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Reinventing the Soviet Past: Actor Pavel Derevyanko's "Positive Heroes"
In the series "Dark Side of the Moon" (2011-) and in the film "Salyut-7" (2017), historical and biographical truth take a backseat to the aesthetic and ideological needs of the...
Environmental Détente: What can we Learn from the Cold War to Manage Today’s Arctic Tensions and Climate Crisis?
The Arctic has long been a setting for collaborative scientific discovery, but tensions related to the Cold War and now the worsening conflict in Ukraine have curtailed effective cooperation.
On Avant-Garde Post: Radical Poetics After the Soviet Union
The new Russian avant-garde poetic cohort's blend of a socialist past with global egalitarian ideas challenges both the discourses of the Russian authorities and the major opposition .
Cyborgs, Weak Cosmists, and a Russian Planet
Is Cosmism becoming a new Eurasianism?
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...
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.
Pussy Riot vs. Ksenia Sobchak, Round Two
So why did she conduct an interview with Pussy Riot that was god-awful enough to make it onto Buzzfeed?
Cold Snap (Part I): Russian Film after Leviathan
This essay provides context for roughly thirty-five current and upcoming Russian films, loosely clustered around four topics: directors; debuts; economic health; and dominant industry trends.
Russia is Attacking Western Liberal Democracies
Russia is engaging in an orchestrated, strategic campaign whose purpose is to erode liberal democracy in Europe and the United States.
Putin won reelection. Now he’s a "lame duck." What will that mean?
To nobody’s surprise, Russian President Vladimir Putin won reelection to a fourth term on March 18, by a wide margin. With Putin’s (last?) presidential election in the books, I reached...
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...
Zvyagintsev’s "Leviathan" and Debates on Authority, Agency and Authenticity
We argue that the film effectively generated political debates because it left viewers to grapple with a series of ambiguous positions, which merit attention at a moment when most observers...
Is a Crocodile Longer Than It Is Green? (Russia's Alien Nations)
On the level of logic, you can prove anything.
Rich Man’s Burden (Russia's Alien Nations)
Where was the New Russian supposed to find a conscience?
How the Soviet Experience Shapes Crime and Punishment in Russia Today
Russia has been justifiably called a Mafia-state. Yet for two centuries it had been making steady progress toward the rule of law and a predictable, impartial, accessible, and fair criminal...
Soviet Miners’ Strikes, Thirty Years Later: What Miners Demanded in 1989 and 1991, Part II
By describing the benefits the mine accrued thanks to its specialists and white-collar employees, the "Izvestiia" article points to the intellectual nature of work performed by those striking miners called...
Putin, Forever: The Russian President Remains as Inscrutable as Ever
Is Vladimir Putin a master manipulator? Or is he a genius of improvisation? Does he have a master strategy which governs his every move, carefully thought out in advance –...
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...
Men Who Paint, Men Who Post: Visualizing Russian Masculinity
In his first personal Instagram post since his poisoning, a dazed Navalny sits up in his hospital bed, surrounded by smiling family. He is hunched, his collarbone and ribs visible...
Legal Nihilism in Russian Television Crime Dramas
The representation of law and justice in Russian crime dramas — and especially their inability to offer a positive image of universally applied law of the Western type — vividly...