With the war entering its second month, the professor of history examines its origins while debunking some myths. Brigid O’Keeffe is a professor of history at Brooklyn College, and an expert on imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. Entering the second month of Russia’s invasion of its sovereign neighboring country, O’Keeffe talked about the roots of this conflict, why Putin invaded and whether another “Cold War” has been started. About Brigid O’Keeffe Brigid O’Keeffe is the author of the book, The Multiethnic Soviet Union and its Demise (forthcoming in fall 2022), which offers a concise, accessible overview of the evolution of the Soviet Union as a multiethnic empire. She is the author of Esperanto and Languages of Internationalism in Revolutionary Russia (2021)—a study of the Esperantists in late imperial and early Soviet Russia—and New Soviet Gypsies: Nationality, Performance, and Selfhood in the Early Soviet Union, a book that examines how early Soviet nationality policy enabled Roma to fashion themselves as integrated Soviet citizens. O’Keeffe has also published her research on the life of Ivy Litvinov and on race in Soviet history.
