Nuclear Bombs and Bomb Shelters
Guest: Edward Geist on Armageddon Insurance: Civil Defense in the United States and Soviet Union, 1945-1991 published by University of North Carolina Press.
January 17, 2020
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Russia in Global Affairs
Guest: Fyodor Lukyanov on Russia in the Middle East: Viewpoints, Policies, Strategies published by East View.
January 7, 2020
Ivan the Terrible
Guest: Charles Halperin on Ivan the Terrible: Free to Reward and Free to Punish published by University of Pittsburgh Press.
December 30, 2019
The Stuff of Red Army Soldiers
Guest: Brandon Schechter on The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects published by Cornell University Press.
December 18, 2019
Russia, China and Inbetween
Guest: Ed Pulford on Mirrorlands: Russia, China, and Journeys in Between published by Hurst.
December 7, 2019
Society
Ivan the Terrible
Guest: Charles Halperin on Ivan the Terrible: Free to Reward and Free to Punish published by University of Pittsburgh Press.
December 30, 2019
Russia, China and Inbetween
Guest: Ed Pulford on Mirrorlands: Russia, China, and Journeys in Between published by Hurst.
December 7, 2019
The Radioactive Mutants of Semipalatinsk
Magdalena Stawkowski on the rural Kazakh communities in the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site.
October 27, 2019
The Jewish Revolution in Belarus
Guest: Andrew Sloin on The Jewish Revolution in Belorussia: Economy, Race, and Bolshevik Power published by Indiana University Press.
October 21, 2019
The Soviet Nuclear Industry
Guest: Sonja Schmid on Producing Power: The Pre-Chernobyl History of the Soviet Nuclear Industry published by MIT Press.
October 13, 2019
The Politics of Immigration in Russia
Guest: Caress Schenk on Why Control Immigration? Strategic Uses of Migration Management in Russia published by University of Toronto Press.
September 7, 2019
Central Asian Migrants in the USSR
Guest: Jeff Sahadeo on Voices from the Soviet Edge: Southern Migrants in Leningrad and Moscow published by Cornell University Press.
September 2, 2019
August 24, 2019
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
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