Featured
Stalin's Dead Road: Ania Hyman discusses her expedition to the Siberian taiga
Ania Hyman recounted her incredible experiences on an expedition to the Siberian Taiga as part of a research project to document the last remaining, and largely untouched, Gulag camps.
Romanian Secret Police Archives and the Women of the Religious Underground
In the process of surveilling church leadership, clergy, and church elders, the Secret Police unwittingly uncovered the new roles that women took on in religious life during a time when...
Elidor Mëhilli explores Albanian filmmaking across the 1960s Sino-Soviet split
Albeit brief, Albania was for a short while held up by China as a model for socialism.
Between Sustainability and Development in Romania
Romanians have become increasingly aware of their environmental difficulties. Today, news of deforestation represents a regular part of the Romanian news cycle and is a hobbyhorse in the House of...
‘I will be back in the autumn’ – a Romanian in the UK (An Immigrant Story)
I was back in the autumn. But it was fourteen years later.
Anticommunism, Neoliberalism, and the Rerunning of Socialist Era Films on Romanian Television
Anticommunist discourse has long since ceased to advance the democratization of society by means of depoliticization and “decommunization.” Instead, it has become a discourse that protects the privileges of the...
A Poll Tax on Patience: Disenfranchising Romanian Citizens Abroad
r. Ponta and his government won a small victory by disenfranchising one of the people who would have voted against him.
Ethical Questions in Researching the Religious Underground in Romania's Secret Police Archives, Part I
In their effort to curtail the clandestine practice of religion, the secret police produced a thorough database of names, places, biographies, activities, and networks. It created one of the most...
Ethical Questions in Researching the Religious Underground in Romania's Secret Police Archives, Part II
Several immediately identifiable problems arose in our talks: the problem of questioning the authority of the canonical historical narrative of the church elders based on documents that were created by...
A Partisan Resistance to Migration
Lithuania, once understood in the Western popular imagination as a lawless backwater home to the likes of Hannibal Lecter and human traffickers, has lately enjoyed no small amount of international...
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...
Pregnancy and Writing the Female Body in Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s "The Kukotsky Case”
In her 2001 novel, Ulitskaya uses the medical gaze to bring the pregnant woman closer to her child.
Stiob and the State
The form of irony known as "stiob" was once the domain of nonconformist artists. Today, "stiob" belongs to the state. How did this happen?
Our Pushkin?
Pushkinists know that today is a holiday. The first graduating class of the Tsarkoe Selo Lyceum annually celebrated the anniversary of their first day of school by gathering, drinking, and...
“The Best Defense against Russian Possessiveness”: Ukraine in Polish Underground Publications, 1976-1989
“There is no independent Poland without independent Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania” remains the basis of Poland’s Eastern policy.
Re-Mediating the Archive: Scholars discuss archival revolutions
On April 24th, 2015, the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia, together with the university’s Department of Comparative Literature, the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, the...
Soviet Filmmakers in Africa
Filmmaker and Visiting Fulbright Scholar Alexander Markov spoke of the line between propaganda and art that Soviet documentarians walked in Africa.
Impeachment – From the Ukrainian Perspective
Amid the ongoing impeachment scandal, the perspective from Ukraine has largely gone unnoticed. On January 23rd, as part of its New York City -- Russia Public Policy Series in collaboration...
Literature and Reality, with Robert Chandler
On a trip to Moscow to meet with Vasily Grossman’s granddaughter, Robert Chandler recalled seeing a room with Grossman’s things. There, the translator was shocked to see the same line...
Try a Little Tenderness: An Immigrant Story
All I have left from the first 14 years of my life is an envelope of old photographs.