The Perch: Historical Digressions

Explaining the present and mapping the future, in retrospection...

Ever since The Perch was founded roughly one year ago, its mission has rested upon the belief that understanding Eurasia’s contemporary state of affairs cannot be fully understood without historical depth and context. In my writing, I’ve always looked backwards before tackling the greatest questions that lie in front of us, but Historical Digressions will ultimately be the series that gives this guiding philosophy of The Perch the dedicated attention which it deserves.

Historical Digressions will be a new, supplementary essay format released at The Perch’s ongoing analysis on Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and other corners of Eurasia that will continue to form the vast majority of The Perch’s written output. Eurasia is a deeply layered region, making its understanding impossible without looking back to its long and troubled geopolitical history. Historical Digressions will bridge this gap by mapping out the conflicts, struggles, and ideas in Eurasia’s past that continue to reverberate through its modern lived experience. It may be history, but so too is our present moment…

The first four-part essay series from Historical Digressions will cover Europe’s most important forgotten conflict from the 20th century: the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921. While historically critical in its own respect, assessing the driving forces behind this long-forgotten conflict between the early Polish Republic and Soviet Union in the years following World War I holds great importance in understanding the present-day dynamic between Eastern Europe’s two strongest countries: Poland and Russia.

While the release of Historical Digressions may be few and far between, some additional future topics may include Ataturk’s War of Turkish Independence, the lasting legacy of the Ba’athist Political Movement, and Enver Pasha’s short-lived “Pan Turkic Empire” in Central Asia during the latter days of the Russian Civil War.

Historical Digressions will supplement this publication’s contemporary geopolitical analysis in a way that will leave readers better informed to the critical junctures in Eurasia’s past that have brought us to where we are today—and to where we might be headed next…