In a programmatic 1986 article, Robert Darnton argued that the study of reading must focus on the social context in which texts function and are received. The historian argued that books not only reflect historical processes but also create them, serving as a medium for social interaction among the participants in the communications circuit: readers, publishers, and booksellers (Darnton R., 1986).

In an extensive interview with Sobaka.ru, Nikita Lomagin, EUSP professor of history, a 2025 laureate of the TOP 50. Best Known People of St. Petersburg award, revealed myths about the blockade, spoke about the creation of the Institute of the History of the Defense and Blockade of Leningrad, the future of the blockade museum and the prospects for the development of the European University. 

A new episode of the podcast "History is Just Beginning" has been released. This episode features Arseny Moiseenko, a researcher at the Center for the Study of Ego-Documents "Prozhito" and a research fellow at the European University's Faculty of History.

The main questions of the course are why in the 1870s young people went en masse to raise peasants to revolt and educate workers, and what came of it.

The theme of the new episode is "Empires and Nations".

The book contains a chapter by  History Professor Nikita Lomagin about how Soviet military strategy changed over the course of almost 30 years.

An article by Alexei Miller, a professor in the Department of History, and Alexander Kamentsev, a graduate student in the same department, has appeared in the journal Communist and Post-Communist Studies. The article is titled "The Cossacks of Southern Russia in 21st-Century Memory Politics".

On May 27 at the History Museum of Armenia in Yerevan, Boris Kolonitsky will give a lecture dedicated to the memory of the First World War in Russia and other post-Soviet countries.

The Empire's End kicks off a new season of podcast “History is Just Beginning”. In the new cycle, historians continue to argue about the viability of the Russian Empire at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Historians Vladimir Lapin and Amiran Urushadze speak about amazing St. Petersburg, its smells and sounds. 

Historians Amiran Urushadze and Vladimir Lapin discuss the cult and the myths that surround the names of the two admirals.

Boris Kolonitsky Professor of the Faculty of History, was featured as a guest on Mikhail Shvydkov's program on the TV channel "Culture".

A new episode of the Podcast "History Is Just Beginning" is on the air. This time the theme is "The Caucasian War: History and Memory".  This war became the longest military confrontation in the history of the Russian Empire. Today it is well remembered in the North Caucasus and hardly remembered at all in the rest of Russia.  Historians Amiran Urushadze and Vladimir Lapin discuss why the Russian Empire fought for the Caucasus for so long and how the mountain people managed to remain undefeated.

Historians Amiran Urushadze and Yulia Safronova discuss how the tsar-liberator is remembered — from the moment of regicide to the present.

As part of EUSP’s history podcasts, a new cycle dedicated to Alexander II has begun. The previous cycle was devoted to the topic of fornication in Russia. Those podcasts can be found here.

The third and final episode of our series investigating fornication cases in 18th century Russia with Amiran Urushadze and Pavel Romanov.

We continue the conversation about fornication in Russia in the 18th century with historians Amiran Urushadze and Pavel Romanov in the podcast "History is just beginning".

The European University launches a popular science series, "History is just beginning", where we talk to scholars who are discovering the past by studying what is left of it. The focus of the first episode is Christian marital morality, church interrogation methods and punishment for extramarital sex in pre-Petrine Russia. Investigations into fornication cases in Russia in the 18th century are discussed by Associate Professor of the Faculty of History Amiran Urushadze and a graduate student of the same faculty, Pavel Romanov.

In 2022, the History Department of the European University at Saint Petersburg will call the 16th Annual Conference “Constructing the ‘Soviet’?” for young scholars. This year our point of departure will be a category of the “global socialist ecumene”, which we apply to the Soviet and other socialist projects history.

European University at Saint-Petersburg, November 1–2, 2021*.