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Testicles vs. Trunks, or, The Discreet Charms of Public Hooliganism
Testicles, titanic trunks, tourists, and pickled corpses. I offer these words up as the answer in a Russia-themed round of Jeopardy. The question is, of course, "What can be found...
The New Cold War is Cold-Blooded: Mass Hysteria and Sex Lizards in Space
We are on the verge of a new era. The world’s first Earth-orbiting sex lizard satellite has been launched by the Russians – and they’ve already lost all contact with...
A Hothouse Flower in a Communal Apartment (Russia's Alien Nations)
Sinyavsky exploits the alien metaphor to the fullest by making his narrator an exotic plant that can barely survive in the harsh Moscow winter and the harsher Soviet communal apartment.
You Want Romanovs With That?
There has long been a reluctance to accept that the Bolsheviks could, in fact, wipe out the entire imperial family and for the next seventy-five years not feel bad about...
Penile Servitude and the Police State
Sunday before last, on the drizzly police holiday, Petersburg performance artist Petr Pavlensky (b. 1984) sat stark naked in Moscow's sacred center and nailed his scrotum to the cold cobblestones...
Person or Persons Unknown
Everyone loves to be proven right, but novelists don’t often expect it — especially five hundred years after the period where their books are set. After all, that’s half the...
Open Letter on the Termination of Russian Studies Faculty at Ohio University
Like you, we are wholeheartedly invested in the survival and recovery of higher education in the United States amid the COVID-19 pandemic. That recovery depends on the will of universities...
Documenting Nation: Why Watching TV Documentaries Matters in Russia Today
Don't worry, I watched them all for you — 672 episodes or 329 documentary films. I did so because TV documentaries matter for gaining insight into the Russian reality they...
Crime and Punishment in Today's Russia
Almost 25 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, crime and policy responses to it are critical to understanding the political dynamics of the region.
Change is coming to All The Russias
I am stepping away from most of my editorial duties for the blog
Vasilisa Visits America: The Rise of Slavic Folklore- Inspired Young Adult Literature in the U.S.
Recently, Russia — or, at least, an imaginary version thereof — has become a standby among writers of American young adult and popular literature.
Stand with Ukraine: An Open Letter from Russian and Kazakh students in the NYU Department of Politics on the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
As citizens of the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan, we unequivocally condemn this war, treacherously started by Vladimir Putin.
Sergei Parkhomenko and the Protest Movement in Russia
“What can Russians do to express themselves? Be political.” Raising and answering this crucial question, Sergei Parkhomenko spoke this past Monday at the Jordan Center about the recent protest movement...
Andrei Zorin's Sandglass
All creative works are autobiographical, but they are autobiographical in their own way. As part of NYU’s commemoration of the War of 1812, the Jordan Center was pleased to welcome...
Are Russians Rejecting Authoritarianism?
In 1995, the film heroes Russians thought would make good presidential candidates were Marshal Zhukov and the Soviet agent Shtirlits. In 2019, the list is topped by Ekaterina, the single...