Event Recap: The State of US-Russia Relations One Year into the Biden Administration



On November 29th, 2021, the Jordan Center and the Columbia University Harriman Institute hosted experts for a panel on “The State of US-Russia Relations One Year into the Biden Administration.” Speakers included Timothy Colton (Morris and Anna Feldberg Professor of Government and Russian Studies at Harvard University), Alexander Gabuev (Senior Fellow and Chair of the Russia in the Asia-Pacific Program at Carnegie Moscow Center), Rose Gottemoeller (Steven C. Házy Lecturer at Stanford University Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Center for International Security and Cooperation, Former Deputy Secretary-General of NATO) Robert Legvold (Marshall D. Shulman Professor Emeritus of the Department of Political Science at Columbia University and previous Harriman Institute Director), and Maria Snegovaya (Postdoctoral Fellow of Political Science at Virginia Tech University and visiting scholar at the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies and Illiberalism Studies Program at George Washington University). This talk was moderated by  Jordan Center Director Joshua Tucker and Harriman Institute Director Alexander Cooley. Note: This event took place before the larger escalation of negotiations related to the buildup of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border that intensified in late 2021 and early 2022.

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Privacy Versus Security in Trying Times: Evidence from Russian Public Opinion



On November 8, 2021, the Jordan Center hosted Professor Israel Marques for his talk “Privacy Versus Security in Trying Times: Evidence from Russian Public Opinion.” Marques is an assistant professor in the School of Politics and Governance at the National Research University – Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia, and a research fellow at the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development, an international laboratory at the HSE University. This talk was the first event in the Jordan Center’s new joint lecture series with HSE University. This new series will meet at least twice a semester, switching off monthly between speakers based at HSE in Moscow, and speakers based at NYU and other US institutions. You can watch the recording on YouTube. 

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Tolstoy’s Orphans



On November 4th, 2021, the Jordan Center hosted Professor David Herman for a talk “Tolstoy’s Orphans.” Professor Herman is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Virginia. His most recent book is titled ​​Poverty of the Imagination: 19th-Century Russian Literature about the Poor, and he is currently working on The Tragic Tolstoy: The Writings after 1876.

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On Soviet Occidentalism, Empire, and Modernity



On September 30, 2021, the Jordan Center hosted Dr. Volodymyr Ryzhkovskyi, a Georgetown University PhD recipient and current Jordan Center Postdoctoral Fellow. Dr. Ryzhkovskyi’s research connects empire, culture, and knowledge to Russia and the Soviet’s Union’s place within global history, with a distinct focus on their relation to Western Imperialism and colonialism.

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Lamas, Leaders, and Lay Believers: A History of Buddhists in Russia



On November 2nd, 2021, the Jordan Center hosted Dr. Melissa Chakars, an associate professor and Chair of the Department of History at Saint Joseph’s University. Dr. Chakars research focuses on Eurasian history with a specialization and focus on the Mongolian peoples of Russia. Having published The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia: Transformation in Buryatia in 2014 and the co-edited volume Modernization, Nation-Building, and Television History in 2015, Dr. Chakars’ current research project is a history of Buddhism in the Russian Empire, Soviet Union, and modern Russian Federation.

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Literature and Reality, with Robert Chandler



On a trip to Moscow to meet with Vasily Grossman’s granddaughter, Robert Chandler recalled seeing a room with Grossman’s things. There, the translator was shocked to see the same line of little sculpted animals that had featured in “Everything Flows.” It seems, then, that the figure of the young boy was inspired by Grossman’s own life, elements of which the author deliberately wove into his prose. 

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Falshfasad: Disavowed Infrastructure and Everyday Mate-realism in Wild Capitalist Moscow


On September 17, 2021, the Jordan Center hosted Michał Murawski for the talk “Falshfasad: Disavowed Infrastructure and Everyday Mate-realism in Wild Capitalist Moscow.” Murawski is a Lecturer in Critical Area Studies at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London. He is currently writing a book on architectural aesthetics and politics in Putin-era Moscow. 

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The Russian Private Sector Today: Challenges and Prospects in a Post-Pandemic World



On April 12th, the Jordan Center and the Harriman Institute co-hosted a panel on the private sector in Russia as part of the NYC-Russia Public Policy Series. Panelists included Simeon Djankov, Director of Development Economics at the World Bank; Dinissa Duvanova, Associate Professor of International Relations at Lehigh University; Alena Ledeneva, Professor of Politics and Society at University College London; Ivan Nechepurenko, Moscow bureau reporter at The New York Times; Andrei A. Yakovlev, Director of the Institute for Industrial and Market Studies and the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development at the Higher School of Economics. The panel was chaired by Jordan Center Director Joshua A. Tucker and Alexander Cooley, Director of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. In case you missed it, you can stream it here.

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Price Tags for Wet Land: Resource-Making in Late Imperial Russia



On November 9, 2020, the Jordan Center hosted Katja Bruisch, Professor in Environmental History at Trinity College Dublin, for a talk on the peatlands in late imperial Russia. By tracing the messy and arbitrary process by which peatlands were appropriated as resources, the talk reflected the relationship between state, economy, and nature. A historian of modern Russia, Professor Bruisch is interested in the interplay between social, political and environmental change, particularly in the Russian countryside. She has worked on the role of experts in dealing with the ‘agrarian question’ in the late imperial and early Soviet periods. In her current project, she explores ways to integrate environmental perspectives into the history of the modern Russian economy, tracing the transformation of peatlands into hinterlands of industrializing cities and the social and environmental legacies of peat extraction and wetland drainage since the imperial period. Bruisch’s talk was hosted by Anne O’Donnell, Assistant Professor of Russian & Slavic Studies at New York University.

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Ballet in the Cold War: The New York City Ballet’s 1962 Tour of the Soviet Union



On February 5th, the Jordan Center welcomed Professor Anne Searcy for a talk on the exchange of Soviet and American ballet troupes for cultural diplomacy during the Cold War. In October 1962, New York City Ballet (NYCB) toured the Soviet Union, performing seventeen ballets by George Balanchine. Part of the Soviet-American cultural exchange, the NYCB tour was positively received by the Soviet audiences but has since been misunderstood as a sign of political protest. Searcy explored the Soviet responses to Balanchine and his company and argued that the Soviet viewers interpreted these new works through Thaw-era debates about choreography and music. The talk was hosted by Anne O’Donnell, Assistant Professor of Russian & Slavic Studies at New York University. Stream it here.

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“Red and Brown”: Left-Patriotism in Russia, its Ideology and Social Base, 1993-2021



On February 22, Jordan Center for Advanced Study of Russia hosted Dr. Alexey Sakhnin, who spoke about the post-Soviet emergence of a political trend consisting of both leftism and right-wing patriotism. Sakhnin received his PhD in modern Russian history and society, with a dissertation dedicated to the debates about the Soviets within the Bolshevik party, later published under the title The Experience of October: How to Make Revolution. Prosecuted as one of the public faces of the Bolotnaya protests of 2011-12, he lived for five years in exile in Sweden, before returning to Russia to work as a journalist and left-oppositional activist. He was introduced by Rossen Djagalov, Assistant Professor of Russian & Slavic Studies at New York University. Stream it here.

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The Improbable Museum: Igor Savitsky’s Collection of Russian Avant-Garde and Karakalpak Art in Soviet Central Asia



On December 4, 2020, Jordan Center for Advanced Study of Russia hosted Zukhra Kasimova, a PhD candidate in the History Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Kasimova was introduced by Rossen Djagalov, Assistant Professor of Russian Slavic Studies at New York University. Kasimova spoke about Igor Savitsky’s creation of “the second largest collection of Russian modernist art in the world.” The Museum is a unique collection of Karakalpak applied folk art and works of the Russian and Soviet avant-garde located in Nukus, which is approximately 800 kilometers away and a 15-hour train ride from the Uzbek capital Tashkent. Stream it here.

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Comics of the New Europe



On March 11, Jordan Center’s Professor of Russian Eliot Borenstein (New York University) hosted José Alaniz (University of Washington), Martha Kuhlman (Bryant University), and Biz Nijdam (University of British Columbia) for a talk on their recently published edited collection Comics of the New Europe.

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Making an Anti-imperialist Empire: Revolutionary Russia and the Muslim World



On February 16, Jordan Center for Advanced Study of Russia hosted Professor Norihiro Naganawa, who spoke about his ongoing book project on early Soviet Russia’s engagement with Central Asia, Iran, and the Red Sea. Naganawa is a professor of Central Eurasian Studies at the Slavic and Eurasian Research Center of Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan. He offered a transnational history of revolutionary Russia through the lens of a Tatar revolutionary and Soviet diplomat, Karim Abdraufovich Khakimov (1890-1938). He was introduced by Jane Burbank, Professor Emerita, New York University. Stream it here.

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Fighting HIV/AIDS in Russia: Challenges, Successes, and Working in a Pandemic



On January 13th, the Jordan Center and the Harriman Institute co-hosted a panel on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Russia as part of the NYC-Russia Public Policy Series. Panelists included Ulla Pape, Researcher at the Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science of Freie Universität Berlin; Robert Heimer,  Professor in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at the Yale University School of Public Health; Anya Sarang, Founder and Director at the Andrey Rylkov Foundation for Health and Social Justice; Anton Eremin, Medical Director at AIDS.CENTER; and Jake Rashbass, Senior Program Lead for Eastern Europe and Central Asia at the Elton John AIDS Foundation. Stream it here.

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Navalny and the Kremlin: Politics and Protest in Russia


Navalny

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 Fellow at the Institute of Modern Russia; Pjotr Sauer, Journalist at the Moscow Times; Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, Reader in Russian Politics at King’s College London; and Aleksandra Urman, Postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Communication and Media Studies, University of Bern.

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The 40th Anniversary of the Leningrad Rock Club, with Joanna Stingray



On March 2, Jordan Center’s Michael Danilin (MA, New York University) hosted Joanna Stingray, a California author and musician who brought Soviet underground music to the Western audience, for a talk on her memoir, Red Wave: An American in the Soviet Music Underground (2020). The book introduces the legendary musicians of Soviet rock through her improbable Cold War heroics. In 1985, Stingray produced Red Wave: 4 Underground Bands from the USSR with music by her new friends that she had smuggled to the West. The memoir is her testimony of youthful fortitude and rebellion, her love story, and proof of the power of music and youth culture over stagnancy and oppression. Stream it here. 

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Poor Liza and Russia’s Sentimental Marketplace


Kirill Ospovat

On December 11, 2020, the Jordan Center welcomed Prof. Kirill Ospovat for a talk on links between narrative modes and visions of economy that defined Russian sentimentalism. Through a close reading of Karamzin’s classic Poor Liza (1792), Ospovat will illuminate the constructions of “sentimental commerce” which aligned specific modes of subjectivity and spectatorship with visions of the market, debates on luxury, and analysis of poverty. He is an assistant professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of “Terror and Pity: Aleksandr Sumarokov and the Theater of Power in Elizabethan Russia” (2016) and “Pridvornaia slovesnost’. Institut literatury i konstruktsii absoliutizma v Rossii serediny XVIII veka” (2020). His next book will explore the social aspects of Russian sentimental fiction through close readings of Karamzin, Gogol, and Dostoevsky. The talk was introduced by Ilya Kliger, Associate Professor of Russian & Slavic Studies at New York University.

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