Friday, August 30, 2024
Benjamin Nathans
Benjamin Nathans is the Alan Charles Kors Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania.
When did you first develop an interest in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies?
After graduating from college in the Orwellian year 1984, I was studying at the University of Tübingen, in West Germany, and during the winter break I went on a 10-day trip to Moscow and Leningrad. The Soviet Union was the most exotic place I’d ever been. Although I had come to Germany to study German history, those ten days pulled my interests eastward, as did two courses with the renowned historian Dietrich Geyer. I had a lot of catching up to do, starting with learning Russian.
How have your interests changed since your initial interest in the field?
I began by focusing on nationality issues during the late imperial period, especially relations between Jews and Russians. The idea of “bringing the empire back in” was in the air, although in truth the field had never completely abandoned it. At Berkeley, where I did my graduate training, none of my teachers specialized in nationality issues, nor was there a Berkeley “school” of history. But they were open to my interests. I benefitted enormously from working with Boris Gasparov, Martin Malia, and above all Reggie Zelnik, wide-angle intellectuals whose influence has endured for me and many others. After my first book, Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia, I wanted to try new things – a different century, different kinds of historical actors. I became interested in the functions of law and legal systems in non-democratic societies, and eventually in ideas of civil and human rights. Some scholars’ interests develop according to a pattern or a series of logical steps. Mine didn’t – they were driven as much by restlessness as anything else.
What is your current research/work project?
My new book has just come out: To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement. It explores the idea and practice of rights and the rule of law in the setting of late socialism. Instead of treating Soviet dissidents as avatars of Western liberalism, I investigate how, as products themselves of the Soviet order, they repurposed Soviet norms in order to promote a kind of containment of Soviet power from within. Understanding this process – how orthodoxies generate their own specific heresies – promises to illuminate the broader problem of how citizens in authoritarian societies conceive of and act on options for political engagement.
Tell us about your most interesting/enjoyable research or work experience.
To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause involved, among other things, two richly contrasting kinds of sources. On the one hand: ego documents, especially dissident memoirs, of which there are over a hundred and fifty (and that’s just book-length accounts). On the other hand: transcripts of KGB interrogations of dissidents, of which there are probably thousands, a fraction of which I was able to access. Same people, but very different kinds of texts and contexts. Bringing the two genres into conversation with each other was one of the most productive challenges I faced.
What do you value about your ASEEES membership?
Reading and writing – aka scholarship – are usually solitary pursuits. ASEEES brings people together! And it represents our shared interests and concerns to the wider world.
Besides your professional work, what other interests and/or hobbies do you enjoy?
I love biking and I’m an amateur pianist. Sometimes it’s a relief to stop reading and writing and instead listen and speak without words.