Featured
Expanding the ‘Mental Phone Book’: Unconscious Bias and Diversity in Conference Panels and Edited Volumes
An editor or panel organiser cannot involve every participant from their immediate, instinctive ‘mental phone book’ every time.
Magic and Dragons and Swords, Oh My! Affect and the Medieval
As medieval knights, damsels, and lords descended on central Moscow this summer as part of the annual Times and Epochs festival, many of them saw their activities as specifically apolitical....
Local Elections and the Durability of Illiberal Regimes in Hungary and Poland
Democratic backsliding is a global malady, with political and institutional challenges to liberal democracy and the rule of law becoming widespread. Central Europe, in spite of European Union requirements that...
Alien Rule and Famine in Ireland and Ukraine
In Ireland as in Ukraine, alien rulers in London and Moscow refused to suspend the export of grain and other foodstuffs and supply them to starving farmers in culturally distinct...
Review: "I Want a Baby and Other Plays" by Sergei Tretyakov, Translated by Robert Leach and Stephen Holland
This new collection of plays by Sergei Tretyakov, translated by Robert Leach and Stephen Holland, attempts to solidify Tretyakov’s role in the Russian Theatrical Avant-Garde Canon. In his introduction, Leach...
Romanian Secret Police Archives and the Women of the Religious Underground
In the process of surveilling church leadership, clergy, and church elders, the Secret Police unwittingly uncovered the new roles that women took on in religious life during a time when...
"Neuzheli tak i nado, tak i budem zhitʹ?" Roman Neumoev and Egor Letov’s Divergent Notions of Death
Death cannot deliver us from the human condition because it *is* the human condition; the highest knowledge is simply knowledge of unending suffering.
Heroes and Zeros: Ded Moroz and Yuri Olesha
Who's your hero: Yuri Olesha, Ded Moroz, or Tyler Durden?
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.
Russian Liberals and the Kremlin: Racism and Colonialism as Common Ground, Part II
Despite their conflicting interests and ideologies, every political affiliation across post-Soviet Europe blamed Russian war crimes on the Asian “other.”
Mother, Wife, and Activist? Opportunities and Obstacles to Women’s Civic Engagement in Russia
Women-led activism deserves a thoughtful examination in the contemporary Russian context, particularly because current debates continue to explicitly tie women to traditional gender roles.
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...
Russian Liberals and the Kremlin: Racism and Colonialism as Common Ground, Part I
Russian liberals present themselves as “civilized Europeans” who would like to fix the “backward Asianness” of Russia. By drawing such Orientalist distinctions, these figures justify the existing colonial economic relationship.
It Will Be Fun and Terrifying: Nationalism and Protest in Post-Soviet Russia
On October 6th, Fabrizio Fenghi of Brown University joined the Jordan Center to speak about the National Bolshevik Party (NBP) and it’s legacy in his talk, “It Will Be Fun...
On "Pragmatism" in Soviet and Russian Foreign Policy in the Middle East and Ukraine
"From Messianism to Pragmatism" was the subtitle of a seminal book on Russian foreign policy in the Middle East, published in 1993. The author, renowned scholar Alexey Vasiliev, argued that,...
Interrogating the Declining Significance of Pushkin’s Blackness: Henry James, Ivan Turgenev, and Literary Nationalism (with Korey Garibaldi and Emily Wang)
On October 14th, Professors Korey Garibaldi and Emily Wang, both of Notre Dame, joined the Jordan Center to speak about their collaborative work on race and literature in talk entitled...
The Periphery Strikes Back: The 2020 Khabarovsk Protests and Its Impact on Protest Movements and Regionalism in Russia
Russia’s provinces are becoming less accepting of Moscow’s domination, and the 2020 Khabarovsk protests in particular signal the increased willingness of Russia’s peripheral regions to push back.
Navalny and the Kremlin: Politics and Protest in Russia
On February 1st, the Jordan Center and the Harriman Institute co-hosted a panel on Alexei Navalny as part of the New York--Russia Public Policy Series. Panelists included Yana Gorokhovskaia, Research...
Russian Meddling and Fake News, Part One: Sell Me More Diapers and Napkins, Please
“Russian affairs” have became a hot topic taken up by writers who lack the proper expertise or necessary restraint
Similarities Between Putin’s Russia and Late Imperial Japan: Backgrounds and Implications
Why are the claims and actions of Japan in the 1930s and Russia today so similar, despite vast differences between eras, cultural backgrounds, and underlying economic structures?