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Raspberry Jackets of the Rich and Loathsome (Russia's Alien Nations)
The raspberry jacket quickly became shorthand for “New Russian"
Steppe School: The Late Russian Empire and Kazakh Agriculture
In 1894, Vasily A. Saenko arrived in the small town of Zaisan in what is today far eastern Kazakhstan to take charge of the Zaisan Kazakh Agricultural School. For several...
Lost Opportunities and Newfound Possibilities: Awaiting a New Cold War or a New Generation
On Tuesday, April 9, the Jordan Center had the great honor of hosting some of the most distinguished experts of Russian-American relations, as Ambassador Jack Matlock, Senator Bill Bradley, Mr....
In Memory of Stephen Cohen
Earlier this year, our friend and colleague Stephen Cohen passed away. His contributions to the field of Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies will be felt for years to come....
Playing with a Full Deck (Akunin WQ 8-9)
Fandorin returns to Pushkin and Lermontov territory
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...
Summer Reading Series: Mikhail Zoshchenko's "Sentimental Tales," Part IV
The author pledges to his dear readers that when he recalls certain sentimental scenes—say, the heroine crying over a portrait, or the same heroine mending Apollo Perepenchuk’s torn tunic, or,...
“Dead Men Don’t Read Tolstoy. A Philip Marlowe Mystery”
“And the students? Didn’t they deserve a little Nabokov?”
The Sochi Citrus Project: a discussion with Johanna Conterio
Friday afternoon February 7th at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Studies, Harvard PhD candidate Johanna Conterio presented her paper at an event made possible by the History of Science Working...
The Spy Who…oh, never mind.
When Ryan Fogle, Third Secretary at the American Embassy in Moscow, was arrested for attempting to recruit a Russian security-services officer, the world sat up and took notice. Then it...
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...
Marital Happy Endings and Cultural Politics in a Contemporary Australian Adaptation of Anna Karenina
In our time, there is a definite expectation that people know what they want and ensure their own happiness.
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...
Gesamtkunstwerk Putin?
In today's Russia, can we really speak of a new official art, constructed on the model of “Gesamtkunstwerk Stalin [Total Art of Stalinism]," whose legacy was still influential at the...
"Black Snow [Khara Khaar]": Sakhawood’s Latest Thriller is a Punishing, Yet Gripping Watch
No more than five minutes into Stepan Burnashnev's Black Snow, it becomes clear that Gosha is headed for big trouble. The winter landscape in the Sakha Republic is notoriously unforgiving,...
Post-Soviet Transformations as a Shame-Mediated “Civilizing Process”: Neoliberalization, Academia, and the War in Ukraine
I recently attended a workshop where each participant presented their observations about the state of national identity in the Baltic States. One of my arguments in the workshop was that...
American Committee for East-West Accord urges debate on U.S.-Russian relations
On November 23, 2015, the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia, in collaboration with the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, hosted a panel discussion organized...
On Not Talking about Gender in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature
As a graduate student in Russian literature, I wrote a dissertation and eventually a book about the body and the grotesque in nineteenth-century realism. As I look back, I can’t...
Hip-Hop Lifestyle Branding and Russian Ethno-Nationalism: The Case of Timati
On Vladimir Putin’s sixty-third birthday, Russian rapper and businessman Timur Yunusov — better known by his stage name, “Timati” — released a music video featuring the hook “My best friend...
Summer Reading Series: Mikhail Zoshchenko’s “Sentimental Tales,” Part V
Before long Apollo Semyonovich Perepenchuk sank deep into poverty.