Masha Cerovic
@mcerovic.bsky.social
Associate Professor, History, CERCEC - EHESS (Paris) / Russian empire, Soviet Union, war history, borderlands, military occupations, partisan warfare, Soviet-Nazi war
Reposted by Masha Cerovic
Outside of Global North scholars working in European archives nobody has easy access to archives. I was lucky as an Indian national to experience the extraordinary democratization and transparency of Brazilian archives after the dictatorship. It gave me a horizon of hope not a standard.
January 27, 2026 at 9:24 PM
Outside of Global North scholars working in European archives nobody has easy access to archives. I was lucky as an Indian national to experience the extraordinary democratization and transparency of Brazilian archives after the dictatorship. It gave me a horizon of hope not a standard.
Lale Can's Spiritual Subjects examines how Central Asian hajjis after the Romanov conquest navigated the tension between imposed political subjecthood and spiritual subjecthood as Muslim subjects of a European colonial power in the Ottoman empire.
January 21, 2026 at 3:47 PM
Lale Can's Spiritual Subjects examines how Central Asian hajjis after the Romanov conquest navigated the tension between imposed political subjecthood and spiritual subjecthood as Muslim subjects of a European colonial power in the Ottoman empire.
Will Smiley's From Slaves to POWs looks at the transformation of the law of war in Russian-Ottoman wars in the 17th-19th centuries.
Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky's Empire of Refugees explores the emergence of an Ottoman refugee regime and the resettlement of Circassians from the Caucasus.
Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky's Empire of Refugees explores the emergence of an Ottoman refugee regime and the resettlement of Circassians from the Caucasus.
January 21, 2026 at 3:47 PM
Will Smiley's From Slaves to POWs looks at the transformation of the law of war in Russian-Ottoman wars in the 17th-19th centuries.
Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky's Empire of Refugees explores the emergence of an Ottoman refugee regime and the resettlement of Circassians from the Caucasus.
Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky's Empire of Refugees explores the emergence of an Ottoman refugee regime and the resettlement of Circassians from the Caucasus.
And neither Putin nor Trump can grasp why that will never happen.
December 28, 2025 at 10:46 PM
And neither Putin nor Trump can grasp why that will never happen.
He's basically telling Trump, over and over again, that if Ukrainians come to their senses and accept that they are truly Russians, they will be welcome back into the fold. And that his sincerest wish is for them to come to this realization as soon as possible, so that all is good again.
December 28, 2025 at 10:43 PM
He's basically telling Trump, over and over again, that if Ukrainians come to their senses and accept that they are truly Russians, they will be welcome back into the fold. And that his sincerest wish is for them to come to this realization as soon as possible, so that all is good again.
Moscow is thus heavily invested in trying to bar or stop the opening of archives outside Russia's borders that would challenge modern imperial myths (cf the huge pressure on KZ to stop opening gulag archives) while strategically using access / digitization to bolster the official Russian narrative.
December 28, 2025 at 10:05 PM
Moscow is thus heavily invested in trying to bar or stop the opening of archives outside Russia's borders that would challenge modern imperial myths (cf the huge pressure on KZ to stop opening gulag archives) while strategically using access / digitization to bolster the official Russian narrative.
Russia would have the funds, like Turkey, but does not have much interest in promoting this history that pre-dates much of its imperial expansion. The 19-20th c. are at the heart of its neo-imperial mythology, but it's way too "current" to allow the Turkish approach to archives of imperial glory.
December 28, 2025 at 10:05 PM
Russia would have the funds, like Turkey, but does not have much interest in promoting this history that pre-dates much of its imperial expansion. The 19-20th c. are at the heart of its neo-imperial mythology, but it's way too "current" to allow the Turkish approach to archives of imperial glory.
There is also far fewer US and EU funds interested in digitizing (funding the digitization of) pre-19th c. archives / manuscripts in the Caucasus and Eastern Europe (don't know about CA), so even less is digitized for those earlier periods as well.
December 28, 2025 at 10:05 PM
There is also far fewer US and EU funds interested in digitizing (funding the digitization of) pre-19th c. archives / manuscripts in the Caucasus and Eastern Europe (don't know about CA), so even less is digitized for those earlier periods as well.
Thank you for the very interesting explanation! I'm still simply baffled by the whole thing. And also - the earliest document I've ever worked with in any archive dated back to the Crimean War.
December 28, 2025 at 10:05 PM
Thank you for the very interesting explanation! I'm still simply baffled by the whole thing. And also - the earliest document I've ever worked with in any archive dated back to the Crimean War.
il ne fallait pas dire ça.... je vous ai fait un mega thread de réponse :)
a woman in a plaid shirt says oops !
ALT: a woman in a plaid shirt says oops !
media.tenor.com
December 28, 2025 at 7:58 PM
il ne fallait pas dire ça.... je vous ai fait un mega thread de réponse :)