · 2d

I agree on the comparison. It is fascinating how great power status and isolation by virtue of size shaped both societies. I thought that already in the 90s. But I don’t think Putin has anything interesting to say about that, because he is caught in the Soviet discourse of US as morally inferior.

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Juliane Fürst @jcaf.bsky.social · 2d

Thanks for this. I must say reads to me like run-of-the-mill justification for imperialism. Similar to the French and Habsburg variety rather than the British one, but no less destructive for language and culture. And immigrants at least make a choice to accept another state as home.

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Reposted by Juliane Fürst

Clemens Villinger @clemensvillinger.bsky.social · 5d

Die andere Seite der Medaille.
zweiteroktober90.de

zweiteroktober90 – Die Gewalt der Vereinigung

Online-Dokumentation neonazistischer Angriffe, die am 2./3. Oktober 1990, also zum Tag der Vereinigung der beiden deutschen Staaten stattgefunden haben.

zweiteroktober90.de

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Juliane Fürst @jcaf.bsky.social · 5d

You did the listening for four hours, so you are the expert. But I have heard many variations on the quote you posted, and I have always understood it as a swipe against the US. It is a standard to get Europeans on side, since we are ‘rooted’ too. But who knows what Putin wanted to say…

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Juliane Fürst @jcaf.bsky.social · 6d

Does not really matter. I guess the gist is that he thinks Americans inferior because they are not rooted, while Russian people live more ‘organic’ lives in their ‘natural‘ habitat. Russian nationalist propaganda has long had a ‘soil’ tenor. I heard it echoed a lot in interviews even before 2022.

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Juliane Fürst @jcaf.bsky.social · 6d

whatever native soil means for a country that had massive urbanisation in the 1930s and again in the 1970s. Also the Soviet Union had incredibly high internal mobility. Few Soviets died in the place they were born in.

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Reposted by Juliane Fürst

Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 9d

Mass shootings in the US, per Gun Violence Archive:

2015: 332
2016: 383
2017: 347
2018: 335
2019: 414
2020: 611
2021: 689
2022: 644
2023: 659
2024: 503

So far in 2025...324 mass shootings in just 272 days.

We do not have to keep living like this.

940 6.5K 17K

Reposted by Juliane Fürst

Juliane Fürst @jcaf.bsky.social · 23d

RIP Al Rieber, professor and teacher extraordinaire at many places but latest at CEU. His biography is worthy of a book. His reputation as an Mensch is legendary among students and colleagues. He will be missed, not least because he represented a time when Russian history was a happier place.

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Juliane Fürst @jcaf.bsky.social · 23d

It is worthy to mention that Al Rieber was part of a professional and personal partnership with Marsha Siefert that shaped history at CEU for decades. Any tribute to him has to include Marsha. My condolences and sympathy.

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Juliane Fürst @jcaf.bsky.social · 23d

RIP Al Rieber, professor and teacher extraordinaire at many places but latest at CEU. His biography is worthy of a book. His reputation as an Mensch is legendary among students and colleagues. He will be missed, not least because he represented a time when Russian history was a happier place.

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Juliane Fürst @jcaf.bsky.social · 27d

I also think that if one listens to Putin his Soviet socialisation comes out loud and clear. He plays a combined Stalinist Brezhnev playbook. There is very little modern about Putinism. He fights 19 th century wars when the 21st century climate crisis is about to make everything irrelevant.

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Juliane Fürst @jcaf.bsky.social · 27d

I agree that his time with Sobchak influenced him. But less because he learned from the West how to break rules but because he learned that the post Soviet system could play a double game, pulling one over the naive West. And yes, neoliberalism then reenforced that learning process.

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Juliane Fürst @jcaf.bsky.social · 27d

I guess, I never had this illusion. And neither had most observers at the time, as I discover now that I am reading 90s press. He came to power blowing up sleeping people in order to justify war in Chechnya. He immediately curtailed press freedom. And the Chechen war was dirty from beginning.

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Juliane Fürst @jcaf.bsky.social · 27d

Our disagreement is chronological. I see Ukraine in a line with Transnistria and Abkhazia. Both wars even predate September 11. And if one thinks of Hungary 1956 and Czechoslovakia 1968, then the thesis of US pathbreaking becomes untenable. It is used for Russian self justification and propaganda.

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Juliane Fürst @jcaf.bsky.social · 27d

I think we overlap in some ways, but I think that Putin’s formation and political actions were and remain only marginally influenced by US actions. He is a domestic Soviet product, shaped by his own particular career and the socialisation of his entire country through successive imperial systems.

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Juliane Fürst @jcaf.bsky.social · 27d

It is very tempting to put all blame on the door of US and certainly reasonable in part, but overall I think this is too simple an approach and misses local agency and historical particularity. It is a reverse vision of the belief that America rules everything, but essentially equally US centric.

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Juliane Fürst @jcaf.bsky.social · 28d

I disagree you with the causality. I see the reasons for Putin’s aggression more rooted in his domestic policy and ideology. I am also a bit wary of the invocation of Gaza everywhere. If we speak of indifference to wars and murder, then Southern Sudan is a much more apt invocation.

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Juliane Fürst @jcaf.bsky.social · 28d

Solidarity for my colleague F. Davies, whose nuanced discussion about oversights in imperial Russian history was compared by the editors of Ab Imperio as akin to Putin’s historical frame. No critique can be as damming as what the editors did to themselves by twisting words and turning personal.

Franziska Davies @efdavies.bsky.social · 28d

Heute hatte ich Gelegenheit auf einen Text von vier russischen Historikern (based in USA) zu antworten, der letzte Woche in der FAZ erschienen ist. Der Text der vier war eine zutiefst persönliche Attacke auf mich, weil ich es gewagt hatte, Teile (!) der Imperiumsforschung zu 🇷🇺 zu kritisieren.
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Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk @ilkokowalczuk.bsky.social · 28d

Auf die unsachlichen Angriffe vor einer Woche in der FAZ antwortet @efdavies.bsky.social heute ebendort

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Juliane Fürst @jcaf.bsky.social · 28d

The war to look at is the second Chechen war. That contains the kernel of Russian state ideology in the Putin era. It was Putin’s first war and his formative one. And it determined where post socialist Russia would go.

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Juliane Fürst @jcaf.bsky.social · 28d

I don’t think Putin needs any US norms or permission structures. He himself tells us how he justifies his actions: his vision of history and an ideology of strength through brutality learned in his KGB days.

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Juliane Fürst @jcaf.bsky.social · 28d

Russia‘s invasion preceded the war in Gaza and was not initiated by a massive terror attack against Russian people. While I condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza, as a historian I have to reject a comparison that does not work on any level. These are two different wars.

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Juliane Fürst @jcaf.bsky.social · 28d

There is something particularly brutal about killing the very young and/ or the very old. Russia has just broken through another shameful barrier. In full daylight and with no shame.
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/09/w...

Russian Bomb Hits Crowd of Retirees, Killing at Least 23, Ukraine Says

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Juliane Fürst

Meanwhile in Ukraine @meanwhileua.bsky.social · Sep 8

Yesterday’s lunar eclipse over Kyiv 💙💛

If you value our work, enjoy what we create, and want to help us reach new heights, we invite you to become a sponsor by clicking on the link

vist.ly/463b3

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Juliane Fürst @jcaf.bsky.social · Sep 6

Me too!

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Juliane Fürst @jcaf.bsky.social · Sep 6

Congratulations!

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