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“Noblemen”: Belarusians fighting for Ukraine
After February 2022, Belarusians played a decisive role in countering the Russian advance on Kyiv. The logic behind their mobilization was simple: “Without a free Ukraine, there won’t be a free Belarus.”
Ukraine’s Post-Soviet Legion? Foreign Fighters from the Former Soviet Union in Ukraine
Foreign fighters hailing from the former Soviet Union are more numerous, and better incorporated into Ukraine’s armed forces, than ever before. Their language skills, experience of post-Soviet armed conflicts, and...
Technology, Ideology and Culture: Legacies of Soviet-African Relations
Historians and anthropologists discuss the impacts and legacies of Soviet-African relations of the 20th century.
Excerpt from Łukasz Stanek's "Architecture in Global Socialism: Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East in the Cold War," Part II
The controversies around socialist labor point to what might be the main dilemma of this book: the relationship between the studied architectures and the project of socialism. This relationship was...
The Power of the Past
Ten years ago, when I began writing a series of novels set in Russia during the minority of Ivan the Terrible, since published under the pen name C. P. Lesley,...
The State and the Human Body in Putin’s Russia: The Biopolitics of Authoritarian Revanche, Part II
Russia's biopolitical normalization occurs in the interstitial space between the popular sentiment of an uprooted society beset by failed transitions and halted globalization, retrograde, neo-patriarchal responses, and the deliberate strategy...
The Ramp to Nowhere? Disability in Contemporary Russia
Given the deeply entrenched obstacles—physical, social, cultural, material— to participation in public life by people with disabilities, whatever mention is made is still noteworthy.
LGBT+ Russians and the Political Environment for Activism
Russia is a vivid example of how domestic political backlash against Western influence may affect LGBT+ rights and the development of LGBT+ activism in the country.
Russia's Orphans as Commodity and Bargaining Chip
When Sting released his song "The Russians" in 1985, I thought the chorus was one of the most asinine things I'd ever heard on the radio (and keep in mind...
Gerard Shrugged, or the Newest New Russian
I am struggling to find some deeper meaning to the petulance of Gerard Depardieu, but the actor is already an idiosyncrasy.
Sex secrets of the Russian classics
Reason #137 to study Russian literature: apparently, it will teach children about sex. This is a good thing, because no one else in Russia seems to want to.
Speak Loudly and Carry a Big Meat Stick: Crimean Tatars, the Media and the Crimea Crisis
This was the first week someone had asked me to edit their guerrilla warfare recruiting propaganda.
Russia Under Siege: Attack of the Gay Pillows
It’s not easy keeping an open mind about what’s going on in Russia when government officials are so intent on keeping minds closed.
It's the economy, durachok! A Snapshot of the Current Mess
Foreign policy is completely related to the economy. Internationally Russia has been finding itself less and less capable, less able to exert lasting influence.
Putin's Birthday: What to Get for the Man Who's Grabbed Everything?
“In an amazing fashion, the events of ancient tales of the mythological hero, Heracles, can be adapted to here and now, when the three-headed Cerberus evokes USA, when the defeat...
Six Questions for Jenny Kaminer about her new book, Women with a Thirst for Destruction: The Bad Mother in Russian Culture
"“Bad,” of course is a highly relative, historically contingent, and variable term. I try to shed light on how changing political, social, and cultural contexts shape the varying models of...
Russian Propaganda and the Return of the Repressed; or, Why the Cheese Never Stands Alone
The Paleo Diet has finally been knocked from its perch as the stupidest food trend of the twenty-first century, replaced by an even stranger phenomenon: the Russian government’s mass, televised...
Speak, Memory: The Case of Yuri Dmitriev, Part I
Dmitriev spent a good part of the 1990s in FSB archives examining case files on purge victims. After finding gaps in the lists, he asked for protocols from NKVD “troikas”...
Lady Astair's School for Gifted Orphans (Akunin WQ 7)
Though he may grow up to be a Russian Poirot, for now he is something of a Miss Marple, underestimated by everyone around him.
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...