Recent trends in the urban history of modern Eastern Europe and Eurasia

Urban history as a field has never been just about cities.Even so, recent work is characterized by a remarkable creativity in integrating city-based stories with wider developments as well as experimenting with new methodological approaches. 1 This review discusses a few recent examples of early career research on modern East European and Eurasian cities.The selection is partly a consequence of contingent encounters among English-speaking scholars of Eastern Europe and Eurasia.It is also, however, an expression of a shared goal to contribute to broader historiographical debates through the study of our region that all too often has been 'the flyover zone' not only of urban history, but other fields as well. 2 It is important to note that the regional scholarship discussed here has been mostly promoted not through institutions and events focused on urban history, but through the framework of East European and Eurasian studies.3 This review, then, also serves to promote the benefits of academic collaboration and cross-regional comparisons.Such connections have the potential to be especially helpful in challenging the existing analytical approaches, 'defamiliarizing' ourselves with Western cities and bringing forth new insights.4 Urban history's role in analytical experimentation can be seen in three recent trends, each one reinterpreted and advanced by the early career scholars whose work is reviewed here.The first trend is towards an increasing interest in urban time and temporalities.The methodological approach stems from the rediscovery of the work of Reinhart Koselleck and fresh contributions from scholars such as François Hartog.5 A focus on modern historicity, principally the subjective understanding