genocide against Azeris by Armenians’ in today’s official Azerbaijani propaganda (p. 134). One of the problematic elements in Nested Nationalism is the description of the escalation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Goff writes that in November 1987, ‘the first train arrived in Baku carrying Azeris fleeing interethnic violence in Armenia’ (p. 221) without providing any reference. The problem with this assertion is that there was no interethnic violence in Armenia at the height of Gorbachev’s perestroika. Narratives that ethnic Azeris were forced out of Armenia date from the early 1990s, years after the conflict started in February 1988. The book is richly documented, using both oral history—with some 120 interviews—and archival material. Carrying out academic research in Azerbaijan comes with numerous difficulties, as the author narrates how in one instance an ‘archive director denounced me as a separatist in front of archival staff’ and, elsewhere, how ‘it was not possible for me to order files about Armenians while conducting research in Azerbaijani archives’ (p. 10).

Cold War, mentioning several important events such as the Cuban missile crisis, the Soviet leadership’s anti-Western campaigns and the erection of the Berlin Wall. The case of the spy in question is an important one. His trial and verdict served as a precedent for other legal cases, some involving Nazi party members, as the Soviet government was found to have the main responsibility for the assassinations, while the agent was merely seen as an accessory to murder. In addition to the legal implications of the case, the agent’s confessions about the Soviet secret missions deeply affected Western views of the Soviet Union and attitudes towards the d etente era. Both books are highly recommended to those who are interested in the question of how postcommunist societies deal with their own past. ‘Collaborator’ may hold a pejorative meaning in many languages but the authors of the books under review do not fall prey to lazy oversimplifications in discussing ‘collaborators’ and their deeds. They carefully emphasise the political and social structure that shaped individual and collective agency, raising important questions about motivations for collaboration and transitional justice in the post-Cold War era.