UCSB Professor Emeritus of History Tsuyoshi Hasegawa engages in a colloquy with Michigan State Professor Emeritus of History Lewis Siegelbaum on Professor Hasegawa’s new book, The Last Tsar: The Abdication of Nicholas II and the Fall of the Romanovs. When Tsar Nicholas II fell from power in 1917, Imperial Russia faced a series of overlapping crises, from war to social unrest. Although Nicholas’s life is often described as tragic, it was not fate that doomed ...

Drawing on her current book project, Communist Neverland, Elizabeth McGuire tells the story of the Stasova International Children’s Home, an elite orphanage and boarding school for the children of Communist Party leaders from all parts of the globe. Professor McGuire will focus in this talk on “Jimmy Ruegg,” one of the Stasova home’s many “mystery children.” Jimmy spent his earliest years in the International Settlement in Shanghai, believed he was German, and thought he had ...