By 2023, the West had discovered that neither increasing the supply of weapons to Ukraine nor Moscow’s loss of annexed territories had prompted any serious response from Russia—as if its so-called red lines were shifting or were not actually there at all.

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The Blog of the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia is pleased to announce our annual Graduate Student Essay Competition for 2024. Enter for a chance to get published on the blog and win cash prizes.

We invite 750-1200 word submissions from full- or part-time M.A. and Ph.D. students from any accredited academic institution in the United States, on any topic and sub-discipline within Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, broadly defined. Cultural criticism; opinion pieces; public-facing treatments of scholarly work; political analysis; book, film, or event reviews; and more are welcome.

All submissions must be in English and observe the blog’s submission guidelines and full competition rules.

Essays are due no later than Friday, 15 March 2024 at 11:59 PM EST, and must be submitted via this Google form.

Seven winners will be selected based on the originality, clarity, and argumentation of their essays, as well as general fit with the blog’s tone and interests as reflected in the submission guidelines linked above. An interdisciplinary panel of judges will select three Grand Prize winners representing history, cultural studies, and the social sciences, each of whom will receive a $500 prize. Four additional Judges’ Choice submissions will receive $200 each. All winners will have their essays published in the Jordan Center Blog.

Competition results will be announced in Summer 2024.

Please note that, for legal reasons around international contest rules, we are unfortunately unable to provide monetary awards to those located outside the US. Regrettably, we must therefore restrict competition for monetary prizes to graduate students of any nationality currently located within the US. Those outside the US, including US citizens and visa holders and those studying at US institutions but currently based abroad, are ineligible for the contest. Outside the bounds of the contest, we welcome submissions from anyone interested in being published on the Blog, regardless of citizenship, national origin, or location. As always, thank you for your interest in the Jordan Center Blog.

Please direct any questions to Jordan.Center.Blog@nyu.edu.

It is ironic that Raskolnikov justifies selecting the old woman as his victim because she is economically unproductive and sick. Raskolnikov is himself perpetually ill, does not work, and relies on charity from the women in his life: his landlady, his landlady’s servant Nastasya, his mother, his sister, and later Sonya.

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The motif of illness runs through Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” and accompanies key developments and themes—so much so that the novel can be read as a pandemic or plague narrative.

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The influence of Soviet-era views of Islam and Islamism among post-Soviet elites was striking.

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The Revolution on Granite was significant for two reasons. First, it was a major milestone on the road to Ukrainian independence, or even a starting point for aspirations of independence. Second, it became a prototype for subsequent Ukrainian revolutions and a precursor to future events set on the Maidan—first in 2004 and again in 2013-2014. 

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Will a major power always hurt smaller nations simply because it can and wants to, ignoring all rules and obligations? Or will the major power, despite having the option of simply dominating and ignoring international conventions, nonetheless commit to credibility and build a more complex relationship with smaller nations that are ultimately beneficial to both sides?

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The stories in many of the films produced after the 2007-2008 financial crisis were drastically different from those in pre-crisis films. Instead of the heroine ending up with a businessman in a Moscow high-rise, she now finds happiness in a humble apartment with a blue-collar or underpaid white-collar husband (a retired military officer or a policeman is even better) and a child or two, ideally with another on the way.

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During Putin’s 24 years in power, he has often resorted to assassinations and extralegal violence to reinforce his control of Russian politics, and it is therefore not surprising that most Russian and Western observers have assumed that he orchestrated Prigozhin’s death as revenge for the mutiny in June.

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In Russia, politicians who run afoul of President Vladimir Putin are at risk of being killed by poison, defenestration, or gunshot, or of being sentenced to harsh prison terms on spurious charges. And now, in the wake of the airplane crash that occurred in the Tver region northwest of Moscow on August 23, many observers both inside and outside Russia believe the Russian president has come up with another technique for eliminating his rivals.

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