Department of History
Department of History
Kyrill Kunakhovich

Kyrill Kunakhovich

Associate Professor; Interim Director, European Studies Program
Email: kunakhovich@virginia.edu
434 924-6415
Address/Office Hours

By appointment

Fields/Specialties
Modern Europe
Cultural History
Heritage Studies
Cold War
European Studies

Education

Ph.D. Princeton University, 2013
M.A. Princeton University, 2009
B.A. Yale University, 2005

Biography

I am an historian of modern Europe, with a particular focus on central and eastern Europe in the twentieth century. My first book, Communism's Public Sphere: Culture as Politics in Cold War Poland and East Germany (Cornell, 2022), explored the political role of cultural spaces in the Eastern Bloc. Under communist regimes that banned free speech, political discussions shifted to spaces of art: theaters, galleries, concert halls, and youth clubs. I showed how these venues turned into sites of dialogue and contestation. While officials used them to spread the communist message, artists and audiences often flouted state policy and championed alternative visions. Cultural spaces therefore came to function as a public sphere, or a rare outlet for discussing public affairs. 

Communism's Public Sphere won the Kulczycki Book Prize from the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, received Honorable Mention for the Oskar Halecki Award from the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, and was shortlisted for the Waterloo Centre for German Studies Book Prize.

My current project is tentatively titled "The Old Town: Warsaw, UNESCO, and the Polish Origins of World Heritage." Ubiquitous today, the word “heritage” was rarely used before the 1960s. My project traces how this term emerged by examining one the first sites on UNESCO’s World Heritage List: the Old Town of Warsaw. Demolished by the Nazis during WWII, the Old Town was then systematically rebuilt—not as it was, but as a fantasy of what it should have been. The reconstruction was widely hailed abroad amid concerns that Western cities, too, were losing their identity to modernization. Warsaw’s example inspired historic preservation codes in Western Europe, the United States, and eventually UNESCO, where Polish architects helped write the World Heritage List’s rules. My project shows how a Stalinist construction project turned into a global model, shaping our contemporary notions of heritage.

In 2026-27, I'll be an ACLS Fellow and Resident Associate at the National Humanities Center.

Publications

Books

Communism's Public Sphere: Culture as Politics in Cold War Poland and East Germany. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022.

The Long 1989: Decades of Global Revolution. Co-edited with Piotr Kosicki. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2019. 

Articles and Book Chapters

“'What German Thought Cannot Express': Gert Neumann Reads Adam Michnik.” In Scott Harrison, Jeff Hayton, and Katharine White (eds.), Socialist Subjectivities: Queering East Germany under Honecker. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2025.

“Antoni Słonimski's UNESCO: On the Uses of International Organizations in Cold War Poland.” Slavic Review 83:2 (Summer 2024), 264-280.

“The Red Director: Karl Kayser and the Evolution of GDR Theater.” The German Studies Review 40:1 (February 2017), 103-121.

“Reconstruction as Revolution: Cultural Life in Post-WWII Kraków and Leipzig.” East European Politics and Societies 30:3 (August 2016), 475-495.

“The Cultural Cold War on the Home Front: The Political Role of Theaters in Communist Kraków and Leipzig.” In Christopher Balme and Berenika Szymanski (eds.), Theatre, Globalization and the Cold War. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

“Ties that Bind, Ties that Divide: Second World Cultural Exchange at the Grassroots.” In Patryk Babiracki and Austin Jersild (eds.), Exploring the Second World: Socialist Internationalism in the Cold War. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

“Cinema Cultures of Integration: Film Distribution and Exhibition in the GDR and Czechoslovakia from the Perspective of Two Local Cases, 1945-1960.” With Pavel Skopal. In Lars Karl and Pavel Skopal (eds.), Cinema in Service of the State: Perspectives on Film Culture in the GDR and Czechoslovakia, 1945-1960. New York: Berghahn Books, 2015.

“Postwar Cultures: Art and Communism in Kraków and Leipzig.” Pamięć i Śprawiedliwość [Poland] 25 (1/2015): 163-184.

Public Writing and Speaking

“A Different Vision: The Intervision Song Contest from the Cold War to the War on Ukraine.” GlobalEurope issue 4 (April 2026).

“Law as Heritage” (with Lisa Stuckey). tbc. working through heritage concepts, issue 2 (2025). 

“AI in Historical Perspective.” In Jess Reia, MC Forelle, and Yingchong Wang (eds.), Reimagining AI for Environmental Justice and Creativity. Charlottesville, VA: Digital Technology for Democracy Lab, University of Virginia, 2025.

I co-edited a special issue of EuropeNow (issue 14, February 2018) with Manuela Achilles and Nicole Shea. The theme is "Nationalism, Nativism, and the Revolt Against Globalization." The issue also featured a Campus Spotlight on UVA and its response to the events of August 11-12. 

Thanks to the generosity of the Mead Endowment, my students and I reconstructed an East German living room using hundreds of objects that we bought on eBay. You can read about our project here, or follow us on Facebook.

In April 2022, I recorded a podcast for UVA Speaks on the historical context for Russia's war on Ukraine. I also spoke to the Global Inquirer podcast about the progress of the war in spring of 2023 (part 2 here) and the resurgence of fascism in 2026.

Awards and Honors

American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, January-December 2027

Resident Associate, National Humanities Center, September 2026-May 2027

Visiting Fellowship, Käte Hamburger Centre for Advanced Study Inherit. Heritage in Transformation, Humboldt University Berlin, Summer 2024

Recognized by the Seven Society (UVA) for undergraduate teaching and mentorship, October 2025

Mead Honored Faculty recognition for student mentorship, 2017

Courses Taught

I teach courses on modern Europe, nationalism, communism, fascism, and the Cold War. I also teach in the European Studies program.

  • HIEU 1502, "The Berlin Wall: Lies and Spies in a Cold War City"
  • HIEU 1502, "Life in Dictatorships: Surviving Authoritarianism in Twentieth-Century Europe"
  • HIEU 2004, "Nationalism in Europe: From the UK to Ukraine"
  • HIEU 3670, "The Fall of Communism: How the Soviet Empire Lost the Cold War"
  • HIEU 3501, "Ukraine/Russia: Entangled Histories"
  • HIEU 4502, "Cold War Europe: One Continent Between Two Superpowers"
  • HIST 2014, "Fascism: A Global History" (with Manuela Achilles)
  • HIST 9029, "Tutorial in the History and Theory of Nationalism"
  • HIEU 9037, "Tutorial in Central and Eastern European History"
  • EURS 5000, "Europe and the World: An Introduction to European Studies"
  • EURS 6000, "Research Inquiries in European Studies"
  • EURS 6720, "Nations and Nationalism"