Alexander Etkind

This bold and wide-ranging book views the history of humankind through the prism of natural resources – how we acquire them, use them, value them, trade them, exploit them. History needs a cast of characters and in this story, the leading actors are peat and hemp, grain and iron, fur and oil, each with its own tale to tell. The...

Remembering Katyn explores the Soviet massacre of over 21,000 Polish prisoners in 1940, remembered today as Stalin’s emblematic mass murder, shrouded in one of history's most extensive cover-ups. Paradoxically, the majority of its victims perished far from the forest in western Russia that lends its name to this tragedy, with their remains buried in killing fields scattered across Russia, Ukraine,...

Putin’s war is a special operation against modernity. The invasion has been directed against Ukraine, but the war has a broader target: the modern world of climate awareness, energy transition and digital labour. By trading oil and gas, promoting Trump and Brexit, spreading corruption, boosting inequality and homophobia, subsidising far-right movements and destroying Ukraine, Putin’s clique aims at suppressing the...