Featured
Impeachment – From the Ukrainian Perspective
Amid the ongoing impeachment scandal, the perspective from Ukraine has largely gone unnoticed. On January 23rd, as part of its New York City -- Russia Public Policy Series in collaboration...
Boris Groys – “The Cold War Between the Medium and the Message: Western Abstract Art vs. Socialist Realism.”
The powers of the post-WWII period began to politicize the struggle between realism and avant-garde modernism. The West, Groys argued, believed that socialist realism was just another version of fascist...
The Many Names for Mother: Bearing Lyric Witness to the Holocaust in the East
In anticipation of the birth of her son in 2015, Dasbach became convinced that her poetic focus would shift into the future. But the opposite happened, as “motherhood entrenched [her]...
Post-Soviet, Post-Industrial, Post-Future: Rethinking Space After the End of Communism
Images of decay across the territory of the former USSR – starkly physical symbols of the broken promises of communism – are one result of this economic collapse. While in...
Starvation and Survival on the Soviet Home Front during World War II
To combat starvation and the shortages, the Soviet state undertook a massive campaign to develop culinary experimentation through foraging and research. Although state sponsored, the effort was largely pioneered from...
War with Russia? From Putin and Ukraine to Trump and Russiagate
In recent years, Professor Cohen has been labelled “the most controversial Russia expert in America”, and this is in due part to his recent book warns of the existential dangers...
Medicine and Mortality in the Gulag
A prevailing argument in Gulag academia posits that the cruelty and inhumanity in Stalinist camps was never deliberate or “centrally coordinated”, but rather a product of incompetence, shortages, depletion of...
Monumental Politics: The Power of Public Memory in Putin’s Russia
The contemporary revival and politicization of Russia’s history begins with references to the glories of Kievan Rus, and progresses onwards through Soviet history. After the fall of the Soviet Union,...
School of Europeanness: Tolerance and Other Lessons in Political Liberalism in Latvia
As Latvia has moved towards Europeanization in the post-Soviet period, the country has faced a set of somewhat contradictory demands from European institutions: it has been expected to “draw a...
Thugocracy: A Way to Think About Trump and Putin
Professor Ries and her team developed an overarching lens through which the two world leaders could be viewed: by tracing similarities in their respective careers, Ries has concluded that both...
Russian Elites and Western Sanctions: A Political Economy Under Strain?
The talk primarily explored the degree to which the latest rounds of sanctions imposed by the West on the Russian oligarchs have been effective, and explored the possible ways the...
"Socialist Orientalism: Aleksandr Rodchenko’s and Varvara Stepanova’s Ten Years of Uzbekistan", a talk with Nariman Skakov
Rodchenko and Stepanova’s album “Ten Years of Uzbekistan” was commissioned and produced in 1933, with the intent of producing a luxurious folio to commemorate the tenth-year anniversary of the Uzbek...
A World of Empires: The Russian Voyage of the Frigate Pallada
Bojanowska’s book examines a travelogue by Ivan Goncharov, better known as the author of the novel Oblomov, using his eyewitness account as a window onto imperial history of the 19th...
The Vory: understanding Russia’s gangsters in their historical and political context, a book talk with Mark Galeotti
With the collapse of the Soviet state, many of the criminals began entering elite positions. The infectivity of the authorities allowed for criminality to roam freely on the streets: terrified...
Film Editing as Women’s Work: Esfir Shub, Elizaveta Svilova, and the Culture of Soviet Montage
Professor Kaganovsky’s study focuses on the contributions of the two early Soviet female directors: Esfir Shub and Elizaveta Svilova, “in order to make visible what has largely remained invisible –...
On Avant-Garde Post: Radical Poetics After the Soviet Union
The new Russian avant-garde poetic cohort's blend of a socialist past with global egalitarian ideas challenges both the discourses of the Russian authorities and the major opposition .
Khlebnikov, Tatlin, and the Utopian Geopoetics of the Russian Avant-garde (Event Recap)
Professor Harsha Ram’s paper primarily focuses on the poetics, the literary theory, and the politics surrounding the Russian Revolution, and how the particular “convergence of literature and politics can help...
The Story of Aleksei Balabanov’s Unfinished Film The American and Its Potential Afterlife
Two tragedies coupled with a failed attempt at completing the film “The American”, broke the “rhythms and networks of meanings” that flowed through the Aleksei Balabanov's earlier films.
Geography of Anti-Corruption Protests in Russia
How does protest activity in Russia vary by geography?
Meet the Empire: The Epic Journey of Grand Prince Alexander Nikolaevich in 1837: A Colloquium Discussion With Paul Werth
A colloquium talk on how the Russian Empire subtly stepped into the modern age in the year 1837.