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Exhibition Review: Five Elements of War
Daria Marchenko and David Green's "Five Elements of War," currently on view at the Ukrainian Institute of America, consists of five politically-charged pieces featuring bold coloring and bullet casings from...
Thesis Profile: Ukrainian Interwar Nationalism in Prague
My combined interest in Ukrainian art and history led me to explore a brief segment of Ukraine’s nationalist narrative through analysis of an art collection. This research developed into my...
Navalny, NFTs, and the New Arena for Political Dissent
NFTs or “non-fungible tokens” grant their purchasers ownership over a form of digital media. Like Bitcoin, NFTs are recorded on a blockchain to promote transparency and enhance security. Unlike various...
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...
Building and Mythologizing the Soviet Friendship Project
Rachel Applebaum discusses the development and narrativization of Soviet-Czechoslovak relations through the 20th century.
In Memory of Stephen Cohen
Earlier this year, our friend and colleague Stephen Cohen passed away. His contributions to the field of Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies will be felt for years to come....
“There is Nothing Outside the Beast”: A Conversation with Kevin Rothrock
Тhe imagined reader should be someone who doesn’t care about what you're trying to tell them. So the flavor of what you’re writing should have a little something that holds...
The Khachaturyan Sisters and Russia’s History of Fighting Terror at Home
The case of the Khachaturyan sisters reads like one of Liudmila Petrushevskaya’s darkest tales. On August 2, 2018, Maria (age 17), Angelina (18), and Krestina (19) were arrested on charges...
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.
The Case of the Multiple Fandorins (WQ 12)
Fandorin has now had enough brushes with death to start his own beauty salon.
Energy Aesthetics: Force, Flow, and En-tropy in Russian Culture
Literature, visual arts, popular science brought together Russian scholars in fields ranging from visual arts to literature to anthropology. The aim of the interdisciplinary symposium was to examine “energy as...
Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata on Stage: Domestic Violence and the Economics of Pity, Part II
Pity is weird. We happily extend it to strong figures but we’re stingy with the weak, with actual “victims.”
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...
Russia’s War on Ukrainian Farms
The Russian military is deliberately targeting key farming-related assets and facilities with the aim of inflicting short- and long-term harm. Moreover, by blockading the Black and Azov seas, Russia controls...
Excerpt from "Sex Work in Contemporary Russia: A Cultural Perspective," Part III
Prostitution existed in Russia for several centuries but became a widespread phenomenon during Peter I’s rule (1683–1725), with the first brothel or “public house” reportedly established by a German in...
Shaving Eisenstein in Manhattan
An old-fashioned shave, with a razor that in Russian they call “dangerous”; an uncannily private scene performed under an open sky, 800 feet over the sidewalks of the greatest city...
What Trump and Putin want from their historic summit
As his 1972 summit with Mao Zedong approached, President Nixon prepped by considering three simple questions: What did China want? What did the United States want? What did they both...
There and Back Again (Russia's Alien Nations)
Was the Soviet Union the model for Mordor?
Putin: Fascist or "Merely" Soviet? Part I
In many ways, Putin's regime meets the expanded definition of fascism. In recent years, Russian public discourse has become increasingly nationalistic, with Putin positioning Russia as a singular civilization locked...
Radoslaw Markowski presents research on Polish politics after the October 2015 election
The last Polish election might have been the last election in a normal, democratic context.