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Daniel Mellis and Eugene Ostashevsky recreate Vasily Kamensky’s Tango with Cows
On October 30, 2015, the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia welcomed visual artist Daniel Mellis and Russian-American poet and translator Eugene Ostashevsky to speak on their...
The David Brooks I Miss; or, What Passes for Commentary about Russia
Again and again I found myself taking sides in our ongoing debate: is David Brooks thoroughly awful or only somewhat awful?
Excerpt from Jeffrey Brooks' "The Firebird and the Fox: Russian Culture under Tsars and Bolsheviks"
During the century of Russian genius roughly from 1850 to Stalin’s death a panorama of extraordinary cultural richness unfolded, with layer upon layer of innovation in the arts. Visual artists...
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...
The Incels and the Injured: Dostoevsky Against Toxic Masculinities
No shortage of contemporary horrors were prophesied by Fyodor Dostoevsky’s works: The Brothers Karamazov presages totalitarianism; Demons—terrorism; Diary of a Writer, the author’s ongoing, raw, dialogic polemic—Twitter. Although the author’s...
In "Mr. Jones," Stalin’s Man-Made Famine Offers Lessons for the Present
What can the Holodomor teach us today about the importance of journalistic integrity and the dangers of historical revisionism?
Messy Things Betwixt and Between
"Because I have practiced law, I have seen what can potentially hobble a lawyer: namely, her insistence that things be tidy and fall within set parameters of unyielding doctrines. In...
Twitterature in the Dostoevsky Classroom
My adventure with Twitterature began three years ago, when I began to work with the North American Dostoevsky Society as their social media curator. I began a twitter account for...
Snowden in Moscow: The Interview
"I’ve been recognized every now and then. It’s always in computer stores. It’s something like brain associations, because I’ll be in the grocery store and nobody will recognize me. Even...
Thoughts from the inaugural New York Russia Public Policy Seminar
Trump brings to Washington a style of rule that Moscow understands and is very comfortable with: personalist and kleptocratic.
"Go Back to Your Homeland If You Want to Live": Russian Policy Toward HIV-Positive Central Asians
This post features a runner-up entry in "All the Russias'" inaugural Graduate Student Essay Competition.
Digital, Political, Prescient: New Directions in Russian Press History
Since the collapse of the Soviet regime three decades ago, the Russian press has experienced a revival that transformed it into an important forum for political discussion and debate in...
Strongmen, Regular Guys, and Killer Bunnies
If you can remember picking up a copy of the Washington Post on the morning of August 30th, 1979 you may recall the shock of reading a front-page headline announcing...
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...
Gender Trouble in The Double: Masculinity in Dostoevsky’s Novella and Ayoade’s Film
Right from the outset, Ayoade’s film establishes the presence of a masculine hierarchy.
Marital Happy Endings and Cultural Politics in a Contemporary Australian Adaptation of Anna Karenina
In our time, there is a definite expectation that people know what they want and ensure their own happiness.
Russia vs. PornHub: Lie Back and Think of the Motherland
Apparently, people would rather do anything else—watch porn, have gay sex—than engage in heterosexual intercourse.
In Defense of Russia’s Holocaust on Ice
Has “Springtime for Hitler” finally met its match?
Fall Reading Series: Sergei Gandlevsky's "Illegible," Part I
In contemporary Russian literary life, Gandlevsky’s stature as a poet is indisputably great; he is less well known as a prose writer, although his novels and essays have been critically...
The Belarus Government is Largely Ignoring the Pandemic. Here's Why.
By officially denying the covid-19 danger while benefiting from other countries’ response to the coronavirus — and with Belarusians promoting social distancing despite Lukashenka’s denials — the Belarusian government has...