Welcome to Russian History Retold.

Episode 309, an interview with Professor Marlene Aruel.

Hey, today we have a special guest,

Professor Marlene Aruel, a research professor of international affairs

and political science at the George Washington University, and director of the University's

Illiberalism Studies program.

She's also the co-author of Russia, Great Power We Can State,

Memory Politics and the Russian Civil War,

an author of Is Russia fascist and Understanding Russia, the

challenges of transformation. Welcome to the podcast Professor Laro.

Thank you so much for having me today.

You bet.

One of the things I want to say is I was writing a book on Russian history and my title was

understanding Russia so you've already taken that one so I'll have to come up with a new

It's probably not the only book with that title. I'm sure

My first question is how did you develop an interest in Russian history and what particular topics within it are you most interested in?

Yeah, so I began studying Russian in fact, Russian language when I was still at school in Paris in the late 80s.

It was the big Gorbimania time, peristroika time, it was really fascinating.

And then I began traveling to Russia at the collapse of the Soviet Union

and the first post-Soviet years.

And I was interested both by what was happening at that time, but also by history,

19th century and immigration period.

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