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All the Russias: A Transnational Approach
A new approach underpins "Transnational Russian Studies," edited by Andy Byford, Connor Doak, and Stephen Hutchings, just published by Liverpool University Press. Our book opens up the map of Russian...
Encountering the Mysterious Landscape of the Tunguska Explosion
The Tunguska event clearly reveals the potency of mystery as a force in environmental history and the planetary humanities.
Black woman or Russian fashion accessory? Only her hairdresser knows for sure...
If you’re an art impresario, fashion designer, and related to two (count ‘em, two) Russian oligarchs by blood and by common-law marriage, it can’t be easy finding a new thrill....
Lenin Lives: An Exhibition at the Van Every Gallery, Davidson College
Artists and politicians alike recognized the symbolic significance of Lenin’s public image.
The Abuses of Enchantment (Russia's Alien Nations)
Tolkien has been accused of many things, but subtlety is not among them.
Tolstoy the Peasant: A "Myth" Revisited
To what extent was the "myth" of Leo Tolstoy-as-peasant purveyed by Ilya Repin merely that—a myth? Was it, in fact, not a myth at all? Tolstoy was no peasant, for...
Red-Colored Glasses: Review of "Everyday Soviet" at Rutgers' Zimmerli Museum
"Everyday Soviet: Soviet Industrial Design and Nonconformist Art" (1959-1989) is on view until May 17, 2020 at Rutgers University’s Zimmerli Museum in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Excerpt from Joanna Stingray's "Red Wave: An American in the Soviet Music Underground," Part II
One of my favorite Pop Mechanics concerts at the Rock Club wasn’t one in which I sang, but one where I saw Sergey produce performance art at its fullest.
Project 1917: A Revolutionary Year Reimagined through Social Media
In today’s Russia, where government propaganda consistently denies society’s inherent complexity, Project 1917 offers a space that supports civil discourse and challenges official narratives. Only when history belongs to the...
The Drag Queen in Vyshyvanka
Socially progressive politicians of Eastern Europe, never neglect the power of vyshyvanka!
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.
December 1989: An Immigrant Story
One could find bards at every immigrant gathering singing The Tales of What Could Go Wrong At the Interview.
A Semester of Diaspora at the Jordan Center
What would change if the emigration were renamed and recast as a diaspora, not to keep up with the fashion but to seriously consider what vistas it might open, what...
Fictional Gays and Real Meteorites in Chelyabinsk
Chelyabinsk is about the last place in Russian you’d expect to find any kind of gay movement, and comedians have taken advantage of this.
The Snowball Effect: An Immigrant Story
When I tell my story of immigration, which story do I tell?
New York Public Library Appoints Full-Time Slavic Curator
On October 15, 2018, Bogdan Horbal became the full-time Slavic curator at the New York Public Library. He holds a Ph.D. in history from University of Wrocław in Poland and...
Russian Christmas Comes But Once a Year
In the United States, the Christmas season is winding down — or concluded depending on whom you speak to. The “most wonderful time of the year” typically ends after the...
Re-Introducing Fandorin (Turkish Gambit 2)
he Turkish Gambit appears to be as much an ironic sequel to Anna Karenina as it is the literal sequel to The Winter Queen.
Fall Reading Series: Sergei Gandlevsky's "Illegible," Part I
In contemporary Russian literary life, Gandlevsky’s stature as a poet is indisputably great; he is less well known as a prose writer, although his novels and essays have been critically...
The Last Will and Testament of Sergei Esenin: Cultural History of a Mystification, Part II
On October 9th, 1927, already after the tragic death of Duncan herself, and again in the Sunday supplement to Hearst’s newspapers, there appeared yet another article, undoubtedly from the same...