"Destructive Imagination: Male Fantasies and the Emotional Roots of Russia’s War in Ukraine" A Book Talk With Mariia Kurbak

The Global Studies program at Washington University in St. Louis invites you to a book talk by Maria Kurbak, Postdoctoral Associate in Global Studies, presenting her newly published book Destructive Imagination: Male Fantasies and the Emotional Roots of Russia’s War in Ukraine (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026).

Drawing on soldiers’ diaries, memoirs, poems, and social media, the book reconstructs the war from the perspective of Russian combatants themselves. It examines how personal grievances, historical memory, and collective myths transform violence into an emotionally meaningful and morally justified act. Rather than treating the war solely as a product of state policy, the book shifts attention to the symbolic and psychological narratives through which individuals come to see violence as purposeful and necessary.

Moving from the full-scale invasion of Ukraine to the myth of Novorossiya and the legacy of the Soviet collapse, the book offers a new framework for understanding how emotional and cultural narratives shape political behavior and make violence imaginable long before it becomes real.

The talk will be followed by discussion and a reception.