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The Great Symbolic War, or Why Felix Dzerzhinsky is Back
The return of the past in Putin’s Russia resembles a mass-scale historical reenactment. The revived Dzerzhinsky again looks to the West—toward Poland and the Baltics—while the gentlemen who proclaimed themselves...
Emotional Accessibility: Illustrations and Editorial Cartoons in Late Imperial Russia’s "Kopeck Press"
In the years before the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution, Russia was home to a thriving penny press. Journalists, publishers, and ambitious entrepreneurs in towns and cities across...
Marks and Angles: An Immigrant Story
You can tell from our left arms.
Alternate Histories: An Immigrant Story
I’m writing this essay rather than hoisting a Kalashnikov for a simple reason: my parents’ determination to leave the Soviet Union.
Excerpt from Emil Draitser's "In the Jaws of the Crocodile: A Soviet Memoir," Part III
What else do I have in my briefcase?
Egnate Ninoshvili and the Remapping of Georgian Cultural History. A View from the Streets of Post-Soviet Tbilisi
There is something suspiciously inconspicuous about how Ninoshvili’s bust fits into its surroundings, remaining unremarkable in an otherwise hyper-central spot on the main street in Georgia's capital.