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The War in Ukraine is Not Only about Putin—It's Also about Russia
Why has Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine? Analysts argue that Putin has changed. The interpretation runs as follows. During the COVID pandemic, the Russian president was isolated...
The Power Practices of Neutrollization and Trickstery in International Digital Society
The design of the two Russia-linked disinformation campaigns exposed by Facebook reveals a peculiar mix of neutrollization and trickstery in action.
Russian Liberals and the Kremlin: Racism and Colonialism as Common Ground, Part II
Despite their conflicting interests and ideologies, every political affiliation across post-Soviet Europe blamed Russian war crimes on the Asian “other.”
What counts as corruption?
It would be difficult to argue that the Russian political system is squeaky clean. However, the ways in which the media defines corruption are skewed to classify what may be...
Sobchak interviews Nezvorov and my head explodes
Nevzorov's responses to Socbchak's pointed questions are a study in raw cynicism.
Penile Servitude and the Police State
Sunday before last, on the drizzly police holiday, Petersburg performance artist Petr Pavlensky (b. 1984) sat stark naked in Moscow's sacred center and nailed his scrotum to the cold cobblestones...
The Ramp to Nowhere? Disability in Contemporary Russia
Given the deeply entrenched obstacles—physical, social, cultural, material— to participation in public life by people with disabilities, whatever mention is made is still noteworthy.
Thank You, Comrade Stalin, for Ben Carson
In Russia, the Dulles Plan was a pre-digital Internet meme, from back in the days when memes had to walk twenty miles in the freezing cold before finding a gullible...
Ksenia Sobchak; or, Who Gets to Lose to Putin in 2018?
Russia could do a lot worse than Ksenia Sobchak. In fact, most countries currently are (not everyone gets to be Canada).
Speak, Memory: The Case of Yuri Dmitriev, Part II
Historian Yuri Dmitriev’s initial arrest came on December 13, 2016. It was the beginning of a nightmare involving months of pre-trial detention, two psychological examinations, and finally an acquittal –...
Kiss Me, Darling: The Monstrous in "The Bear's Wedding" (1926)
As the sole example of early Soviet supernatural horror (or perhaps even horror as such), "The Bear's Wedding" offers insight into the shape of the dreadful in the early Soviet...
Sergei Parkhomenko and the Protest Movement in Russia
“What can Russians do to express themselves? Be political.” Raising and answering this crucial question, Sergei Parkhomenko spoke this past Monday at the Jordan Center about the recent protest movement...
Day Two of “Hegel to Russia and Back”: Hegel Meets Marx, Lukacs, Soviet Art, and Kojève
On Saturday, April 13, day two of the conference “Hegel to Russia and Back,” sponsored by the Humanities Initiative, CUNY and the Jordan Center, took place at NYU. Again brilliant...
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...
All Blushes of Autumn: Russia’s Evolving “Red Lines” in the War on Ukraine, Part I
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 "red lines" were shifting or were not actually there at all.