Letter in Support of Eugenia Berkovich and Svetlana Petriichuk

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On 4 May 2023, Russian theater director Eugenia (Zhenya) Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petriichuk were detained in Moscow as suspects in a criminal case on “justifying terrorism” for their feminist play, “Finist the Brave Falcon.” Faced with this new act of intimidation of the artistic community in Russia, committed in violation of the constitutional principle of freedom of speech, we ask the international community for their support.

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Exodus: Russian Repression and Social “Movement”

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In past research, we identified several broad trends in Russian civil society prior to the war, which we labeled enduring, evaporating, and adapting forms of activism. These terms captured, respectively, organizational types that had persisted since the 1990s, those unable to survive, and those that adapted to Russia’s increasingly repressive environment. Here we examine a new trend in Russian civil society: escaping.

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The Path to “Healthy Conservatism”: Values-Based Regime Legitimation in Putin’s Russia

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As the Kremlin’s definition of conservatism evolved, it moved from privileging stability, to emphasizing control, to, finally, understanding conservatism as traditionalism. These shifts were both gradual and reactive, responding to changing domestic and external circumstances. The “healthy conservatism” of 2021, where our study culminates, provides a useful ideological platform for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine only months later. However, this outcome diverges sharply from the original premise of conservatism in Putin’s discourse—stability.

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Employee of the State, Enemy of the State: Teaching English in Moscow

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I taught English as a Foreign Language in Moscow between 2019 and 2022, through mass student protests, increasing restrictions on freedom of speech, and, finally, a total break with Western institutions after February of last year. I taught a chilling set of classes only hours after Russia began bombing Kyiv. And as the government cracked down on connections with perceived enemies of the state, banned Facebook, Instagram, and the BBC, my students did not know how they should relate to me—the “enemy”—nor I them.

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Prosperity or War? “Peace” as a Political Tool in Today’s Hungary

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Since the outbreak of the war, the Hungarian government has consistently objected to providing military aid to Ukraine to help the country defend itself from its Eastern aggressor. Hungary has also striven to use its power as an EU member state to minimize the breadth and effect of sanctions imposed on Russia by the EU. The Hungarian government has made it clear that rather than arms, only “peace” can bring an end to the conflict.

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Excerpt from “Sex Work in Contemporary Russia: A Cultural Perspective,” Part III

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Prostitution existed in Russia for several centuries but became a widespread phenomenon during Peter I’s rule (1683–1725), with the first brothel or “public house” reportedly established by a German in the 1750s. Undoubtedly, prostitution existed in Russia prior to this time, but its linkage to the influx of Western ideas during Peter’s reign, and crediting the first brothel to a non Russian, set up an important pattern of identifying prostitution and its social and symbolic implications with a Western, and not Russian, value system.

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Excerpt from “Sex Work in Contemporary Russia: A Cultural Perspective,” Part II

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The sex industry in Russia is multiethnic, with scholars estimating a significant number of female migrants (from Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia) working as sex workers, especially in large cities like Moscow. Despite this diversity in real life, the sex workers (and their clients) featured in films and literature are almost exclusively depicted as white, ethnic Russians.

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