Featured
“The Americans Are (Not) Coming”: Rescue and Self-Defense in the Cold War
A cautionary tale from the Cold War might remind us that narratives of rescue, which promise to overturn repressive regimes and bring freedom and democracy in other nations, can be...
Frozen in Time
I have lived more than eight decades, and in many countries, so friends occasionally phone and ask, “Have you ever experienced anything like this?” Yes, I answer.
The European Court’s Pro-Gay Ruling Is Great Anti-Gay Propaganda
The ECHR ruling plays right into the Kremlin’s favorite narrative: Western liberalism is not only offensive to traditional values, but also out to get Russia.
A Balanchine for the New Millennium: Dana Genshaft and "Shadow Lands" at the Washington Ballet
A futuristic feeling pervades Dana Genshaft’s new work "Shadow Lands," the centerpiece of the Washington Ballet’s Three World Premieres this April at the Harman Center. Along with Ethan Stiefel’s Wood...
Fall Reading Series: Sergei Gandlevsky's "Illegible," Part II
Sergey Gandlevsky has written that his very first childhood poem, written on the occasion of the transfer to another school of the “beautiful, stern” little girl he had a crush...
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...
Third Terms, Third Trimesters, Third Columns
This past week, the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly considered taking a bold stance on the protection of human rights in these troubled times. There was just one catch: the "humans"...
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.
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.
Steve Jobs, iPhones, and Gay Propaganda
Is it possible to make official Russian homophobia even more laughable? There’s an app for that.
Why We Must Return to the US-Russian Parity Principle
We are in a new Cold War with Russia today, and specifically over the Ukrainian confrontation, largely because Washington nullified the parity principle. Indeed, we know when, why, and how...
Gender Trouble in The Double: Masculinity in Dostoevsky’s Novella and Ayoade’s Film
Right from the outset, Ayoade’s film establishes the presence of a masculine hierarchy.
Seeing Russia from Alaska
On April 13, 2016, a group of scholars met in Moscow to discuss the history and future of Alaska, or Russian America, as it was known before Russia sold it...
Tolstoy's Double, Part II
Tolstoy was sensitive and impressionable, but if a war, a guillotining, an autopsy or a famine was happening nearby, he wanted to see it for himself.
Plato’s Republic of Zavolshsk (Pelagia and the White Bulldog 6)
We’ve wandered onto territory somewhere between the Beiils Affair and the Pussy Riot trial
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...
Parliamentary Daydreams in Belarus: When the Rubber-Stamp Really is Just a Rubber-Stamp
Belarus held parliamentary elections in November 2019, producing one of the most unsurprising electoral results in recent history, even by Belarusian standards.
The Cold War’s End Between Contingency and Crowds
Taken together, Mary Sarotte's "The Collapse" and Serhii Plokhy's "The Last Empire" offer insights into the world’s geopolitical revolution of 1989-91, how developed states fail, and the limits of U.S....
Excerpt from Victoria Phillips' "Martha Graham's Cold War: The Dance of American Diplomacy," Part I
This week, "All the Russias" is delighted to feature excerpts from Victoria Phillips' book, "Martha Graham's Cold War: The Dance of American Diplomacy," out in 2019 from Oxford University Press....
"With the Slavonic Tongue One Cannot Be a Scholar": A Revised Assessment of Liberal Arts Culture in East Slavic Lands
If the first liberal arts academies in East Slavic lands swiftly attained a reputation for academic excellence, and were endorsed by both Church and state authorities, why was their introduction...