Roundup: Talking About History

Natalia Bubnova: The Unknown War

Natalia Bubnova is deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Center.

Todd Gitlin: Vietnam: the Old Business That Never Goes Away

Todd Gitlin is a professor of journalism and sociology and chair of the communications program at Columbia University, and a prolific author whose most recent book is a novel, Undying.The overwhelmingly effective forces that ended the war were the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong.

Louise Mirrer: What to Do When America Gets an F on Its History Report Card

Louise Mirrer joined the New-York Historical Society as President and CEO in June 2004. Under her guidance, the Society is reinvigorating its commitment to foster greater public understanding of history and its impact on the world of today, to support and encourage historical scholarship, and to develop education initiatives for young people, students, and adults. Dr. Mirrer is leading the Society's campaign for a major renovation of its landmark building on Central Park West, which so far has raised nearly $80 million.

Jim Lacey: Operation Barbarossa

Jim Lacey is professor of strategic studies at the Marine Corps War College. He is the author of the recently released The First Clash and Keep from All Thoughtful Men. The opinions in this article are entirely his own and do not represent those of the Department of Defense or any of its members.

Gennady Burbulis and Michele A. Berdy: The Inside Story of the Failed Coup that Brought Down the Soviet Union

Gennady Burbulis, provost of Moscow's International University, held several high positions in the first Russian government, including secretary of state. Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and writer."That scum!" Boris Yeltsin fumed. "It's a coup. We can't let them get away with it."

Jim Lacey: Operation Barbarossa

Jim Lacey is professor of strategic studies at the Marine Corps War College. He is the author of the recently released The First Clash and Keep from All Thoughtful Men. The opinions in this article are entirely his own and do not represent those of the Department of Defense or any of its members.

Andrei Kalikh: Russia's WWII ... Still Too Many Taboos?

Andrei Kalikh is programme coordinator at the Centre for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights.22 June 2011 marks the 70th anniversary of Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union. This date is to this day a painful memory for the people of Russia, though for a long time the official Soviet calendar ignored it. Everyone knew that 22 June was the start of the war, but it was not until 1996 that Boris Yeltsin declared it a day of national mourning.

David E. Hoffman: Sakharov Was Russia's Mandela. How Could They Have Forgotten Him?

David E. Hoffman is a contributing editor to Foreign Policy and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. His book The Oligarchs will be issued in an updated edition in September.

Katherine Connell: Hug History

Katherine Connell is National Review’s research director

Anne Applebaum: Everything You Think You Know About the Collapse of the Soviet Union Is Wrong

Anne Applebaum, author of Gulag: A History, is a columnist for the Washington Post and Slate.

WaPo Editorial Board: Making History and Civics a Priority

U.S. youths score lowest on U.S. history among all disciplines, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress survey released last week. A distressing 2 percent of high school seniors knew what Brown v. Board of Education was about. Civic apathy is nothing new, but the reports are increasingly dire.

Jeff Jacoby: Americans Don’t Know Much About History

Jeff Jacoby is a Boston Globe Columnist. He can be reached at jacoby@globe.com or Twitter @jeffjacoby. When the Department of Education last week released the results of the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress — “the Nation’s Report Card’’ — the bottom line was depressingly predictable: Not even a quarter of American students is proficient in US history, and the percentage declines as students grow older.

Warren Kozak: What If Jews Had Followed the Palestinian Path?

Mr. Kozak is the author of LeMay: The Life and Wars of General Curtis LeMay (Regnery, 2009).

Tony Woodlief: What Would the Founders Teach?

Tony Woodlief is president of the Bill of Rights Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating students about the words and ideas of the founders.

Harvey J. Kaye: Republicans Remain Poor at History – But So Do American Citizens

Harvey J. Kaye is the Ben & Joyce Rosenberg Professor of Democracy and Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and the author of Thomas Paine and the Promise of America. He is currently writing The Four Freedoms and the Promise of America: FDR, the Greatest Generation, and Us.

Dean Nichols: Zhou Enlai's Famous Saying Debunked

Dean Nichols is a writer for History Today....During Richard Nixon's visit to Beijing in 1972, the Chinese premier, Zhou Enlai, was asked about the impact of the French Revolution. Speaking of an event that took place nearly two centuries previously, Zhou famously commented that it was "too early to say". The witticism quickly became a standard way of emphasising the Chinese ability to take the long view in history.

Drew Gilpin Faust: Telling War Stories

Drew Gilpin Faust is president of Harvard University and the author, most recently, of This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (Knopf). A version of this essay was given as the 2011 Jefferson Lecture of the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington, D.C. This article originally ran in the June 30, 2011, issue of the magazine.

William S. Lind and William S. Piper: Alternate History ... The Right Needs a Narrative to Refute the Superstitions of Progress

William S. Lind is director of the American Conservative Center for Public Transportation. William S. Piper, a student at Baldwin-Wallace College, provided additional research. At any given time, most cultures have a dominant narrative, a collectively agreed upon story that explains where they came from, where they are going, and why. Narratives change over time—modern Italy’s is not that of ancient Rome—and several may be in contention at once.

Conor Friedersdorf: The War on Drugs Turns 40

Conor Friedersdorf is an associate editor at The Atlantic, where he writes about politics and national affairs. He lives in Venice, California, and is the founding editor of The Best of Journalism, a newsletter devoted to exceptional nonfiction.

Hariz Halilovich: Memories of a better future in the aftermath of the Srebrenica genocide

Hariz Halilovich is an anthropologist and senior lecturer at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.Possibly the only way to explain who you are is to remember who you were, and to take a mental journey into your very intimate past, to the place you left many years ago but you know you will always belong to – though you may never actually return, knowing as you do that the place and the people who made the place won’t be there.