Featured
Putin's Mobilization and the Crimean Tatars: What Can We Expect?
Putin’s decision to mobilize Crimean Tatars may backfire. He has underestimated them just as he completely misunderstood Ukraine.
Cold Snap (Part I): Russian Film after Leviathan
This essay provides context for roughly thirty-five current and upcoming Russian films, loosely clustered around four topics: directors; debuts; economic health; and dominant industry trends.
There and Back Again (Russia's Alien Nations)
Was the Soviet Union the model for Mordor?
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...
Baltic Orthodox Monasticism
On 26 August 2018, an icon procession left the red-brick gates of the Pühtitsa convent, eastern Estonia: nuns in jet-black habits, priests in aqua vestments, and choristers in crimson velvet...
Reconceiving the Center: Correcting Our View of “Great” Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature
By the end of the nineteenth century, fifteen percent of Russia's professional writers were women. If we are now rethinking the canon, a major step is to restore them to...
Minor Writers and the Major Leagues, Part I
Why bother reading the minor writers of nineteenth-century Russia? There seems to be such a surplus of major writers, why dig any deeper?
Minor Writers and the Major Leagues, Part II
Another reason to study minor writers is that they help us to understand historical eras. They are part of the thick description of a given time. For the major-centric among...
V.V. Andreev’s Velikorusskii Orchestra: National Identity and Music in Late Imperial Russia
Anya Shatilova writes about Vasily Andreev, “a self-taught balalaika player” who in 1888 organized the Society of Balalaika Devotees in order to “manifest the ‘Russian national idea’ in musical form.