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Boris Groys – “The Cold War Between the Medium and the Message: Western Abstract Art vs. Socialist Realism.”
The powers of the post-WWII period began to politicize the struggle between realism and avant-garde modernism. The West, Groys argued, believed that socialist realism was just another version of fascist...
Boris Groys on the Russian quest for biopolitical utopias
What would happen if biopower were to eliminate death entirely?
Anti-Hegemonic Code-Switching: The Case of Odesa Poet Boris Khersonskii, Part I
In 2018, Boris Khersonskii, Ukraine’s most famous Russian-language poet, wrote on Facebook—in Ukrainian: “My credo is: in Odesa, obstruct the Russian language gently, but oppose boorishness on the part of...
Stephen Norris discusses Boris Efimov and Soviet cartoons
On October 10, 2014, the Jordan Center welcomed Stephen Norris, a professor of history at the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies at Miami University of Ohio, to speak...
This just in: Boris Berezovsky is still dead
Two days after his body was found by a bodyguard in his Berkshire home, Boris Berezovsky shocks the blogosphere by remaining deceased.
What does Boris Nemtsov’s murder mean for Russia?
The more I think about Nemtsov’s murder, the more worried I am about what comes next.
Anti-Hegemonic Code-Switching: The Case of Odesa Poet Boris Khersonskii, Part II
Immediately after Euromaidan, Khersonskii began to reflect on his own precarious position as a Russophone patriot of Ukraine who had published his poetry primarily in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Anti-Hegemonic Code-Switching: The Case of Odesa Poet Boris Khersonskii, Part III
Taken together, Khersonskii’s posts imagine a future multilingual society that recognizes the civic obligation of understanding and speaking Ukrainian. His own bilingualism, meanwhile, helps mitigate language conflict by modeling flexibility...
Excerpt from Joanna Stingray's "Red Wave: An American in the Soviet Music Underground," Part I
There was no one as pure, as transcendent, as irresistible as Boris Grebenshchikov.
Of Course, We Didn’t Know: An Immigrant Story
So why not spend some time looking in their eyes?
Winter Reading Series: Emil Draitser's "Farewell, Mama Odessa," Part IV
So, Boris, when you are finally here, you must meet Si and Zev. We should do whatever we can to express our gratitude for all they have done—and are still...
Victory Day at the Soviet Kitchen Table
“Why are you crying, Musya? Because we’re so old?” asks my grandmother, annoyed. “No, no, because it all happened.”
The 40th Anniversary of the Leningrad Rock Club, with Joanna Stingray
On March 2, Jordan Center’s Michael Danilin (MA, New York University) hosted Joanna Stingray, a California author and musician who brought Soviet underground music to the Western audience, for a...
Experts discuss Russian law and its trajectories
On October 16, 2014, the Jordan Center welcomed several scholars to participate in a panel, entitled Russia’s Legal Trajectories: Law in Action and Question, 1830 to 2014. In her introductory...
Yuz Aleshkovsky’s “Song about Stalin”
Many took Aleshkovsky's song to be a folk composition, but no ordinary criminal — not even a gang of them — could have produced so elaborate a political satire. Aleshkovsky...
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...
Cold Snap (Part II): Russian Film after Leviathan
An auteurist orientation, therefore, is neither good nor bad, but it is certainly mismatched to an industry—especially during periods of robust growth—in which so-called “spectators’ cinema” [zritel'skoe kino] is in...
Summer Reading Series: Mikhail Zoshchenko's "Sentimental Tales," Part I
"This book—this collection of sentimental tales—was written at the very height of NEP and revolution. And so the reader is, of course, entitled to demand certain things of its author:...
Summer Reading Series: Mikhail Zoshchenko's "Sentimental Tales," Part II
"In view of past misunderstandings, the writer notifies his critic that the person who narrates these tales, is, so to speak, an imaginary person."
Summer Reading Series: Mikhail Zoshchenko's "Sentimental Tales," Part III
“Why does man exist? Is there a purpose to man’s life—and if there isn’t, then is life itself not, generally speaking, in part senseless?” Of course, some assistant or full...