In “To Run the World,” Sergey Radchenko examines how Soviet leaders attempted to balance the demands of revolution, security, and legitimacy during the Cold War. Read John Lewis Gaddis’s review: foreignaffairs.com/reviews/why-wo…

.Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko discuss an overlooked episode of the war in Ukraine—the intense diplomacy involving Moscow, Kyiv, and a host of other actors that could have resulted in a settlement just weeks after the war began: foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/talks-…

samf.substack.com/p/ukraines-inv…. Always read Lawrence Freedman.

This is something else. The last speaker in particular.

Parting thoughts here from Katherine Graham whose memoir proved a worthy beach companion.

An interesting panel on Ukraine, including a few thoughts from me: theguardian.com/commentisfree/….

"He died, slowly and without publicity." Liza Fokht on the death of anti-war protester Pavel Kushnir. I suspect this story will be remembered when other names fade from the headlines bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

Russia's strikes on an ostensibly "military" target in Poltava does not make this strike legitimate because the invasion is a priori illegitimate. The case is pretty clear cut.

This here has been my morning coffee companion for the last week: amazon.co.uk/Indira-Life-Ne…. What do people think? I really like this book. Just beautifully written. Reminded me of all the good days I spent in India researching at the Nehru Library & at the National Archives.

"He was becoming a master at mass hypnosis. What he understood in a way that none of his predecessors had was that people were ruled most of all by emotion and that their reality had less to do with the external world than with the symbolic one he could fashion for them."

Thank you for reading, Mark Urban! Glad you found it interesting!