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Socrates in Russia, Part III
My chapter draws on Skovoroda’s metaphysics and epistemology to articulate a conception of Dostoevsky's Zosima as a Russian Socrates.
Diary of a Tweeter: On Golyadkin, Raskolnikov, and the Search for Empathy
I broke one of the @RodionTweets rules.
Rodion Raskolnikov, Your Tweet Archive is Ready
Two years ago, on May 1, 2016, the Twitter account @RodionTweets sent its first tweet. Since then @RodionTweets has livetweeted the events of Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment, broken into...
Twitterature in the Dostoevsky Classroom
My adventure with Twitterature began three years ago, when I began to work with the North American Dostoevsky Society as their social media curator. I began a twitter account for...
Tweets in the Fog: Time and the Crime and Punishment End Game
Once Raskolnikov confesses, then what happens?
Why the international community shouldn’t ignore the Crimean Tatars
Early in 2014 the Russian annexation of Crimea caused international uproar. Subsequently, things went quiet. Today, the media are paying attention again, as they reveal how local Russian authorities are...
Interview with Sean Guillory, Part I
"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...
Open Letter on the Termination of Russian Studies Faculty at Ohio University
Like you, we are wholeheartedly invested in the survival and recovery of higher education in the United States amid the COVID-19 pandemic. That recovery depends on the will of universities...
Governing Religion, Mobilizing Faith: Conference Recap
The Jordan Center's first all-day conference of the fall on Friday October 18th: "Governing Religion, Mobilizing Faith"
Will American Liquefied Natural Gas Change the Russian Sanctions Game?
When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the United States reacted with its first round of sanctions against the country, with the Obama administration levying additional sanctions in December of 2016...
New-Generation Warfare and the Fringe Right: How Russian Interference Impacts Right-Wing Extremism in the US, Part I
Russian interference campaigns do not discriminate. They target the left as well as the right. But with right-wing violence the largest terrorist threat facing the US today, the potential impact...
New-Generation Warfare and the Fringe Right: How Russian Interference Impacts Right-Wing Extremism in the US, Part II
It is difficult to say whether anyone, Russia included, could purposely engineer another QAnon movement. However, QAnon is a masterclass in manipulating an audience by playing to its expectations and...
New-Generation Warfare and the Fringe Right: How Russian Interference Impacts Right-Wing Extremism in the US, Part III
The white supremacist fascination with Putin’s Russia is not alarming only because it represents a distasteful admiration for anti-democratic and authoritarian values but also because it presents a direct threat...
Love (Not Death): A Postmodern Tolstoy in Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina
Despite flaws of both execution and interpretation, this most recent adaptation displays a genuinely intelligent understanding Tolstoy’s novel.
The Final Battle between Good and Neutrality?
Today, the Leninskii District court in Kirov (what would those two Bolsheviks have made of it all?) is due to see the start of Alexei Navalny’s case, as he faces...
Talking with Scholarly Publishers (Historia Nova Prize Part II)
What advice would you give a young scholar when submitting a manuscript to your press?
Putin won reelection. Now he’s a "lame duck." What will that mean?
To nobody’s surprise, Russian President Vladimir Putin won reelection to a fourth term on March 18, by a wide margin. With Putin’s (last?) presidential election in the books, I reached...
What Was Postsocialism, and What Comes Next? (Russia's Alien Nations)
“Post-Soviet” is, initially, meaningless, but so was “Soviet”
The Khachaturyan Sisters and Russia’s History of Fighting Terror at Home
The case of the Khachaturyan sisters reads like one of Liudmila Petrushevskaya’s darkest tales. On August 2, 2018, Maria (age 17), Angelina (18), and Krestina (19) were arrested on charges...
"One Soldier’s War" and the New Literary War Hero
In literature and in real life, there is a new type of veteran. From the West’s GWOT (Global War on Terror) "hitters" to the generation Russia lost to Chechnya, the...