Joan Neuberger, Author at Not Even Past

Episode 68: The Russian Empire on the Eve of World War 1

World War I is often described as “the war to end all wars,” a global conflagration unprecedented in human society whose outbreak reshaped the face of Europe, and led to the collapse of the Russian Empire and the rise of the Soviet Union. But did the war really come out of nowhere? What else was going on in Europe—and around the world—that led to the outbreak of this “global” conflict?

Our guest, Dominic Lieven of the London School of Economics, has spent his career examining problems of political stability in Europe in the 19th century, and the history of the Russian Empire’s waning days, and helps us understand the world on the eve of its first global war.

The Environment on History & History in the Environment

Environmental history is one of the most exciting fields of history at the moment as scholars seek to understand the role the environment played in familiar events and the ways the environment has been shaped by historical forces. Here is a list of important works selected by Erika Bsumek and Mark Lawrence, two of the authors of our featured book this month (some of which have been reviewed on NEP).

Kurk Dorsey, The Dawn of Conservation Diplomacy: U.S.-Canadian Wildlife Protection Treaties in the Progressive Era (University of Washington Press, 1998). A landmark in the scholarship combining diplomatic and environmental history, this book examines U.S.-Canadian diplomacy aimed at managing migratory animals and birds — a notable and overlooked success of Progressive-era effforts to impose control over nature.

J.R. McNeill and Corinna R. Unger, Environmental Histories of the Cold War (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Like Nation-States and the Global Environment, this book collects essays from leading international and environmental scholars, uncovering various ways in which the Cold War involved struggles for natural resources and an the horrific ways in which the Cold War damaged the natural environment.

William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (W.W. Norton, 1991).

Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City (Picador Press, 2009).
Reviewed by Cristina Metz on Not Even Past

Joachim Radkau, Nature and Power: A Global History of the Environment (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

Climate Change in History

By Erika Bsumek, David Kinkela, and Mark A. Lawrence

The coincidence was striking when negotiators from around the world gathered at Cancún, Mexico, in late 2010 to make progress on an agreement to curb emissions of greenhouse gases. The last time the globe had experienced significant warming – about 120,000 years ago – the Cancún coastline had been deluged by a seven-foot rise in ocean levels over several decades. Would governments, after years of inaction, embrace a binding deal to head off rising sea levels, extreme weather, disruptions of food production, and other potentially cataclysmic results of a warmer atmosphere? Predictably, the answer was no. Despite abundant evidence of impending disaster for many low-lying parts of the world, the representatives from 194 nations agreed to only minor, face-saving new provisions to encourage cooperation.

The reasons for this disappointing result were the same ones that have bedeviled climate-change negotiations since they began under U.N. auspices in 1990: differences over strategies for combating emissions, disagreements over how large reductions should be, and, above all, divisions amongst the nations of the developed world, which have reaped the benefits of fossil fuel-based industrialization for many years, and less-developed nations, which view restrictions as an unfair limitation on their economic growth.

Such disputes are merely outward manifestations of a more fundamental problem at the root of the climate-change talks. A meaningful solution to global warming, deforestation, species extinctions, and other major environmental problems will require global commitments to common policies. Yet nation-states, the basic building blocks of the international order, have great difficulty prioritizing the general good over their narrower interests. Global problems, in other words, require a kind of cooperation inconsistent with the jealously guarded sovereign prerogatives and economic concerns of individual nations. Activists and supranational institutions have clearly recognized the problem and consistently urged national governments to look beyond their own interests. But such appeals have produced few results. As flows of pollution – not to mention people, money, goods, and information – have become increasingly global, national governments have failed to keep pace by establishing new cooperative regimes or ceding authority to supranational regulatory institutions. As journalist Fareed Zakaria succinctly summarized in 2008 “Formal political power remains firmly tethered to the nation-state, even as the nation-state has become less able to solve most … problems unilaterally.” The human future seems likely to depend crucially on how the international community manages what has often been called the “global commons,” but striking a new balance between global priorities and those of the nation-state will continue to be a key challenge for years to come.

map — The International Whaling Commission combined trans-national cooperation and moral persuasion to initiate a campaign to limit whaling. Tuna, which are not as pretty as whales, were not so lucky.

Nation-States and the Global Environment demonstrates that this predicament is not nearly as new as some recent commentary on climate change and other global challenges suggests. In fact, understanding present-day dilemmas may be as much a matter for historians as for natural and social scientists, journalists, and futurologists. Nations have long confronted the need to manage features of the natural environment – whether disagreeable pollutants, fragile habitats, or desirable resources – that, acting with a kind of agency of their own, pay little or no heed to artificial geopolitical boundaries drawn and defended by humans. Nation-states have, for example, long sought agreements to manage migratory wildlife, just as they have negotiated conventions governing the release of toxic materials or the exploitation of rivers and other bodies of water. Similarly, nation-states have long attempted to exert influence over resources beyond their borders, to impose their standards of proper environmental use on others, and to import expertise developed elsewhere to cope with domestic environmental problems. To be sure, the scale, urgency, and visibility of such endeavors have increased dramatically in recent times. But present-day efforts to find international solutions to trans-boundary environmental challenges unquestionably have historical precedent. As environmental historian William Cronon has eloquently observed, “Current environmental problems almost always have historical analogues from which we have much to learn if only we pay attention both to discontinuities and continuities that link past, present, and future.”

indianfisheries01 — 1930s painting of Indians fishing at Celilo Falls, as they had for thousands of years prior to white settlement of the Oregon Country. The Nez Perce resisted the globalization of salmon fishing, which, in turn, reinforced their sovereignty.

This book, a collection of essays by leading international and environmental historians, aspires to draw attention to some of these analogues by exploring the complex interplay between nation-states and the global environment in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Uncovering these histories provides context, reference points, and perhaps even lessons that can inform ongoing debates about how to close the yawning gap between environmental problems and the political mechanisms available to address them. The authors of some essays, especially in the first half of the book, are directly concerned with understanding the reasons for the successes and failures of past regulatory regimes. But the collection as a whole does not advance any single policy agenda or line of argument, and some essays may even contradict each other in their implications. Indeed, the most important point to emerge from the chapters may be the maddening complexity of the political, social, cultural, and technological issues at hand and the impossibility of simple solutions. Various essays highlight an array of barriers to effective cooperation inherent in the nature of nation-states – their parochial range of vision, their tendencies to set short-term concerns above long-term interests, their desires for competitive advantage in a world mostly lacking in recognized legal norms, and their responsiveness to domestic rather than global constituencies.

3564_large — A lot of toxic electronic waste gets shipped to Africa

The essays also show, however, that nation-states are neither self-contained nor equal units when it comes to dealing with the global environment. Even as governments have tried to pursue national priorities, they have been challenged by activists, scientists, and other non-state groups seeking in different ways to subvert the nation-state as the key entity of environmental decision-making. Such groups, explored in the second half of this collection, have long shaped and constrained – just as they do in the present era of globalization – the ability of nation-states to erect and defend meaningful boundaries and insist on strictly national priorities. This book, then, depicts nation-states as doubly challenged in their attempts to regulate natural processes and enforce those regulations. In some of the historical case studies offered in this volume, authors demonstrate different ways in which nation-states have channeled and represented their interests, even as they processed and “domesticated” pressures, sometimes from subnational groups but increasingly from transnational networks, to alter their environmental practices.

800px-Riverboat_with_container_on_Rhine_in_Cologne,_Germany_PNr°0206 — Container boat on the Rhine in Cologne, Germany. The international Rhine Commission successfully engineered the Rhine river for shipping but, in doing so, ignored local concerns about the natural environment.

In pursuing this agenda, the books aims to contribute to the fields of international and environmental history, but it especially aims to push ahead the important work of combining these two fields. International/diplomatic and environmental history have been extraordinarily dynamic fields of historical scholarship in recent years. Yet the work of building bridges between these two fields and developing what might be called “international/diplomatic environmental history” has only just begun. This is not to say that no outstanding work in this genre has yet appeared. On the contrary, as we show in this introduction, a number of scholars, including several participants in this collection, have published pioneering studies since the 1990s.

The goal of this book is to reinforce the point that environmental and international historians have much to learn from each other and to build on earlier accomplishments by offering new case studies that might offer models for further work. Collectively the essays consider not just how nation-states have sought to control and regulate nature but also how cultural, ideological, and economic forces have shaped and constrained the options available to nation-states as they have struggled to master an ever-changing global environment.

Nation States and the Global Environment: New Approaches to International Environmental History, edited by Erika Marie Bsumek, David Kinkela, Mark Atwood Lawrence (Oxford University Press, 2013)
The book collects work presented at a symposium sponsored by the Institute for Historical Studies at The University of Texas at Austin in 2009.

For more environmental history on Not Even Past, you might like:

Neel Baumgartner on Big Bend’s “scenic beauty”

Erika Bsumek on Lady Bird Johnson’s beautification project

And watch Blake Scott and Andres Lombana-Bermudez’s short documentaries on the history of tourism in Panama

For more to read on environmental history, look here.

Episode 67: How Jews Translate the Bible and Why

Any student of a foreign language knows that the process of translating a text can be laden with unexpected choices about words, sentence structure, and phrases that don’t make sense in the target language. Now imagine the pressures of translating a sacred text whose language is well known and imbued with religious significance and symbolism. Our guest Leonard Greenspoon from Creighton University has done just that with translators of the Jewish Bible over the centuries. In this episode, Dr. Greespoon takes us on a fascinating journey into a Jewish perspective on how and translating the Bible is necessary, and how and why it matters. A link to Dr. Greenspoon’s longer lecture “How and Why Jews Translate the Bible (and How And Why it Matters)” can be found on our website: http://sites.utexas.edu/15minutehistory/2015/04/29/episode-67-how-jews-translate-the-bible-and-why/

Reading Magnum: A Photo Archive Gets a New Life

By Steven Hoelscher and Andrea Gustavson

When photographer Bruce Davidson boarded a Greyhound bus on May 24, 1961 in Montgomery, Alabama, he joined a group of 27 students, ministers, and activists determined to challenge the South’s segregation laws. In response to two earlier busses carrying anti-segregationist Freedom Riders—the first one firebombed and the second attacked by a mob wielding iron pipes—the federal government stepped in and ordered armed National Guard soldiers to provide protection. It was a moment of high drama in the Civil Rights movement, one that both exposed the bitter racism along the way from Montgomery to Jackson, Mississippi, and one that sorely tested the activists’ belief in nonviolent action. Davidson’s photographs portray something of that drama as they show a secret meeting before the ride, young men and women waiting to board the bus at the segregated station, groups along the route including white men heckling the Freedom Riders and black residents standing among National Guardsmen.

One picture succinctly captures the complicated emotions and political tensions of the scene: taken from inside the bus looking out, it portrays both the young activists and the armed escort ordered to protect them (above). This photograph, and others like it, circulated widely from the November 12, 1961 issue of The New York Times, to Raymond Arsenault’s 2007 Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice, and to the cover of Davidson’s own 2002 book, Time of Change: Civil Rights Photographs, 1961-1965. An icon of the Freedom Riders’ struggle, it is featured on the 2010 American Experience documentary website.

Verso from press print by Bruce Davidson, taken “aboard the Freedom Riders’ bus, Montgromery [sic] Alabama, 1961.” Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos

The photographic print that brought the image from Davidson’s photo agency, Magnum Photos, to newspapers, magazines, textbooks, and websites carries its history on its back. If we turn over the print, we find a message board of scribbled notes, agency stamps, archival references, photo credits, hastily written captions, and a stamp identifying the photo as part of the Magnum Photo New York Print Library. So many times has the photograph been sent to various publishers and then returned to Magnum that a staff member wrote in bold, black lettering, the word “RETIRED,” suggesting that this particular print’s utility has come to an end.

Like the print itself, the collection of photographs to which it belongs is now also retired—at least from its previous occupation of carrying the image it bears to publishing venues. Davidson’s print came out of retirement in the summer of 2010—or, more accurately, it took on a new life—when the Magnum Photo New York Print Library was opened for research at the Harry Ransom Center, a research library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin. The Magnum Photos collection, as it is now known, is comprised of some 1,300 boxes containing more than 200,000 press prints and exhibition photographs by some of the twentieth century’s most famous photographers. Once Magnum began using digital distribution methods for its photographs, the function of press prints as vehicles for conveying the image became obsolete and these photographs became significant solely as objects for both monetary and historic value.

Death of a Loyalist militiaman. Córdoba front, Spain, 1936, ©Robert Capa/Magnum Photos

Magnum’s visual archive is a vast, living chronicle of the people, places, and events of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Images of cultural icons, from James Dean and Marilyn Monroe,to Gandhi and Castro, coexist in the Magnum Photos collection with depictions of international conflicts, political unrest, and cultural life. Included are famous war photos from the Spanish Civil War and D-Day landings to wars in Central America, Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as unforgettable scenes of historic events: the rise of democracy in India, the Chinese military suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, the U.S. Civil Rights movement, the Iranian revolution, and the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Marilyn Monroe reading James Joyce’s Ulysses. Long Island, New York, 1955, ©Eve Arnold/Magnum Photos

Finally, scenes of everyday life in a wide range of historical contexts—from immigrant communities in New York City to Romani communities in Czechoslovakia, and much more—comprise an extraordinarily valuable visual archive.

A newly arrived immigrant (Tang Z) eats noodles on a fire escape. New York City, 1998, ©Chien-Chi Chang/Magnum Photos

View from Brooklyn. New York City, September 11, 2001, ©Thomas Hoepker/Magnum Photos

Magnum Photos was formed in 1947, in the wake of the Second World War, by four photographers seeking to retain the rights to their images while working on projects that aligned with their own interests rather than solely responding to commissions from magazines and newspapers. Henri Cartier-Bresson, David “Chim” Seymour, George Rodger, and Robert Capa created a business model that fundamentally changed the practices of photojournalism, allowing the image-maker, rather than the magazine, to retain control over published work. This shift allowed Magnum photographers to emphasize their artistic integrity and fosters independence in terms of subject matter.

Soldiers search bus passengers along the Northern Highway in El Salvador, 1980 by Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos.

The result was a new way of doing assignment photography so that members of the Magnum collective were free to pursue projects that spoke to their personal, political, and artistic concerns. While Magnum’s working model has evolved over time, Capa’s initial idea was that members would place images, often in the form of extended photo-essays, in various publications and across several geographic markets. The publication fees earned would be shared between the photographer and the agency with part of the earnings made available to finance further projects. Although Magnum Photos was formed during and sustained by the postwar heyday of picture magazines such as Life, Look, Picture Post, and Illustrated, the cooperative still exists and recently celebrated its 65th anniversary.

A column of T59 tanks makes its way from Tiananmen Square along the Avenue of Eternal Peace. A solitary protester stands determined in the center of the road, blocking the tanks. Beijing, China, June 4, 1989, ©Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos

The organization of the Magnum Photos collection at the Harry Ransom Center directly reflects the working practices of the photography collective. A key component of Capa’s plan was the repackaging, recaptioning, and redistributing of images as photo-essays once the images were no longer immediately newsworthy. Practically speaking, this meant that images like Eve Arnold’s iconic photograph of Malcolm X might have been made into multiple prints and filed in several different file folders that eventually were placed into archival boxes including the box designated “Eve Arnold 1961-1964,” another designated “X, Malcolm 1925-1965,” and a third designated “Historical 1960s,” and a fourth designated “Social Protest.”

Malcolm X during his visit to enterprises owned by Black Muslims. Chicago, IL, 1962, ©Eve Arnold/Magnum Photos.

Eventually the physical photographs were returned to the Magnum office to be stored in file cabinets and boxes labeled by photographer and by a range of subjects and thematic groupings. This organizational structure has been preserved in the archival collection at the Ransom Center. The 169-page finding aid has sections for individual photographers, public personalities, and geographic regions. It also contains subject groupings such as “World War II” or “Motherhood” or “National parks” and also more idiosyncratic thematic categories such as “Time and Measurement” or “Historical Emotions, 1970s.”

Reconstruction of a homicide. In the foreground: a young gypsy suspected of being guilty. Jarabina, Czechoslovakia, 1963, ©Josef Koudelka/Magnum Photos

These subject categories evolved along with the press print library as different librarians, archivists, and interns sought to structure the collection in ways that would make the images accessible and reusable. In this way, the press print library with its organizational structures and its multiple copies of each photograph was an attempt to make the objects—the press prints—function in service of the image content.

Historians are encouraged to visit the Reading and Viewing Room at the Harry Ransom Center, where the Magnum Photos collection is open for scholarly research and teaching and fellowships are available to support that research. To be sure, many of Magnum’s images are available online through its website. But to understand these photographs in their historical context—both how they circulated throughout the world and how the photo agency kept them in the public’s eye—direct engagement with these remarkable primary sources is essential.

Reading Magnum: A Visual Archive of the Modern World by Steven Hoelscher

This essay is derived from a longer article to be published in Rundbrief Fotografie. We thank the editor for permission to reprint here.

Want to read more about Magnum Photos and photojournalism? Click here.

Head Photo: National Guard Soldiers escort Freedom Riders along their ride from Montgomery to Jackson, Mississippi. Montgomery, Alabama, 1961, ©Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos

All photos: Courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center with permission from Magnum Photos for any promotional work associated with Reading Magnum.

Episode 66: Operation Intercept

At 2:30 pm on Saturday September 21 1969, US president Richard Nixon announced ‘the largest peacetime search and seizure operation in history.’ Intended to stem the flow of marijuana into the United States from Mexico, the three-week operation resulted in a near shut down of all traffic across the border and was later referred to by Mexico’s foreign minister as the lowest point in his career.

Guest James Martin from UT’s Department of History describes the motivations for President Nixon’s historic unilateral reaction and how it affected both Americans as well as our ally across the southern border.

History Museums: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful

What makes a history museum “work”? This is one of those things we don’t usually think about. As it happens, I love history museums. I especially like small, quirky museums in out of the way places with unique collections, in part because they are often conserved and curated by a devoted staff.

FireMuseum — Michigan Firehouse Museum, Ypsilanti, MI

But I also love a grand museum with an epic story to tell. In the past year I drove from Austin to Los Angeles and back, and from Austin to Michigan and back, and I’m spending this semester in England, all of which has given me a chance to visit an astonishing variety of history museums, and to start wondering what made some of them so wonderful and some of them so – meh.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Taos Pueblo, continuously inhabited for 1000 years.

I hope to write about some more of these in the future. And I hope that you, our readers, will send us something about your favorite history museums. Send in a paragraph (or more!) or just send us a photo and a caption and we’ll post it in our series on history museums. (You can use the Contact button at the bottom of our homepage.) We might even start to visit each others’ favorites!

Liverpool_in_1680 — Liverpool in 1680. Earliest known image of Liverpool. (wikipedia)

A couple weeks ago I had a chance to compare three popular history museums in close proximity to one another in Liverpool. I should start by saying that I am reporting as merely a tourist who happens to be a historian. I haven’t done any special research, I don’t know the goals of the curators of any of these museums, I haven’t read much about how history museums are changing to make use of new technologies or to attract bigger crowds. And it was only by visiting a lot of museums lately that I began to think about what makes some more fun and satisfying than others.

Liverpool, like many seaport cities that had fallen on hard times, has turned to its historical sites – its Mersey River waterfront and docks – to revitalize its economy by attracting tourists. The dock area of Liverpool now sports three major history museums: the Museum of Liverpool, The Beatles’ Story, and the Merseyside Maritime Museum. It also has a branch of London’s Tate art museum, the Tate Liverpool, as well as hotels, coffee shops, and souvenir stores. And for readers of a certain age, there is a ferry launch just outside the Museum of Liverpool where you can catch a ferry ‘cross the Mersey.

The ferry docks just in front of the Three Graces, the three buildings that comprised the business center of the city during its 18th and 19th centuries heyday: the Liver Building, the Port of Liverpool Building and the Cunard Building. Altogether the area has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City.

The_Museum_of_Liverpool,_Pier_Head,_Liverpool_(geograph_2978672) — Museum of Liverpool (wikipedia)

I began my visit at the Museum of Liverpool. It was a busy Saturday afternoon and the place was packed with families. I like to see people in museums so I didn’t mind the crowds, but I immediately noticed that only a few of those people were really looking at the exhibits. It was quickly apparent why. The exhibit cases were full of diverse things in kaleidoscopic display: historical photos, documents, and colorful, everyday objects used by sailors and merchants and families living in the city, rich and poor. In fact, the display cases were as packed as the space around them, with a dizzying amount of stuff, but there was only the slimmest explanation or historical text. So there was a lot to look at but little to help make sense of anything.

Museum_of_Liverpool_spiral_staircase — Inside the Museum of Liverpool (wikipedia)

Some historians may be glad to hear that there was no “master narrative,” but I wanted some kind of historical thread linking one period to the next, or linking social life to political life or to the shipping history of the port or to the history of the families looking on. The historical texts didn’t whitewash the history of the city. Liverpool’s connection to imperialism and the slave trade as well as to enrichment and impoverishment at home were clearly indicated and objects representing these large movements were on display. But no one could construct a coherent narrative with any nuance from the abundance of objects and the scarcity of text. One could, perhaps, see this kind of organization as a general introduction to history for young children and their history-averse parents who might want more things to look at and less to read. For me, on the other hand, this is a kind of looking without thinking that leads only to frustration. But I can’t argue with the crowds. The other museums I visited were much better at presenting history in ways that were more visually and intellectually stimulating, but they weren’t packed.

I left the Museum of Liverpool and headed for The Beatles’ Story, a little worried that it would be equally superficial and haphazard. I was also wondering if my familiarity with the Beatles and their story and pretty much everything Beatles would make it boring. I grew up with the Beatles; they introduced me to pop music at just the same time I got a transistor radio, which I listened to for hours every day. I wasn’t one of the screaming girls but I was the right age and one of my best friends was there in Los Angeles screaming her head off (for Paul) when the Beatles played the Hollywood Bowl in 1964. And I’ve watched all the films and documentaries since. So what could I learn? Why even go? Probably for the same reason we listen to the same song over and over again, we like familiar stories as much as we like to learn new ones.

So stay tuned. Over the next couple weeks I’ll report on The Beatles’ Story and then I’ll tell you about one of the best history museums I have visited, The International Slavery Museum at the Merseyside Maritime Museum.

In the meantime, send us pictures or tell us about your local museums, your favorite museums, or history museums you think we would all like.

Photos are all the author’s except where otherwise noted.

Notes from the Field: The Murder of Boris Nemtsov

“Really! They have not even buried him yet!” This was my in-laws’ reaction to the two-hour, primetime special on Boris Nemtsov’s love life that aired the Sunday after his assassination. Nemtsov’s reputation as a “ladies man” was never a secret, but tarnishing his name just days after his death was too much, even for some people who disliked his politics.

Support_of_prisoners_of_the_Bolotnaya_square_case_(21_February_2014)_(Boris_Nemtsov) — Boris Nemtsov, murdered in central Moscow on February 27, 2015, at a demonstration protesting the arrest of anti-Putin protestors

When investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in front of her Moscow building on October 7, 2006, I was shocked. I had read her work, discussed her in classes, and was even familiar with the street where she lived. However, discussions of the crime with Russian students and friends usually required me to explain what her work was about and why people in the West found her criticism of the war in Chechnya so compelling. Dozens of other Russian journalists and political activists have been murdered over the last decade, but the murder of Nemtsov is different.

“HEROES DO NOT DIE.” Demonstration on March 1, 2015 mourning the murder of Boris Nemtsov

When I came upon the news of Nemtsov’s murder two Friday nights ago, I immediately handed the iPad to my wife, and her jaw dropped. That Saturday morning, there was a pervasive shock — on Russian social media and in the state-run and independent media — because everyone knew Nemtsov. His political career in the 1990s included a post as Deputy Prime Minister in 1998 under Boris Yeltsin, and, before that, as Governor of the Nizhny Novgorod where he led agricultural and economic reforms. However, his liberalism often clashed with the former communist party members who made up much of the Russian government. More importantly, as corruption blossomed in the new Russian economy, he relentlessly attacked the perpetrators. His political career imploded because his idealism and activism had no place in the status quo Vladimir Putin created between society, the oligarchs and the state after 2000.

“FOR HONEST ELECTIONS.” Boris Nemtsov (far right) at a demonstration in December 2011 protesting widespread corruption in recent elections

This is another reason why the murder shocked many Russians. Many people were perfectly happy to leave behind the idealistic politics and the mobster-political violence of the 1990s for Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which brought relative economic stability after the “wild” 1990s, even if it certainly did not ensure democracy. The fear of losing pensions or homes, as often happened in the 1990s, was and is much greater than the fear of authoritarian government. When Russian TV airs iconic 1990s mob movies such as Aleksei Balabanov’s Brother, people acknowledge the film’s greatness, but they are relieved that period of Russian history is behind them.

Sergei Bodrov in Aleksei Balabanov's film, "Brother" — Sergei Bodrov in Aleksei Balabanov’s film, “Brother” (2000).

Moreover, perhaps more important than the symbolism of an opposition politician being murdered on the steps of Russian power, is what the public spaces around the Kremlin and in Central Moscow have come to represent for modern Muscovites. The Moscow city government, urban planners, and young activist politicians have spent the better part of the last decade transforming central Moscow into a more pedestrian friendly and livable urban space. Gorky Park has become a hipster paradise with hammocks, yoga, WIFI, and coffee shops. Many of the central streets (including the one Nemtsov strolled down on the night of his death) have been closed to traffic and lined with cafes. Red Square itself and the surrounding new pedestrian zones host numerous festivals and markets. This popular space to unwind has now become the scene of a brutal political murder.

Finally, with the war in Ukraine, Russian TV has been inundated with scenes of terrible and graphic violence, but the violence was quite far from Moscow. Now, with this backdrop, there is a sense that the inter-Slavic bloodletting that has been so far mostly confined to the Donbas could be reaching out to touch the Russian capital.

Even on my Facebook feed there were people who believed he got what he deserved. Still, the most common response I heard over the last week was of a dreaded return to the 1990s, when Russians, both politically important and ordinary citizens, did not feel safe in their homes, finances, jobs or city.

More by Andy Straw on Not Even Past

“The Tatars of Crimea: Ethnic Cleansing and Why History Matters“

“The 1980 Olympics and my Family“

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The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Episode 65: Darwinism and the Scopes “Monkey Trial”

Controversies over the theory of evolution are well documented in American society: according to a Gallup poll conducted in the late 1990s, 44% of the American public rejects it in favor of the Biblical account of creation. Has this always been the case? Did Charles Darwin and early proponents of evolution encounter the same objections when the theory was first proposed in the late 19th century? And did evolution come out of nowhere as a radical new idea, taking the world by surprise? Not necessarily, as it turns out.

In an episode recorded on location in London, Adam Shapiro from Birkbeck University describes how evolution was first received in the United States, and the debates that led up to its most famous test–the Scopes “Monkey Trial” held in Dayton, Tennessee, in the 1920s.

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