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Admitted as a Tourist, Tried as a Spy
Then I was asked[...] to name the former US secret service workers that he believed were teaching at NYU, and to recount the anti-Russian information that they believed was being...
Our Pushkin?
Pushkinists know that today is a holiday. The first graduating class of the Tsarkoe Selo Lyceum annually celebrated the anniversary of their first day of school by gathering, drinking, and...
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...
Russia and the Women's Marches
The signs linking Russia, Putin and Trump invoked existing language and memes that were often bawdy and hilarious.
Experts debate The Global History of Sport in the Cold War - Day 1
On October 23, 2015, the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia opened the New York session of “The Global History of Sport in the Cold War,” a...
Experts debate The Global History of Sport in the Cold War - Day 2
On October 24, 2015, the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia hosted the second part of “The Global History of Sport in the Cold War,” a two-day...
Civic Poetry and the Decembrist Revolt: Pushkin, Virtue Signaling, and Liberal Vibes
Pushkin’s political verse helped shape a subgenre of civic poetry and was subsequently interpreted in the context of this broader corpus and its increasingly radical opposition to the state.
Was An Iconic Pushkin Heroine Actually a Woman of Color?
Some of Pushkin’s contemporaries associated Russian serfdom with American slavery—and hence, the poet’s youthful liberalism with his African ancestry.
Teaching Race in Russia Part III: Sartre, Jazz, and the Cossack Dance
Sartre’s essay spends considerable time problematizing the intersection of communism and anti-racist politics, asking, “Can the black man count on a distant white proletariat-- involved in its own struggles?"
Crime and Punishment in Today's Russia
Almost 25 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, crime and policy responses to it are critical to understanding the political dynamics of the region.
Bitter Taste: How Gorky Saved Pushkin’s Honor by Closing His Café, Part I
"The dignity of Russia’s most famous poet, Alexander Pushkin, has been saved, but as a result Moscow’s most pretentious café is now nameless. It all started a few weeks ago...
Bitter Taste: How Gorky Saved Pushkin’s Honor by Closing His Café, Part II
The hysterical reaction by the Soviet establishment to an apparently innocent incident — a reaction that struck at least one Western observer as symptomatic, but still curious — was deeply...
Bitter Taste: How Gorky Saved Pushkin’s Honor by Closing His Café, Part III
Immediately after Gorky's death, rumors began to spread that he had been poisoned by chocolate candies sent to him from the Kremlin. Whether this is true or not, nobody knows....
How Pushkin Became a Cat, Part I
An American magazine article from 1936 plainly states that “the name Pushkin is ideal for a cat.” Why?
How Pushkin Became a Cat, Part II
Sometimes, it turns out, "Pushkin" is simply a fun nickname, in no way “instantly summoning,” as the devoted Gogol put it, “an intimation of Russia’s national poet.”
War and Pestilence: The Epidemiological Motif in L. N. Tolstoy's Historical Epic
In the motivic structure of "War and Peace," the “mythical” French "grippe" of Anna Petrovna Scherer occupies a unique position. It is a simultaneously socio-linguistic, satirical, historical, moral, and providential...
The Last Will and Testament of Sergei Esenin: Cultural History of a Mystification, Part I
In this article, I’d like to turn away from heated debates over Esenin’s alleged “killers,” or unprofessional falsifiers of literary history, toward an apparently calmer place. I will focus on...
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...
The Last Will and Testament of Sergei Esenin: Cultural History of a Mystification, Part III
In the end, he was released as partially insane, for it was noted that he considered himself an incarnation of the Buddha and believed that he desperately needed money to...
Excerpt from "Sex Work in Contemporary Russia: A Cultural Perspective," Part I
The character of the female sex worker has recurred pervasively across time, space, and genre, repeatedly used by writers, filmmakers, artists, intellectuals, and politicians to explore anxieties about the disruptive...