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Person or Persons Unknown
Everyone loves to be proven right, but novelists don’t often expect it — especially five hundred years after the period where their books are set. After all, that’s half the...
Robert Bird discusses female subjectivity in socialist realist film
On December 11, 2015, the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia welcomed Robert Bird for a colloquium entitled, “Synchrony and Matriarchy: Documenting Female Subjectivity in Dziga Vertov...
Robert Crews revisits Afghan history in a global context
On Wednesday, March 9, 2016, the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia welcomed Robert Crews, Associate Professor of History and Director of the Abbasi Program in Islamic...
Islamic Engagement with the Russian Imperial State: A Conversation with Robert Crews
Robert Crews of Stanford University joined the Jordan Center on Thursday, October 17th for a discussion about his extensive research regarding Islamic engagement with the Russian Imperial state.
Review: "I Want a Baby and Other Plays" by Sergei Tretyakov, Translated by Robert Leach and Stephen Holland
This new collection of plays by Sergei Tretyakov, translated by Robert Leach and Stephen Holland, attempts to solidify Tretyakov’s role in the Russian Theatrical Avant-Garde Canon. In his introduction, Leach...
Literature and Reality, with Robert Chandler
On a trip to Moscow to meet with Vasily Grossman’s granddaughter, Robert Chandler recalled seeing a room with Grossman’s things. There, the translator was shocked to see the same line...
The Philosopher-Dictator: A Review of Geoffrey Roberts' "Stalin’s Library"
Roberts never defends Stalin or his crimes, but he does affirm Stalin’s rationality, arguing that Stalin’s actions can be understood in light of his ideas. His steadfast pursuit of communist...
A Sovok is a Person, Place, or Thing (Russia's Alien Nations)
"Sovok” becomes a diagnosis of a familiar, lamentable condition.
Kristy Ironside discusses Soviet tax on bachelors, singles persons and small families
On March 6, 2015, the Jordan Center welcomed Kristy Ironside, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, to speak about the Soviet tax on bachelors, singles...
Breaking Taboos by Injecting the Personal: Anna Starobinets and the Tradition of Solzhenitsyn
In Russian culture, the writer often acts as a missionary, charting new paths in public discourse by broaching previously unmentionable topics. In 2017, Russian fiction writer Anna Starobinets (pictured above)...
The Propaganda of Pornography: Soviet Reforms on Obscenity, Morality, and Personal Freedom in the Era of Glasnost
Lawmakers' greatest challenge was in defining pornography, a prerequisite for drafting meaningful legislation against it. Even pornography abolitionists acknowledged the importance of erotic themes in art and literature and did...
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...
It’s Raining New Men (Russia's Alien Nations)
The idea of the New Man is fundamentally utopian, based on the common utopian anthropology of human malleability.
Snowden in Moscow: The Interview
"I’ve been recognized every now and then. It’s always in computer stores. It’s something like brain associations, because I’ll be in the grocery store and nobody will recognize me. Even...
Slavery, Adat, and Blood Revenge in the North Caucasus
Slavery was a deeply ingrained social institution in the North Caucasus.
Soft Power Within – State Socialism and the Modern Everyday
The consumerism of modern everyday life as it developed in post-1956 communist Hungary is not merely the story of the Kádárian “carrot” gradually replacing Mátyás Rákosi’s “stick.” It is also...
Oleg Kharkhordin speaks on rules of order in Russian society
On October 15, 2014, the Jordan Center welcomed Oleg Kharkhordin with a lecture entitled “A Point of Order! The Troubled Travels of Robert’s Rules of Order from America to Russia,...
Documenting Nation: Why Watching TV Documentaries Matters in Russia Today
Don't worry, I watched them all for you — 672 episodes or 329 documentary films. I did so because TV documentaries matter for gaining insight into the Russian reality they...
Where does Putin's support come from?
"Collective euphoria" may explain the surge in support for Putin that followed Russia's annexation of Crimea, said Graeme Robertson.
Linor Goralik: "She Said, He Said"
Like, here, I had this parrot, and you know, they live a long time. Well, he died, like, he was sitting on my shoulder and all of a sudden I...