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Interview with Sean Guillory, Part I
"The sorry state of public discourse around Russia has led me to try to provide the most eclectic range of topics on my podcast. The idea is to show my...
Interview with Sean Guillory, Part II
"I think we who either produce or engage with academic work need to seriously reconsider what we do, why we do it, and whom we do it for. I remember...
From Ideology to Culture in Putin’s Russia
Although Putin laments the excesses of communism, he identifies two problems that ideology or otherwise a “national idea,” as a pragmatic tool, could theoretically solve: 1) a lack of moral...
The Second Great Patriotic War? Sacred Memory and Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine
The cult of the Great Victory was transformed into the war cult of the Russian invasion.
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...
A Trial Against Racial Hatred: White Chauvinism and International Communism
On September 21st, Sean Guillory, host of the SRB Podcast and Digital Scholarship Curator in the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, joined...
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.
Cold Snap (Part II): Russian Film after Leviathan
An auteurist orientation, therefore, is neither good nor bad, but it is certainly mismatched to an industry—especially during periods of robust growth—in which so-called “spectators’ cinema” [zritel'skoe kino] is in...
Hulk Smash Stupid Russia Theories
Monocausal explanations have the virtue of catchiness and the vice of absurdity.
Radoslaw Markowski presents research on Polish politics after the October 2015 election
The last Polish election might have been the last election in a normal, democratic context.
No Victory in Sight in Russia’s Great Memetic War
As I write this, Moscow is clearing up after the latest Great Patriotic War nostalgia-fest. The Victory Day parade is a chance to remember past glories, drink, wear a pilotka...
Philosophical Moving Pictures (Russia's Alien Nations)
Мikhalkov’s recreation of Russia is an exercise in sympathetic magic, meant to transform the derussified masses from de facto foreigners into the Russians they are meant to be.
Yesterday's Man of Tomorrow (Akunin WQ 6)
Is there anything more tedious than historical parallels, especially in Russia?
Russian Symbolists and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Part I
“Absurd!” “Perverse!” “Puerile!” “Frantic trash!” Thus fumed London critics who attended the 1850 exhibition of the little-known Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. For the three young artists who dreamt of revolutionizing the Royal...
Dispatches from NYU Libraries
“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...