Beatrice Penati’s new book Rural History of Soviet Central Asia: Land Reform and Agricultural Change in Early Soviet Uzbekistan (published with Brill, 2025) provides a comprehensive account of early S...

Nicole HarryIn 1959, the Holy See of the Catholic Church and the Soviet government agreed to send two Lithuanian priests to study at the Vatican College of Saint Casimir, which was run by Lithuanian é...

The year 2026 will mark the 110th anniversaries of what are increasingly recognised as defining moments within the wider history of international anti-imperial and anti-colonial struggle: the Easter R...

Kateřina ZächThe Soviet government attempted to demonstrate its resolute power by shaping the perceptions of the population in ways that evinced a feeling of hope. The resource security of the governm...

The ICCEES XI World Congress is being hosted by UCL in London in 2025, and will run from Monday 21st July to Friday 25th July. There is a large and diverse range of panels and roundtables to view, ei...

Between Modernity and Tradition: Conflict Between the Belarusian Intelligentsia and the Broader Population in Interwar Western Belarus

Stanisław BoridczenkoAmong the private papers of Fr Lew Goroszko — now archived in the Francis Skoryna Belarusian Library and Museum situated in northern London — there lies a chilling, handwritten no...

Victoria Peretitskaya As religious dissenters, the Doukhobors, a pacifist Christian sect dating back to the eighteenth century, endured multiple resettlements within the borders of the Russian Empire....

Aglaia GulakovaThese remaining Old Believers must be seen – their strength, their conviction, their selfless nightly prayers (no longer feasible for us), their vital courage and determination – in tho...

Leora EisenbergIt would have been absurd if it wasn’t quite so sincere: at least seven Kazakhstani composers sitting in a conference room, drawing up lists of people I needed to interview for my disse...

Kristo Nurmis“Ready to Die for Liberty: Tiny Estonia to Declare War on USSR as well as on Reich.” So proclaimed The Boston Globe in July 1944, relaying dramatic claims from Estonian diplomats in neutr...

Hanna Maria Aunin In January 1988, the editorial board of the Tallinnfilm studio signed a contract with Rein Saluri for a feature film script about mass deportations. According to the studio, the topi...

As part of the series that discusses ‘peripheries’ in the Baltic states, Rasa Kamarauskaitė (RK) of the BASEES Study Group on the Baltic States interviewed Estonian sexuality scholar Rebeka Põldsam (R...

Kateryna BudzOne of the most popular Ukrainian carols is ‘Nova Radist’ Stala’ (‘A New Joy has Come’), which tells the story of the birth of Christ.[1] After the Soviets occupied the Western Ukrainian ...

It is no secret that the Peripheral Histories? editorial team is comprised of a few historians of humanitarianism who are rather enthusiastic about drawing upon the archives of international organisations to write new histories of Eastern Europe, the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union. Some of our readers may remember that we included the collections of the ICRC archives and library back in our archives-focused series in summer 2023. Therefore, we were very excited to see the publication of a

Mann LoperThe establishment of Estonia’s independent statehood in 1918 took the political and cultural freedom of Estonians to an entirely new level. Under the Russian Empire, imperial policies and th...

HOME