It is with great sadness that we announce the death of our friend and colleague, Stephen F. Cohen.

The Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia and “All the Russias” are pleased to announce the inaugural Graduate Student Essay Competition! Get published in “All the Russias” and win cash prizes.

“I think we who either produce or engage with academic work need to seriously reconsider what we do, why we do it, and whom we do it for. I remember in my first year of grad school, one of my professors said that his audience was the handful of experts around his topic. I found this really shocking, but at the same time, I couldn’t blame him. Academia is structurally designed so that all you have to do is impress a handful of people— peer reviewers, tenure committees, experts in your field and the people who might review your book in an academic journal, etc. I find this really sad—not to mention incredibly unimaginative—given the amount of blood, sweat, and tears people put into their work.”

“The sorry state of public discourse around Russia has led me to try to provide the most eclectic range of topics on my podcast. The idea is to show my audience and guests three things: 1) That there is a lot of wonderful scholarly work out there. This is really the golden age of Eurasian studies; 2) That there is an audience for scholarly work and the problem is one of access. 3) That scholarship is more needed than ever and scholars should do their best to reach beyond the university, their colleagues, and students. Sure, we may never have an impact like all the flapping heads on the Punditburo, but at least we might get people to realize there are more stories out there than need telling.”

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 their attention for a second longer. Maybe it’s some unexpected flourish here or there, a flash of colloquialism that feels out of place, but without completely contradicting professional norms.

Happy New Year, “All the Russias” readers! In my capacity as blog editor, I am pleased to announce two new features for 2019.

Before long Apollo Semyonovich Perepenchuk sank deep into poverty.

“Why does man exist? Is there a purpose to man’s life—and if there isn’t, then is life itself not, generally speaking, in part senseless?” Of course, some assistant or full professor on the state’s gravy train would reply, with unpleasant ease, that man exists in order to further culture and the happiness of the universe. But that’s vague and unclear, and, for the common man, even disgusting.

“In view of past misunderstandings, the writer notifies his critic that the person who narrates these tales, is, so to speak, an imaginary person.”

“This book—this collection of sentimental tales—was written at the very height of NEP and revolution. And so the reader is, of course, entitled to demand certain things of its author: real revolutionary content, grand subject matter, tasks of planetary significance, and heroic pathos—in a word, a full, lofty ideology.”

Darkness comes early. There is a damp frost; you can see spiky halos around the streetlamps. You have to breathe through your mittens. Your forehead aches from the cold, and your cheeks are numb. But, wouldn’t you know it, you still have to boil and chill the aspic. It’s a yearly sacrifice, though we don’t know to whom or for what.

I felt even worse about my appendix. Over and over, they’d told me: “Don’t swallow fruit pits, and make sure to shell sunflower seeds before sticking them in your mouth, otherwise your appendix’ll get inflamed.”

The rabbit conveys to you that you can’t even imagine how and what he pees and poops—but soon you will.

Like, here, I had this parrot, and you know, they live a long time. Well, he died, like, he was sitting on my shoulder and all of a sudden I thought he’d flown off, but then I felt his claws on my back—he’d fallen backwards. Well, I even, you know, I even cried. He lived a long time. So I couldn’t throw him out, I put him in a plastic box and buried him at my dacha.

This past June — a moment since blotted out by geopolitical horrors large and small — Vladimir Putin sat down with NBC’s Megyn Kelly for an interview subsequently lambasted as boring, “stubbornly uninformative theater.” It’s true that neither party said anything unexpected, instead treating viewers to another episode of “Dogged Journalist Confronts Icy, Obfuscating Politician.” Yet the conversation’s very lack of narrative drive offers insight into the heart of Putin’s messaging strategy — and into the fundamentally cumulative nature of contemporary political ideology.

What you need is something we don’t have yet in the case of the election, and might never have, which is somebody from the inside saying, “Here’s how we did it.” And once they do, it’s going to be surprising. It won’t be the way that we predicted. Because truth is stranger than fiction.