CREECA Lecture Series Podcast
159 episodes - English - Latest episode: 5 months ago - ★★★★★ - 14 ratingsCREECA’s mission is to support research, teaching, and outreach on Russia, Eastern and Central Europe, and Central Asia. We approach this three-part mission by promoting faculty research across a range of disciplines; by supporting graduate and undergraduate teaching and training related to the region; and by serving as a community resource through outreach activities targeted to K-12 teachers and students, other institutions of higher education, and the general public.
As a U.S. Department of Education Title VI National Resource Center, CREECA hosts a variety of events and lectures which are free and open to the public. You can find recordings of past events here.
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Episodes
Sonic Inscription, Soviet Writing, and Mikhail Romm’s Oral Stories with Matthew Kendall
November 14, 2023 22:04 - 47 minutes - 43.1 MBMatthew Kendall (Assistant Professor in the Department of Polish, Russian, and Lithuanian Studies, University of Illinois-Chicago) will give a lecture on “Revolutions per Minute: Sonic Inscription, Soviet Writing, and Mikhail Romm’s Oral Stories” on Thursday, October 26, 2023 at 4:00 pm in 206 Ingraham Hall, 1155 Observatory Drive. About the lecture: In 1921, the poet Aleksandr Blok bemoaned the sonic aftermath of the Revolution from his deathbed, writing that “for a long time, no new sounds...
After Violence: Russia’s Beslan School Massacre And The Peace That Followed
October 24, 2023 19:58 - 45 minutes - 41.9 MBDebra Javeline (Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame) will present on her book, After Violence: Russia’s Beslan School Massacre and the Peace that Followed (Oxford University Press, 2023). Free and open to the public. About the lecture: Starting on September 1, 2004, and ending 53 hours later, Russia experienced its most appalling act of terrorism in history, the seizure of School No. 1 in Beslan, North Ossetia. Approximately 1,200 childr...
Intermarriage And The Friendship Of Peoples
October 24, 2023 19:54 - 52 minutes - 48.4 MBHistorian Adrienne Edgar (Professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara) will present on her recent book, Intermarriage and the Friendship of Peoples: Ethnic Mixing in Soviet Central Asia (Cornell University Press, 2022). Free and open to the public. About the lecture: In marked contrast to its Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union celebrated mixed marriages among its diverse ethnic groups as a sign of the unbreakable friendship of peoples and the imminent...
The Story Of Memorial And The Country's Failed Transition To The Rule Of Law
October 18, 2023 19:13 - 41 minutes - 38.1 MBLecture with Grigory Vaypan. Grigory traces the root causes of Russia’s war against Ukraine to the failure of the post-Soviet transitional justice project in the early 1990s. When the Soviet totalitarian regime collapsed, very little was done to confront its past crimes. Impunity for Soviet-era atrocities set the ground for persecution and abuse of power to reproduce themselves in contemporary Russia’s domestic and foreign policies. The story of Memorial, Russia’s oldest human rights group a...
Dungan Folktales & Legends: The Sino-Muslim Folkloric Narrative Tradition of Central Asia
July 25, 2023 18:17 - 42 minutes - 38.9 MBLecture with Professor Kenneth J. Yin. First migrating from northwest China to Russian Central Asia after the suppression of the Dungan Revolt (1862–1877) under the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, the Dungan people boast a rich oral tradition, which served as an important breeding ground for the development of Dungan written literature in the Soviet period. This presentation discusses the findings of an in-depth structural and comparative analysis of Dungan folk narratives conducted in the second h...
The Great Game and Migration of the 1950-60s from China to Kazakhstan with Dr. Ablet Kamalov
July 24, 2023 20:48 - 1 hour - 62 MBThis presentation will focus on the migration of Kazakhs, Uyghurs, Russians and some other ethnic groups from Xinjiang province of China to Soviet Kazakhstan in the 1950-60s. Discussion of the migration based on analysis of the Soviet archival materials as well as oral histories of migrants will be put into the context of the Great Game paradigm, that is a struggle of great powers for domination in Central Asia. Besides the historical background of the migration, we will examine the main fact...
Resilience in Ukraine: What We Know and What Can Be Done with Tymofii Brik
May 11, 2023 16:55 - 38 minutes - 35.7 MBThe talk focuses on the socio-economic consequences of the war and the factors contributing to the resilience of the Ukrainian people. Russia’s war against Ukraine has been ongoing for many years, and despite the challenges, the Ukrainian people have shown remarkable resilience in the face of adversity. The talk will highlight the factors that have contributed to the resilience. These include a strong sense of national identity, a deep-rooted commitment to democracy, and a successful decentra...
A Spiritual Revolution: Reform and Reaction in Orthodox Russia with Andrey Ivanov
April 14, 2023 19:11 - 49 minutes - 45.2 MBThe ideas of the Protestant Reformation, followed by the European Enlightenment, had a profound and long-lasting impact on Russia’s church and society in the long eighteenth century. Though the Orthodox Church was often assumed to have been hostile toward outside influence, Ivanov’s recent book argues that the institution in fact embraced many Western ideas, thereby undergoing what some observers called a religious revolution. Embedded with lively portrayals of historical actors and vivid des...
Political Participation of Women in the USSR and Russia with Valeria Umanets
April 07, 2023 18:32 - 48 minutes - 44.4 MBWhat happens when women’s political quotas are implemented in non-democracies? Valeria Umanets focuses on understanding the political and social meaning and manipulation of gender in the Soviet Union, which held informal women’s political quotas for almost 75 years. Specifically, this talk focuses on the political engagement of women in the Soviet legislative bodies and local councils and their consequences today. Valeria Umanets argues that the effects of women’s quotas should be considered ...
Shifting Rationality: How Identity Decay Led Russia to Invade Ukraine with Mikhail Troitskiy
March 31, 2023 17:39 - 40 minutes - 37.2 MBThe great puzzle of Russia-West relations throughout the three post-Cold War decades has been the apparent reluctance of the Kremlin to reap significant and evident benefits from collaboration with the United States and its allies. At many junctures, Moscow consistently chose confrontation over reassurance of its western counterparts and other key players. The costs of such behavior would almost invariably turn out to be high and unnecessary. Despite learning these lessons, Moscow continued t...
War, Revolution, and the Expansion of Women's Political Citizenship in Finland with Aili Tripp
March 24, 2023 21:32 - 40 minutes - 37.1 MBFinland was the first country in Europe to allow for suffrage for both men and women and the first in the world where women were elected to national legislative office. Using turn of the 20th century Finland as an example, Professor Tripp will demonstrate how war and the end of empire are linked to the expansion of women's citizenship. (The lecture was co-sponsored by UW-Madison Center for European Studies, CREECA, and UW-Madison GNS+.) - About the speaker: Aili Mari Tripp is Vilas Resear...
A War Vocabulary: Traumatic Experience and the Search for a New Language in Ukrainian Literature
March 10, 2023 00:08 - 59 minutes - 54.7 MBThe literature of the war against Ukraine testified to the profound changes that took place in the nature of Ukrainian artistic expression: from the loss of the very ability to speak, through the development of a new poetics of the voice and body, through literalism as the restoration of the connection between the word and reality and the rejection of metaphor in favor of metonymy – to the formation of a new idea of literature. Understood as a sphere of imagination and at the same time as a m...
Power And Powerlessness In Wartime Russia with Sam Greene
March 03, 2023 00:11 - 48 minutes - 44.1 MBRussia's war against Ukraine has brought about a radical restructuring of the Russian political economy, placing transformative ideology and outright coercion firmly at the heart of power. Despite this, the war and its consequences have produced remarkably little resistance. This discussion delves beyond the dynamics of coercion and ideology, to investigate how the war has interacted with Russians' "vernacular knowledge" about power and powerlessness. This knowledge has thus far remained resi...
Ukraine's Unnamed War - Jesse Driscoll (2.9.23)
February 20, 2023 19:52 - 52 minutes - 48.3 MBThe Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has its roots in the events of 2013–2014. Russia cynically termed the seditionist conflict in Crimea and Eastern Donbas a ‘civil war’ in order to claim non-involvement. This flies in the face of evidence, but the authors argue that the social science literature on civil wars can be used help understand why no political solution was found between 2015 and 2022. Jesse Driscoll explains how Russia, after seizing Crimea, was reacting to events it could not ...
The Russian Labor Market Story: Deciphering the Puzzles with Vladimir Gimpelson
February 17, 2023 19:06 - 1 hour - 57.1 MBHow can the Russian economy, moving from one crisis to another one, avoid significant hikes in unemployment? How does human capital evolve when workers’ wages peak so early and then decline so steeply? How does a country so rich in human capital exhibit such low productivity? Vladimir Gimpelson suggests some explanations and proposes how examining them can help in understanding past, present and future of the Russian economic performance. - Vladimir Gimpelson is Professor of Practice i...
The Biggest War Since 1945: Why and How Russia's Invasion of Ukraine Matters for European Security
February 03, 2023 00:44 - 48 minutes - 44.3 MBRussia's ongoing war against Ukraine reverberates beyond Ukraine in a major way. The international order and law are blatantly violated. Energy corridors have been affected and food supply chains have been disrupted around the world. The very notion of the international community and its ability to react to aggression is being tested. Volodymyr Dubovyk discusses how Russia's war in Ukraine puts the future of the EU as a foreign policy actor and of NATO as a major security player at stake. ...
Pastoralism in Kazakhstan as Cultural Heritage or Sustainable Culture? - Russell Zanca
January 27, 2023 00:11 - 1 hour - 72.1 MBHumans have harnessed and selectively bred livestock in Kazakhstan for over 5,000 years. This lecture discusses the history and current practices of pastoralism in Kazakhstan, exploring the contemporary interaction shared among people, animals, and ecosystems and the advantages of incorporating ancient lifeways among those who herd livestock in Kazakhstan today. Other topics include the necessity to “re-wild” environments and to expand the decision-making capacity of smallholders, as climate ...
Ukraine Now and Tomorrow - Yoshiko Herrera, Sara Karpukhin, and Oksana Stoychuk
December 12, 2022 18:37 - 59 minutes - 54.8 MBEmerged from several courses taught by UW-Madison faculty this semester focusing on Ukraine, the panel addresses questions submitted by the students in these courses relating to the histories and cultures in the region, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. - SPEAKERS: Oksana Stoychuk (German, Nordic, and Slavic+), Sara Karpukhin (German, Nordic, and Slavic+), and Yoshiko M. Herrera (Political Science)
How Russia Joined the Council of Europe: The Role of Values, Politics, and Law - Jeff Kahn
December 09, 2022 00:46 - 43 minutes - 40.1 MBThe story of Russia’s membership in the Council of Europe now has a beginning, a middle, and an end. What can we learn about the values of this international organization from Russia’s participation in it? Was Russia’s membership “worth it”? Any attempted answer must produce more questions: from which perspective – Russia’s, the Council’s, other Member States’ – should the effects of Russian membership be evaluated? How did the Council of Europe change Russia (if Russia was, indeed, changed) ...
Re-colonization? Kyrgyzstani Labor Migrant Experiences in Russia and Geopolitical Remittances
December 02, 2022 23:46 - 56 minutes - 51.5 MBwith Ted Gerber (UW-Madison Professor of Sociology) - After Russia recovered from the economic woes of the 1990s, its government sought to maintain and expand its influence over former Soviet republics of Central Asia by opening the doors to large numbers of labor migrants from them. However, many accounts of the experiences of Central Asian labor migrants in Russia during the 2010s emphasize their exploitation and mistreatment at the hands of officials, police, employers, and the general...
Law and Visual Culture in Three Vignettes - Agata Fijalkowski
November 18, 2022 00:19 - 53 minutes - 48.5 MBDr. Fijalkowski explores the relationship between law and visual culture by looking at photographs of individuals (a dissident, a judge, and a prosecutor who were involved in high-profile trials during the Stalinist period. An image can hide and expose questions of legitimation and authority pertaining to Stalinist rule and how we view defendants, judges, prosecutors, and justice. Visualising law requires extra-legal sources and analysis to reveal the nuances of a question that has been well ...
Making a Difference: Helping Ukrainian Refugees on the Ukraine-Poland Border
November 10, 2022 21:53 - 51 minutes - 47.5 MBNOTE: This is a partial recording of a complete panel. The beginning of the panel was not recorded. - Panelists share their experiences volunteering to help Ukrainian refugees in border regions of Poland and Ukraine. This panel features Kari Anderson (University of Wisconsin-Madison alumna, Head of Operations for Operation SafeDrop of the Make a Difference Foundation and practicing attorney in Washington, D.C.), Anna Tumarkin (University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of German, Nordic a...
The Russian 1990s and Soviet Writers: Market, Marginalization, and Decay in Peredelkino
October 20, 2022 23:30 - 49 minutes - 45.6 MBRussians today often remember the “Wild 1990s” as a time of chaos, impoverishment and disorientation. Through the lens of the privileged Writers’ Town, which had been built under Stalin and once been home to Isaac Babel, Boris Pasternak and Kornei Chukovskii among others, we can see how marketization and the collapse of socialist support systems led to both degradation and gentrification of the dacha community. In this talk, Dr. Kelly Smith will analyze the way in which partial commodificatio...
Sovereign Fiction: The Poetics and Politics of Russian Realism
October 13, 2022 23:10 - 53 minutes - 48.6 MBDr. Ilya Kliger outlines an approach to the study of “sociotopes” in narrative fiction and beyond. Defining sociotopes as specific configurations of sociality, presupposing and projecting diverse scenarios and normative principles of affiliation and detachment, Professor Kliger takes as his case study the emblematic and consequential moment in the history of the reception of Hegel’s philosophy in Russia: Belinsky's scandalous “reconciliation with actuality” (primirenie s deistvitel’nost’iu). ...
Art in Doubt: Tolstoy, Nabokov, and the Problem of Other Minds - Tatyana Gershkovich
October 06, 2022 23:18 - 44 minutes - 40.3 MBDr. Tatyana Gershkovich contests the familiar opposition of Tolstoy the moralist and Nabokov the aesthete. She argues that their divergent stylistic and philosophical trajectories were in fact parallel flights from the same fear: that one’s experience of the world might be entirely one’s own, private, and impossible to share through art. Yet unlike modernist and postmodernist authors for whom such doubt ends in absurdity or despair, Tolstoy and Nabokov both hold out hope that an artwork, w...
Crossroads of Empire: Culture and Statehood at the Eastern Frontiers of Europe - Cristina Florea
September 29, 2022 23:29 - 58 minutes - 53.4 MBBukovina, a former borderland of the Habsburg empire now divided between Ukraine and Romania, was a place of mutual observation, competition, and conflict between the different states and governments that laid claim to the territory. Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the province experienced repeated regime changes – many of which occurred seemingly overnight. This talk explores how the shared challenges of governing Bukovina facilitated mutual influences between regi...
Thrifty Businesswoman or Exploiter Extraordinaire? The Madam in Nineteenth-Century Russia
September 22, 2022 23:38 - 47 minutes - 43.2 MBDr. Lucey considers how Russia’s writers and artists popularized images of madams and procuresses as manipulative and greedy figures who tricked and abused the women in their charge. Portrayed as far more heinous than the men who frequented brothels, the madam looms in literature and fine art as a trafficker in human flesh who goes against God and nature in the pursuit of profit. Yet, as historians of imperial Russia have shown, the experience of brothel madams working under the state system ...
Ukrainians in Poland in Peace and War - Iryna Januszek (9.15.22)
September 15, 2022 23:04 - 57 minutes - 52.4 MBIryna Januszek is one of the many Ukrainians who found a life in Poland in the post-Soviet era, but Ukraine has never been far from her thoughts. Members of family remained there and participated in the movements to build a new society. She also shares those aspirations which brought Ukrainians to fight for freedom and association with Europe. Now the war has brought millions of Ukrainians to Poland as refugees, and she has been working to help them adjust to life there. She has many insights...
Black Like Us: African-American Travelers in Soviet Central Asia - Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon
July 28, 2022 23:26 - 39 minutes - 36.3 MBHow did African American visitors and residents of Soviet Central Asia imagine their Central Asian counterparts? Through an exploration of their writings, we can see how African Americans envisioned a shared historical and racial bond between themselves and Central Asians. About the Speaker: Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon is a Ph.D. student in history at the University of Pennsylvania and a Penn Presidential Ph.D. Fellow. Her work examines how the presence of people of color shaped ideas and un...
Climate, Environment, and Society in Medieval Central Eurasia - Amanda Wooden and Henry Misa
July 28, 2022 20:11 - 1 hour - 62.8 MB7.21.22 Henry Misa provides an almost two-thousand-year-long context for the modern climate crisis in Central Eurasia. He gives an overview of climatic and environmental change in Central Eurasia stretching from around 400 to the 1960s, and discusses the ongoing debates within the historiography of climate and society in Central Eurasia with a focus on the medieval period. Amanda Wooden brings together mining histories, political ecology, and modern environmental perceptions in Kyrgyzstan. T...
The Untold Nuclear History of Kazakhstan - Togzhan Kassenova (7.14.22)
July 21, 2022 22:55 - 1 hour - 58.8 MBDr. Kassenova shares the history of Soviet nuclear tests in the Kazakh steppe, their harm to the people and the environment, and the story of the public anti-nuclear movement that led to the closure of the nuclear testing site. She also explains why Kazakhstan decided to give up its nuclear inheritance, including more than a thousand nuclear weapons, more than a hundred intercontinental ballistic missiles, tons of nuclear materials, and critical nuclear infrastructure. Dr. Togzhan Kassenov...
When Language Policy is Not Enough - Juldyz Smagulova (7.7.22)
July 14, 2022 19:12 - 40 minutes - 37.1 MBBy focusing predominantly on discourse production and language management, language policy research de-emphasizes the material sources of inequality. The lecture argues that language management, often restricted by ritualistic and symbolic gestures, cannot rectify historically formed relations of power and calls for critical examination of both sociolinguistic and socio-economic consequences of language reforms. About the Speaker: Juldyz Smagulova is Associate Professor and Dean of College ...
Chechen Demographic Growth as a Reaction to the Existential Threat from Russia with Marat Iliyasov
May 05, 2022 23:28 - 36 minutes - 33.7 MBThis lecture presents research findings on the reasons for Chechen population growth in times of harshness. The investigation begins with an observation of a quite contradictory nature: Chechens would not postpone creating families in times of war (1994-1996 and 1999-2009). Being based on demographic statistics, which imply longitudinal studies, the analysis goes back as far as 200-250 years ago, when the first estimates of Chechen population size were made. This lecture analyzes available st...
Dialogue with the Dictator: Authoritarian Legitimation and Information Management - Hannah Chapman
April 28, 2022 22:50 - 35 minutes - 32.5 MBHannah Chapman presents a theory of how non-democratic regimes use seemingly democratic forms of communication and participation to bolster regime legitimacy and mitigate information dilemmas. She argues that autocrats develop and maintain participatory technologies—elite-mass communication strategies that promote increased interaction between the public and individuals in power—as a tool of legitimation and information management in authoritarian regimes. About the Speaker: Dr. Hannah Chap...
The Anniversary of Martial Law in Poland: Panel Discussion
April 22, 2022 17:28 - 1 hour - 57.7 MBPanel Discussion with Kathryn Ciancia, Lukasz Wodzynski, Krzysztof Borowski, and Brian Porter-Szucs : December 13, 2021, marked the 40th Anniversary of the Declaration of the Martial Law, the Communist Government’s violent attempt to quell a civic mass movement that gave millions of Poles hope for a better future. It marked the end of the “carnival of Solidarity,” ushering in a new era of brutality and repression. Despite the ultimate defeat of communism in East-Central Europe, the shadow of...
The Expulsion of Jews from Communist Poland: Memory Wars and Homeland Anxieties - Anat Plocker
April 14, 2022 23:37 - 44 minutes - 40.8 MBIn March 1968, Polish youth rebelled against the communist regime, demanding free speech and academic freedom. In response, the government publicly accused Polish Jews of staging the demonstrations as part of a wide-ranging conspiracy to weaken communism and forced thousands of Jews to leave the country. The talk exposes the conspiracies the communist regime held and promoted, which had turned Polish Jews into “security risks,” and points to connections between contemporary memory politics in...
The Political Economy of Polygynous Marriages Among the Kyrgyz - Michele Commercio (3.31.22)
March 31, 2022 23:38 - 58 minutes - 53.3 MBThere is very little academic literature on polygyny among Central Asians in general and among the Kyrgyz in particular. This talk, based on Michele Commercio’s forthcoming book, will explore the normalization of polygyny among the Kyrgyz in contemporary Kyrgyzstan, which criminalizes such unions, from a historical perspective. By this, she means implicit tolerance of unconcealed polygynous marriages at the mass and elite levels of Kyrgyz society within a state that is obligated but neglects ...
James Joyce's Russia and the Nightmare of Paternity - Jose Vergara (3.24.22)
March 24, 2022 23:35 - 46 minutes - 42.4 MBWhile James Joyce’s place in the modernist pantheon has long been firmly entrenched, its resonances continue to be uncovered. In the Russian context, the Irish writer has occupied many roles since his work was first translated in the mid-1920s. This talk will trace the development not of a monolithic Joyce, but rather of five separate Russian Joyces — the versions of the author imagined by his Russian readers. About the Speaker: José Vergara is Assistant Professor of Russian at Bryn Mawr C...
Russia Invades Ukraine: A Public Forum (3.2.22)
March 07, 2022 20:07 - 1 hour - 63.4 MBThe world has been shocked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Why did this happen? What is the true historical relationship between Russia and Ukraine? How are people reacting in Russia? What are the implications for the United States, NATO, and international security? What will be the impact of sanctions and other financial penalties that the United States and its allies have imposed on Russia? A panel of University of Wisconsin faculty members addressed these and other questions. Paneli...
Truculent Nationalism: The Russian People and Foreign Policy - Michael Alexeev (3.3.22)
March 04, 2022 00:29 - 43 minutes - 39.9 MBMilitary assertiveness in the “near abroad” and elsewhere has characterized Russia’s foreign policy at least since 2008. It has also played well with the Russian public. Is this aggressiveness due only or mostly to Putin’s ambitions or do popular attitudes in Russia support it as well? About the Speaker: Michael Alexeev is Professor of Economics at Indiana University in Bloomington. His research and teaching interests lie mostly in the fields of institutional economics, law and economics, a...
Muslims and the Making of Modern Europe with Emily Greble (2.17.22)
February 18, 2022 00:04 - 45 minutes - 41.6 MBFrom 1878 to the early 1920s, millions of Ottoman Muslims became citizens of other European states. This talk explores the many ways Muslims responded, from resistance to negotiation, illuminating how Muslim citizens shaped the states and societies in which they lived. Emily Greble addresses questions about why Muslims have been erased from so much of European history and what we can learn about secularism, religious freedom, and European legal norms by analyzing Muslim lives and perspectives...
Black Earth, White Bread: A Technopolitical History of Russian Agriculture and Food - Susanne Wengle
February 11, 2022 20:55 - 39 minutes - 35.7 MBLike all facets of daily life, the food that Russian farms produced and citizens ate—or, in some years, didn’t eat—underwent radical shifts in the century between the Bolshevik Revolution and Vladimir Putin’s presidency. An interdisciplinary history of Russia’s agriculture and food systems documents a complex story of the interactions between political policies, daily cultural practices, and technological improvements. Examining governance, production, consumption, nature, and the ensuing vul...
Judicial Dissent Under Autocracy: Evidence from the Russian Constitutional Court - Yulia Khalikova
February 04, 2022 00:32 - 31 minutes - 28.5 MBDissenting opinions are an unusual type of judicial behavior, especially in autocracies. Except for in very rare circumstances, separate opinions do not lead to changes in law or policy, but judges spend their time and resources to author them. In authoritarian regimes, dissents are even less expected: why would judges publicly voice their disagreement with the majority given the higher personal risks of expressing such discontent? Using original data on 629 judgments and 8,857 judicial votes...
Gender, Marriage, and Depression in the Animated Stories of Latvian Women
December 10, 2021 17:55 - 49 minutes - 45 MBSigne Baumane (Latvian-born animator, artist, and film maker) discusses her animated films, particularly 'Rocks in my Pockets' (2014), a film about five Latvian women throughout the twentieth century, which focuses on topics of depression, suicide, marriage, and gender roles in Soviet-occupied and post-Soviet Latvia. Baumane also offers a glance at her work-in-progress animated feature film 'My Love Affair With Marriage,' a fresh look on gender and romantic love, to be released in 2022. [Aud...
Social Policy and Societal Change: The Moscow Housing Renovation Program - Regina Smyth (12.2.21)
December 03, 2021 18:12 - 46 minutes - 42.9 MBThe introduction of an expansive housing reform in Moscow in 2017–the destruction and replacement of Khrushchev-era five story buildings–reflected a new form of consultative policy processes that demand state-society interaction. Similar policy interactions in democratic systems have led to increase in social capital and pro-social norms. In authoritarian contexts, they are a mechanism to win social support. The findings presented by Dr. Regina Smyth (Indiana University)have important implica...
Spending Preferences of Russia's Regional Governors - Dmitriy Vorobyev (11.11.21)
November 12, 2021 18:14 - 53 minutes - 49.1 MBDmitriy Vorobyev analyzes a unique dataset on personal characteristics of Russian regional governors serving between 2006 and 2019. Many of these governors have professional or educational military backgrounds. He combines the data with a panel of detailed regional budgets over the same period to identify any relationships between governors’ backgrounds and their spending preferences, and finds that governors with military backgrounds tend to distribute regional budgets very differently from ...
Ethnic and Religious Identities in Russian Penal Institutions - Rustam Urinboyev (11.4.21)
November 05, 2021 17:03 - 37 minutes - 34.7 MB"Ethnic and Religious Identities in Russian Penal Institutions: A Case Study of Uzbek Transnational Prisoners" discusses how the arrival of a large number of transnational Muslim prisoners shapes the traditional hierarchies and power relations in Russian penal institutions. He will argue that the large-scale migratory processes have transformed Russian penal institutions into a legally plural environment where it is possible to glean the patterns of the coexistence and clash between various f...
The Legacy Of Vaclav Havel: Virtual Roundtable (10.28.21)
October 29, 2021 17:02 - 1 hour - 80.9 MBIn December of this year, ten years will have passed since the death of the Czech writer, dissident, and statesman Václav Havel. This roundtable discusses Havelian concepts including “truth” (pravda), “power” (moc), “civil society” (občanská společnost), “appeal” (apel/výzva), “indifference” (lhostejnost), “focus/center” (ohnisko), “theater” (divadlo), “prison” (vězení), and “responsibility” (odpovědnost). Roundtable participants are noted scholars of Havel from North America and Europe: Asp...
Esperanto and Languages of Internationalism in Revolutionary Russia - Brigid O'Keeffe (10.21.21)
October 22, 2021 16:57 - 45 minutes - 41.5 MBIn 1887, a Jewish eye doctor named L.L. Zamenhof launched his international auxiliary language “Esperanto” from the western borderlands of a tsarist empire in crisis. Brigid O’Keeffe traces the history of Esperanto as a utopian vision rooted in late imperial Russian culture through to its rise as a vibrant global movement that inspired women and men around the world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although Esperanto and Esperantists have long been dismissed to the margin...
Photography in the Russian Poetic Imagination - Molly T Blasing 10.14.21
October 18, 2021 17:28 - 54 minutes - 49.9 MBDr. Molly Blasing presents material from her recent book, Snapshots of the Soul: Photo-Poetic Encounters in Modern Russian Culture (Cornell UP, 2021). She considers how photography has shaped Russian poetry from the early twentieth century to the present day, using examples of photo-poetic writing by Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Brodsky, and other 20th and 21st century poets. Listen to learn about how the camera transformed the visual language, representational power, and metaphorical possibilities ...