Book Talk: Lost Souls – Soviet Displaced Persons and the Birth of the Cold War
Since the late 1940s, the Western reception of refugees, emigres and dissidents from the Soviet bloc and Russia has been both a humanitarian policy, and an important part of strategy and propaganda against the West’s geopolitical and ideological adversaries. This strategy continued to a reduced extent after the Cold War, and has now returned with full force as a result of the flight of Russians to the West as a result of the invasion of Ukraine.
To discuss these issues and the legacy of the Soviet Union, Anatol Lieven, director of the Eurasia program at the Quincy Institute, was joined by Professor Sheila Fitzpatrick, pre-eminent social and cultural historian of the Soviet Union and modern Russia. They discussed her soon to be released book, Lost Souls: Soviet Displaced Persons and the Birth of the Cold War (Princeton University Press, November 14th, 2024), which draws both on her historical research and her personal contacts with East European and Soviet diasporas.
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Sheila Fitzpatrick
Sheila Fizpatrick is a professor at Australian Catholic University, and distinguished service professor emerita at the University of Chicago. She was president of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (formerly AAASS) and is currently a member of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She received a Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award in 2002 and the American Historical Association’s Award for Scholarly Distinction in 2012. She is the author of several famous works on the Soviet Union, including "Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s" (2000) and "On Stalin's Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics" (2017).
Anatol Lieven
Dr. Anatol Lieven is the director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He was formerly a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar and in the War Studies Department of King’s College London. From 1985 to 1998, Lieven worked as a journalist in South Asia, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and covered the wars in Afghanistan, Chechnya and the southern Caucasus. Lieven is the author of several books, including "Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power?" and "Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry."