Dr Zbigniew Wojnowski

zbigniew wojnowski
Associate Professor
St Antony's College, Faculty of History

I am a historian of Ukraine, Russia, and Central Asia. My research has focused on interethnic relations and imperial dynamics in the USSR. My book entitled 'The Near Abroad: Socialist Eastern Europe and Soviet Patriotism in Ukraine' examines how the flow of people and ideas across borders shaped Ukrainian and Soviet identities after the death of Stalin. I have also published on the history of twentieth-century Kazakhstan.

I am currently working on a monograph about the history of perestroika and the collapse of the USSR. The book examines the interplay between economic, social, and cultural transformations through the prism of show business.

 

 Supervisees

 - Iryna Zamuruieva (DPhil, OSGA)
 - Victoria Aranowicz (DPhil, History)
 - Anna Efimova (DPhil, History)
 - Anna Giluch (DPhil, History)
 - Natalia Golysheva (DPhil, History)
 - Dylan Hebert (DPhil, History)
 - Linda Kvitkina (DPhil, History)
 - Paulina Maziarska (DPhil, History)
 - Arthur McFarlane (DPhil, History)
- Katerina Szylo (DPhil, History)
- Ioana Zamfir (DPhil, History)

 

Research Interests
Research Disciplines:
  • History
Research Keywords:
  • Popular culture, Ethnicity, Nationalism, Perestroika
Countries:
  • Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Central Asia, USSR, East Europe

 

Contact Information

Email: zbigniew.wojnowski@history.ox.ac.uk

Publications

Books

  • The Near Abroad: Socialist Ukraine and the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe, 1956-85' (University of Toronto Press, 2017)

Book Chapters

  • 'Poland, Ukraine, and the limits of socialist friendship: how a Polish diplomat tried and failed to overcome ethnic rifts in the Soviet Bloc, 1944-64' in Norihiro Naganawa (ed), Dreams of Emancipation: A Transnational History of Revolutionary Russia (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2024), pp.199-228
  • ‘Impact of the Prague Spring in the USSR’ in Kevin McDermott and Matthew Stibbe (eds), Eastern Europe in 1968: Responses to the Prague Spring and Warsaw Pact Invasion (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp.71-96.

Monograph

  • The Near Abroad: Socialist Ukraine and the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe, 1956-85 (University of Toronto Press, 2017)

Articles

  • (with Michel Abesser), 'Between Winning and Losing the Cultural Cold War – The Soviet Ministry of Culture and Musical Infrastructures During the Cold War', New Global Studies 19:2 (2025), pp. 149-174
  • 'The Lives and Afterlives of a Soviet Misfit: Volodymyr Ivasiuk, the Emotional Crisis of Late Socialism, and the anti-Soviet Turn in Ukrainian Popular Culture’, Contemporary European History 32:1 (2023), pp.61-78
  • ‘The Pop Industry from Stagnation to Perestroika: How Music Professionals Embraced Economic Reform that Broke East European Cultural Networks’, The Journal of Modern History 92:2 (2020), pp. 311-350.
  • ‘Soviet Identity Politics in Ukrainian Crimea: Friendship of the Peoples and Internal Borders in the USSR between the 1950s and the 1980s’, Acta Slavica Iaponica 40 (2020), pp.125-48.
  • ‘De-Stalinisation and the Failure of Soviet Identity Building in Kazakhstan’, The Journal of Contemporary History 52:4 (2017), pp.999-1021.
  • Guest edited and authored introduction for a special section of Nationalities Papers entitled ‘The Soviet People: National and Supranational Identities in the USSR after 1945’, Nationalities Papers 43:1 (2015), pp.1-7.
  • ‘An Unlikely Bulwark of Sovietness: Cross-Border Travel and the Soviet People in Western Ukraine, 1950s-1980s’, Nationalities Papers 43:1 (2015), pp.82-101.
  • ‘Staging Patriotism: Popular Responses to Solidarność in Soviet Ukraine, 1980-81’, Slavic Review 71:4 (2012), pp.824-48.
  • ‘De-Stalinisation and Soviet Patriotism: Ukrainian Reactions to East European Unrest in 1956’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 13:4 (2012), pp.799-829.

Other Publications

  • Review of 'World War II as an Identity Project: Historicism, Legitimacy Contests, and the (Re-)Construction of Political Communities in Ukraine, 1939–1946' by Oleksandr Melnyk, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (online first publication, 2025)
  • Review of 'The DJ Who “Brought Down” the USSR: The Life and Legacy of Seva Novgorodsev' by Michelle S. Daniel, The Russian Review (online first publication, 2024)
  • ‘Keskuseta geograafia poole’ (Towards a Centerless Geography), in Estonian, Vikerkaar: Kuulturiajakiri (November 2023)
  • ‘Moscow’s Divide and Rule’, History Today 72:4 (April 2022)
  • ‘Putin’s “History” of Ukraine Has an All-Too Soviet Legacy’,(February 2022)
  • Book review of The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution by Marci Shore, The Journal of Modern History 93:1 (2021)
  • ‘The Market Decides? A Short History of Ukrainian Pop Music’, (April 2019)
  • ‘The East European “1968” and Its Legacies’, blog entry for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, co-authored with Matthew Stibbe (August 2018)
  • Book review of Club Red: Vacation Travel and the Soviet Dream by Diane Koenker, The Journal of Contemporary History 51:4 (2016)
  • ‘Whose Crimea is it anyway?’, (April 2014) [also available in Russian translation]
  • ‘Economic tensions worsen unrest in eastern Ukraine’, Al Jazeera America (25 March 2014) [also available in Turkish translation]
  • ‘“We are in for a shock”: Teaching Soviet History at Nazarbayev University’, NewsNet (August 2013)
  • ‘Postcard from Astana’, The World Today 69:3 (April 2013)