We self-generate kompromat all day long.
Continue reading...Edward Cohn explores “prophylactic policing” in the Soviet Baltics
Kathryn David
On April 1, 2015, the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia welcomed Edward Cohn for a colloquium on “A Soviet Theory of Broken Windows: Policing and the KGB’s Struggle With the Baltic States.” Cohn, Associate Professor of History and chair of the Russian, Central, and Eastern European Studies concentration at Grinnell College, was introduced by Arturas Rozenas, Assistant Professor of Politics at NYU. The presentation and discussion focused on a paper that will become part of a larger research project on Soviet strategies of policing in the Baltics.
A Soviet Theory of Broken Windows: Prophylactic Policing and the KGB’s Struggle with Dissent in the Baltic States
Ilaria Parogni
Stephen Kotkin on Stalin: Geopolitics, Ideas, Power
Anastassia Kostrioukova
Sept. 26, 2014, marked the first of the Distinguished Lecture series at the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia. As director Yanni Kotsonis pointed out, the lectures as well as the Center itself are meant to “protect conversations about Russia. If one wants to speak of Russia these days, you need protection; if one wants to speak against, you also need protection.” He added: “The only criterion here is intelligence.”
Noncompetitive elections and dissent: Evidence from the USSR
Anastassia Kostrioukova
Sept. 12 marked the opening of the Jordan Center’s Fall 2014 Colloquium Series with a presentation by Arturas Rozenas, Assistant Professor at the NYU Department of Politics, whose current research focuses on authoritarian states, electoral competitions and statistical methodology. Rozenas presented a paper on the nature of Soviet elections, which he had written several years ago and currently wishes to revive with newly gathered data from the KGB and Communist Party archives in Lithuania.
Continue reading...Spies in the House of Rock
Eliot Borenstein
We end up with a CIA whose power and effectiveness would bring joy to Dick Cheney’s latest heart and prompt him to shoot another friend in the face in celebration.
Continue reading...Admitted as a Tourist, Tried as a Spy
Diego Benning Wang
Then I was asked[…] to name the former US secret service workers that he believed were teaching at NYU, and to recount the anti-Russian information that they believed was being disseminated in my classes.
Continue reading...Чаадаев и пустота (Chaadaev and Void)
Nicole Disser
Spies Like U.S.: “The Americans” and the Americans
Eliot Borenstein
On the face of things, “The Americans” should be pressing all sorts of buttons in the American psyche: crypto-communists! danger in the suburbs! our neighbors hate our freedoms! Moreover, since the Soviet agents and our main point-of-view characters, the show is implicitly asking us to root for the KGB. Why isn’t Fox News all over this?
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