Scott Reynolds Nelson

Scott Reynolds Nelson is the Georgia Athletic Association Professor of History at the University of Georgia. His latest book, Oceans of Grain: How American Wheat Remade the World, was published by Basic Books in February 2022.

After invasion, famine

Geopolitical pundits fool themselves by thinking that President Putin wants simply to return to challenge Nato or return to the Soviet Union. This is a much older story. Russian imperialists have had utopian designs on the Ukrainian plains since at least the days of Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible. In 1768, Catherine the