Images of decay across the territory of the former USSR – starkly physical symbols of the broken promises of communism – are one result of this economic collapse. While in the center of Moscow former factories such as Vinzavod, Artplay, and Red October have been turned into hip gallery spaces, helping to transform run-down neighborhoods into cosmopolitan hotspots, throughout the rest of Russia many factories remain derelict spaces–as is dramatically evident in the Hammer and Sickle metallurgical plant.
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To combat starvation and the shortages, the Soviet state undertook a massive campaign to develop culinary experimentation through foraging and research. Although state sponsored, the effort was largely pioneered from below – scientists, nutrition experts, canteen cooks, and bakers were among the many ordinary participants.
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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 a hardline foreign policy on Russia could pose.
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A prevailing argument in Gulag academia posits that the cruelty and inhumanity in Stalinist camps was never deliberate or “centrally coordinated”, but rather a product of incompetence, shortages, depletion of resources, and other “external factors” such as the harsh Siberian climates. But in her book Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin’s Gulag, Dr. Golfo Alexopoulos argues, contrary to popular Gulag literature, that Stalinist camps were actually more akin to death camps: a “highly coordinated system of violent human exploitation” to a “degree not previously documented.”
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The contemporary revival and politicization of Russia’s history begins with references to the glories of Kievan Rus, and progresses onwards through Soviet history. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Johnson argued, Russia was left with an identity crisis caused by the vacancy of Soviet ideology. The Russian state therefore looked towards public space, as “control of symbolic public spaces was always very important.”
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As Latvia has moved towards Europeanization in the post-Soviet period, the country has faced a set of somewhat contradictory demands from European institutions: it has been expected to “draw a variety of boundaries around liberal democratic states and policies, while at the same time emphasizing the virtues of inclusion openness and tolerance.”
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Professor Ries and her team developed an overarching lens through which the two world leaders could be viewed: by tracing similarities in their respective careers, Ries has concluded that both Trump and Putin exhibit “thugocratic tendencies.”
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The talk primarily explored the degree to which the latest rounds of sanctions imposed by the West on the Russian oligarchs have been effective, and explored the possible ways the oligarchs can react to the financial constraints. The question mark at the end of the title signifies the lack of a definitive answer to the question.
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Rodchenko and Stepanova’s album “Ten Years of Uzbekistan” was commissioned and produced in 1933, with the intent of producing a luxurious folio to commemorate the tenth-year anniversary of the Uzbek Socialist Soviet Republic. At the time, the Central Asian republic was considered “an exemplary space” for manifesting the Socialist goal.
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Bojanowska’s book examines a travelogue by Ivan Goncharov, better known as the author of the novel Oblomov, using his eyewitness account as a window onto imperial history of the 19th century and Russia’s perceptions of and relations with its own colonial subjects.
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With the collapse of the Soviet state, many of the criminals began entering elite positions. The infectivity of the authorities allowed for criminality to roam freely on the streets: terrified and outgunned, police would often patrol for no more than fifteen minutes.
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Professor Kaganovsky’s study focuses on the contributions of the two early Soviet female directors: Esfir Shub and Elizaveta Svilova, “in order to make visible what has largely remained invisible – film editing as women’s work”
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The new Russian avant-garde poetic cohort’s blend of a socialist past with global egalitarian ideas challenges both the discourses of the Russian authorities and the major opposition .
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Professor Harsha Ram’s paper primarily focuses on the poetics, the literary theory, and the politics surrounding the Russian Revolution, and how the particular “convergence of literature and politics can help rethink the problem of world literature.” Focal to Ram’s research are poet Velimir Khlebnikov and artist Vladimir Tatlin, whose unconventional work presented a utopia imbued with a new vision of geopolitics.
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Two tragedies coupled with a failed attempt at completing the film “The American”, broke the “rhythms and networks of meanings” that flowed through the Aleksei Balabanov’s earlier films.
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How does protest activity in Russia vary by geography?
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A colloquium talk on how the Russian Empire subtly stepped into the modern age in the year 1837.
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Professors Hilary Appel and Mitchell A. Orenstein discuss a new approach to examining post-communist Eastern European economic policies offered in their book “From Triumph to Crisis: Neoliberal Economic Reform in Postcommunist Countries”.
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Call it a new cold war or a “hot peace,” US-Russia relations are terrible, yet within recent memory the two countries still cooperated on a range of issues. To answer which side is to blame for current tensions, Stephen Cohen debated Michael McFaul at Columbia University.
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A historical sociolinguistic study of social groups in early 20th century Russia reveals particular social dialects among peasants.
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