Why do peat and peatlands matter in modern Russian history? The introduction highlights peatlands as a prominent feature of Russia’s physical environment and reflects on their forgotten role as providers of fuel in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It discusses the invisibility of peat and peatlands in most existing historical narratives of the fossil fuel age and identifies peat as a lens to reflect upon Russia’s place within global histories of economic growth and associated resource-use. Situating the book at the intersection of modern Russian, energy, and environmental history, the introduction underscores why the planetary predicament makes the seemingly marginal history of peat extraction a topic of global significance.

Physical education in the Soviet Union, initially focused on health and military readiness, shifted toward producing athletes for international competitions by the early 1950s, peaking in the 1970s/1980s. This shift led to increased investment in sport psychology. To analyze this history, particularly the use of sports to promote communist values, and challenge other political systems, I synthesized peer-reviewed articles using keywords like "Soviet Union," "sport(s) psychology," and "Puni." As social scientists, we decided to analyze this specific history with an emphasis on psychological theories to better understand how the Soviet Union’s communist ideology impacted scientific study within the Soviet Union and sports competition abroad. Thus, I explored the life of the most prominent sports psychologist in the Soviet Union, Avksenty Cezarevich Puni, and his theory of Psychological Preparation for Competition (PPC), which serves as an example of the Soviet Union’s approach to applied sports. Additionally, I examined how Soviet Olympic successes spurred investment in sports and sport psychology, reflecting efforts to compete with the West and asserting the superiority of communism.

The ideology of Marxism–Leninism seemingly contradicts competition, yet competition was prevalent in former communist countries to foster productivity and economic growth. The Stakhanovite movement, originating in the Soviet Union, incentivized laborers to excel as an economic propaganda tool, while also honoring them as socialist heroes but also penalizing dissent as a political propaganda tool. Competition extended to managers of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) vying for government resources. Consumer competition arose from pervasive shortages, driving black market economies. Underground enterprises, which were protected from competition, resisted economic reform from a planned economic system to a more market-oriented system to maintain their privileged status. Post-World War II, some SOEs adopted market-based approaches, competing domestically and globally. This chapter argues that such forms of competition emerge when humans struggle for survival amid perceived inequalities in the existing system, prompting them to seek opportunities and thrive.

This chapter examines how the War Department approached planning for the postwar world. It specifically focuses on the future of Soviet-American relations and how that relationship impacted preparations for the defeat and eventual occupation of the Axis powers. The War Department often adopted ambiguous and confusing stances toward the Soviet Union when it came to postwar planning issues. Stimson, his senior advisers, and Marshall primarily felt a durable postwar peace required a cooperative Washington–Moscow relationship while Army planners and mid-level War Department officials expressed strong concerns about Soviet behavior in Eastern Europe and what that meant for the future. Given Army planners’ central role in the strategic planning and policy process, these divisions helped blur and muddle Washington’s broader Russia policy and helped reinforce American hawks’ views that the future Soviet–American relationship would be dominated by conflict and superpower rivalry. The hawks’ increasingly strong beliefs made confrontational US policies more likely and helped construct the foundations for the pugnacious atmosphere in the developing superpower relationship and the Cold War.

O’Casey was a great writer of war, and he wrote a great deal during the Second World War when he lived in England, although much of this work has failed to find a place in the theatrical repertoire. This chapter focuses on the two wartime plays set during the war: the comic Purple Dust (1940), about two Englishmen moving to Ireland to escape the conflict; and the tragic Oak Leaves and Lavender (1946), set during the Battle of Britain. This chapter shows how the geopolitics of the Second World War, combined with O’Casey’s complex political affiliations and a heightened anxiety about Irish masculinity, placed O’Casey in a position from which he found it difficult to speak.

Chapter 2 demonstrates that Russian modernist conservatism was first formed in the late Soviet Union as an attempt to confront the convergence horizon predicted by Western liberal modernization theories. From 1970 to 1985, theorizers of modernist conservatism aimed to reenchant Soviet modernity through the deconfliction of the relationship between technological modernity and spirituality. As they viewed it, this new ideological language should serve to reinvigorate the Soviet state ideology and maintain it as an alternative to the Western model of modernity. The chapter shows that, in contrast to the description of the Soviet state ideology as a rigid monolith, modernist conservatism’s ideas were selectively dispersed in official sites of ideology production such as the Komsomol.

Chapter 1 introduces the reader to the book’s definition of the Russian hawks. It provides a brief review of the current literature on Russian conservatism and the gaps in it. It presents the two distinctive features of the book: the historical scope that spans across the 1991 regime change and the sociohistorical analysis of the career of the Russian hawks from ideological fringes to policy prominence. It builds the main argument of the book around the concept of idea network. Finally, it discusses the outline of the book.

This conclusion highlights that the Russian regime, from the mid-1990s onwards, has revived Soviet practices of sponsorship of ideology production. Instead of the Soviet institutionalization of an ideological apparatus, however, the current regime has outsourced it to clubs and think tanks outside the administration or party institutions. This challenges the common narrative that identifies a distinct conservative turning point in the Russian regime from 2012 onward. Instead, the book argues that this shift should be viewed within a broader and more gradual evolution of the relationship between decision-makers and “ideas networks.” The second implication is that regime support for ideology production aimed not at consolidating a unique state ideology but at cultivating and authoritatively controlling a certain degree of ideological pluralism. While an ideological core consolidated over the years in official discourse around key concepts such as strong state power and the multipolarity of the world order, additional ideological content remained fluid. This practice of “managed ideological pluralism” through the promotion or demotion of different idea networks maintained a range of lines and narratives available to justify various policy courses.

The chapter delves into the iconic imagery and contested legacy of Moshe Dayan as the “minister of victory” during the Six-Day War. It examines the strategic decisions and military maneuvers orchestrated by Dayan, shedding light on his pivotal role in shaping the objective and management of the war. The emphasizing his focus on neutralizing the Egyptian military threat and avoiding unnecessary entanglements with other Arab armies. Dayan’s adaptability and opportunistic approach to seizing fleeting opportunities are highlighted, underscoring his influence on major decisions while attempting to minimize intervention in routine management. Furthermore, the chapter delves into Dayan’s considerations of international sensitivities, particularly regarding the Holy Basin and the potential involvement of the Soviet Union. The controversy surrounding the war’s objectives and priorities, as well as the tensions between the political and military echelons, is also examined. Additionally, the chapter delves into Dayan’s interactions with political figures and military leaders, revealing the complexities and challenges he faced in navigating the rapidly evolving dynamics of the war.