In the early morning hours of April 26th, 1986, Chernobyl reactor number four experienced a series of explosions that resulted in the world’s most devastating nuclear disaster to date.
Remembering Chernobyl
The First Rule of Flight Club
In July 2014, Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 went down over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board. In October 2015, Russian passenger plane KGL9268 plummeted to the earth over the Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 passengers and crew. In this region of the world, the mysterious destruction of aircraft is not an entirely new occurrence.
Vietnam between the United States and Yugoslavia
A specter is haunting Europe (also the United States and, really, much of the globe)—the specter of a new Cold War. In recent years columnists have been invoking the memory of the global ideological conflict that governed much of the violence and geopolitics of the twentieth-century.
Episode 72: Roundtable – Antiquities in Danger
Notes from the Field: 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.
#BringBackOurGirls: A History of Humanitarian Intervention in Nigeria
by Brian McNeil #BringBackOurGirls has become ubiquitous on the internet, with a wide gamut of politicians and celebrities taking up the cause of the nearly 300 Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by the terrorist organization Boko Haram. While the efficacy of this sort of hashtag activism, or slacktivism, has been questioned by scholars—and openly mocked by some […]
Fools and Kings
Fools and Kings: Who Rules the World? (An April Fools Special)
An Emotional Database: The New Archive (No. 8)
But let’s be honest, it’s impossible to study the past without feeling something. Confusion, fascination, excitement—this is what motivates historians to spend their days poring over obscure manuscripts.
Hungary 1956. Crimea 2014? The New Archive (No. 7)
By Charley S. Binkow With Russian troops on the ground in Crimea, Ukraine, it’s tempting to see parallels with Soviet invasions of the past. As the unique and pressing situation in the Ukraine develops, can historians look to history for guidance? Central European University’s Open Society Archives gives us a window into a similar invasion in […]
The Tatars of Crimea: Ethnic Cleansing and Why History Matters
Many historical accounts of events in the Crimea simply mention that Nikita Khrushchev “gifted” the Crimea to Ukraine in 1954. This does little to explain the Crimea’s current demographic make-up or what happened to put the strategic peninsula in the position to be “given” by Moscow to Ukraine in 1954.