Love, Peace, and Developed Socialism: A Talk by Juliane Fürst



The first wave of hippies was indeed a community largely made up of urban and privileged children of elites, who were better connected to the West and therefore had more potential to kick start a hippie movement. Among them was even Joseph Stalin’s son, Vasily, as well as the children of the Mikoyan family. “One can see how in one family, the roads divide.”

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Experts discuss Russian law and its trajectories



On October 16, 2014, the Jordan Center welcomed several scholars to participate in a panel, entitled Russia’s Legal Trajectories: Law in Action and Question, 1830 to 2014. In her introductory remarks, Professor of History at NYU Jane Burbank stated that there are many perplexing ideas about law and Russia. Some commentators think that the rule of law is incompatible with autocratic or Communist governments; for them Russian law is an oxymoron. Yet, Burbank remarked, law has been important to government in Russia for many centuries. In addition, for the last 10 year or so many scholars have been rigorously scrutinizing the subject. This panel was meant to give its audience “a taste of new legal history” in four different presentations about law from the early 19th century, through the legal reforms of 1864, to the current day.

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Stephen Norris discusses Boris Efimov and Soviet cartoons


On October 10, 2014, the Jordan Center welcomed Stephen Norris, a professor of history at the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies at Miami University of Ohio, to speak about his book project, entitled “Communist Cartoonist: Boris Efimov.” Norris’s talk was second in the Jordan Center’s Colloquium Series, which, as Director Yanni Kotsonis explained, encourages scholars to present their ongoing projects in order to receive feedback and comments from the audience.

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Stephen Kotkin on Stalin: Geopolitics, Ideas, Power



Sept. 26, 2014, marked the first of the Distinguished Lecture series at the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia. As director Yanni Kotsonis pointed out, the lectures as well as the Center itself are meant to “protect conversations about Russia. If one wants to speak of Russia these days, you need protection; if one wants to speak against, you also need protection.” He added: “The only criterion here is intelligence.”

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Twenty-Seven Questions for Stephen F. Cohen from Russia’s Leading Opposition Newspaper



People who know me personally or my writings know that I never judge or lecture Russia, but these three inter-related features are objective, not my subjective opinion: the excessive concentration of wealth in too few hands; the political-economic system, including widespread corruption, which that feature created; and, as a result, the unwillingness of the financial élite and its many official retainers to permit truly free elections. (All this began, of course, in the Yeltsin 1990s, not under Putin.)

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