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Navalny and the Boxers Rebellion
There is no scenario in which a sentence containing the name "Putin" and the words "Navalny's underwear" does the president any good.
A Spectre is Haunting Russia, or A Chilling Journey from Ulyanovsk to Silicon Valley, Part I
How does the Airpod-sporting, Tesla-obsessed Ulyanovsk teen compare to Eugene Onegin with a bust of Napoleon in his study?
A Spectre is Haunting Russia, or A Chilling Journey from Ulyanovsk to Silicon Valley, Part II
As near-daily news articles expose American tech leaders’ unethical business practices and shifts into neoconservativism, we are more in need than ever of creative means for limiting their power. Maybe...
Men Who Paint, Men Who Post: Visualizing Russian Masculinity
In his first personal Instagram post since his poisoning, a dazed Navalny sits up in his hospital bed, surrounded by smiling family. He is hunched, his collarbone and ribs visible...
Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata on Stage: Domestic Violence and the Economics of Pity, Part I
I pictured myself as the narrator in Tolstoy’s 1889 novella The Kreutzer Sonata. Like me, he feigns sleep to escape a talkative seatmate. Like me, he is failed by this...
Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata on Stage: Domestic Violence and the Economics of Pity, Part II
Pity is weird. We happily extend it to strong figures but we’re stingy with the weak, with actual “victims.”
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...
Fandorin Meets Dracula (WQ 13)
There is precious little bloodsucking in Akunin’s oeuvre, which I’ve long considered a serious flaw.
Spring Reading Series: Andrei Egunov-Nikolev's "Beyond Tula," Part II
Railroad engineers used to refer to tracks in the feminine: “get up on her,” they’d say about the fifth track, or “she’s a tough one, the eleventh.”
Spring Reading Series: Andrei Egunov-Nikolev's "Beyond Tula," Part III
Darya Fyodorovna came in and asked whether to serve them dinner, but the co-op operator was loping dreamily around the room. A porcelain Easter egg was hanging in the corner...
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"
War with Russia? From Putin and Ukraine to Trump and Russiagate
In recent years, Professor Cohen has been labelled “the most controversial Russia expert in America”, and this is in due part to his recent book warns of the existential dangers...
Putin: the man who arranges the blocks
The entirely brilliant Complete History Of The Soviet Union, Arranged To The Melody Of Tetris by Pig With The Face Of A Boy, encapsulates what we could call Russia’s long...
Tsar Nicholas Putin: Continuity or Coincidence?
On a cold December morning in the capital city a crowd gathered to protest Russia’s new ruler. Slogans and cheers sounded through the winter air as the people awaited the...
Second World Problems (and their solutions)
I wanted to write about the plane crash in Kazan but I keep sneezing because my apartment is dusty.
HuffPost Interview: Is Media Distorting Russia & Ukraine?
Alyona Minkovski of HuffPost Live interviews guests David Speedie (Director of the Carnegie Council's program on U.S. Global Engagement), Yanni Kotsonis (Director of the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced...
The Takeaway Interview | Literature Offers Lessons For Growing Russian-Ukrainian Crisis
CNN Interview | Russia facing strong economic sanctions
The Silence of American Hawks About Kiev’s Atrocities
Among the crucial questions rarely discussed in the US political-media establishment: What is the role of the “neo-fascist” factor in Kiev’s “anti-terrorist” ideology and military operations?
Change is coming to All The Russias
I am stepping away from most of my editorial duties for the blog