Benjamin Nathans

Nov 19, 2024 | lawliberty.org | Benjamin Nathans |Nadya Williams |Juliana Geran Pilon |John O. McGinnis

Judged against other world empires, the Soviet Union had a short lifespan. The communist regime did not even last a full century: only a mere sixty-nine years passed from the Russian Revolution to the dissolution of the USSR. That is one year less than the Jews’ biblical exile to Babylon. And yet, the history of some aspects of that brief existence is only now coming to light. The USSR was a notoriously closed, secretive place.

Oct 14, 2024 | lrb.co.uk | Benjamin Nathans |Sheila Fitzpatrick

Soviet dissidents​ saw things differently from those around them and asserted their right to do so. This was a phenomenon of the post-Stalin period, and specifically of the second half of the 1960s and the 1970s: the aftermath of Khrushchev’s Thaw, which happens to be the period in which I first encountered the Soviet Union as a British exchange student in Moscow. Naturally their dissenting opinions tended to be unpopular with their fellow citizens.

Aug 29, 2024 | theamericanconservative.com | Benjamin Nathans |Princeton Press |Helen Andrews

Books When Soviet Dissidents Disappoint A new history of the Soviet dissident movement tries to make heroes of an underwhelming lot. To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement by Benjamin Nathans, Princeton University Press, 816 pages, August 2024Professor Benjamin Nathans thinks Soviet-era dissidents don’t get enough respect in modern Russia.

Aug 13, 2024 | kirkusreviews.com | Benjamin Nathans |Robert Greene |Jack Weatherford

If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire. The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power. Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia).

Mar 27, 2024 | lawfaremedia.org | Benjamin Wittes |Benjamin Nathans |Jen Patja

Published by The Lawfare Institute in Cooperation With Benjamin Nathans is a professor of Russian and Soviet history at the University of Pennsylvania, with a particular specialty in the history of Russian and Soviet dissidents. He joined Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes to talk about the legacy of Alexei Navalny, his life and death, and how Navalny was similar to and different from other dissidents, both recent and historic.