A Russian Voyage of Empires
Guest: Edyta Bojanowska on A World of Empires: The Russian Voyage of the Frigate Pallada published by Harvard University Press.
August 17, 2019
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Russian Socialists in the Struggle for Democracy
For the past few weeks, protests for fair elections in upcoming municipal polls have become weekly in Moscow and St. Petersburg as thousands have defied authorities to attend unsanctioned rallies. The police crackdown has been particularly harsh in Moscow. Protests on July 27 and August 3 resulted in over 2000 detentions. Images of police in riot gear wrestling citizens to the ground and beating peaceful protesters were reminiscent of the mass protests against election fraud in 2011-2012.
Members of the Russian Socialist Movement, a small Marxist, anti-Stalinist organization active in the Russian left, have been participants in local electoral campaigns and in the protests. Two RSM activists, Valeria Kovelishina and Ilya Budraitskis talk about the Russian Socialist Movement, their electoral work, the protests for democracy in Russia and what they might mean for the future.
August 10, 2019
Witnessing the Collapse of Communism
Roundtable discussion marking the 30th anniversary of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. Participants include Timothy Garton Ash, Bridget Kendall, and Jens Reich.
August 2, 2019
Rasputin, the Man and the Myth (Rebroadcast)
Guest: Doug Smith on Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs.
July 27, 2019
The Evictors
Around Moscow, there’s a whole industry of so-called “black creditors” — microfinance institutions (or MFOs) that swindle and seize debtors’ homes. Ivan Golunov’s investigation for Meduza has discovered that almost 500 apartments have been seized from their owners over the past five years without so much as a court order. In fact, this scheme involves more than simply “squeezing” people from their homes. It is possibly part of a wider, international money-laundering system. Here’s Meduza special correspondent Ivan Golunov on the ins and outs of this industry.
July 19, 2019
Stalinism
Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible
Guest: Joan Neuberger on This Thing of Darkness: Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible in Stalin’s Russia published by Cornell University Press.
June 21, 2019
Soviet Anti-Americanism
Guest: Rósa Magnúsdóttir on Enemy Number One: The United States of America in Soviet Ideology and Propaganda, 1945-1959 published by Oxford University Press.
June 14, 2019
Stalin’s Short Course
Guest: David Brandenberger on Stalin’s Master Narrative: A Critical Edition of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), Short Course published by Yale University Press.
June 7, 2019
“The Reddest of the Blacks”
For the past several months, I’ve been researching the life of Lovett Fort-Whiteman. Here’s a short film I made about his eventual arrest and death in Stalinist Russia.
May 21, 2019
The Gulag at War
Guest: Wilson Bell on Stalin’s Gulag at War: Forced Labor, Mass Death, and Soviet Victory in the Second World War published by the University of Toronto Press.
March 1, 2019
Transcript: The Gulag at War
Partial transcript of my interview with Wilson Bell on his book Stalin’s Gulag at War: Forced Labor, Mass Death, and Soviet Victory in the Second World War.
February 28, 2019
Transcript: The Kazakh Famine
Partial transcript of my interview with Sarah Cameron on the Kazakh famine.
February 21, 2019
Stalinist Markets and Entrepreneurship
Soviet historian Elena Osokina comments on two myths of Stalinist society in an interview in Republic.ru.
January 27, 2019