Russia, China and Inbetween
Guest: Ed Pulford on Mirrorlands: Russia, China, and Journeys in Between published by Hurst.
December 7, 2019
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The Collective Farm
Guests: Aaron Hale-Dorrell, Kristy Ironside, and Samantha Lomb on the collective farm system in the USSR.
November 17, 2019
Atoms and Aliens in Eurasian Science Fiction
Guest: Anindita Banerjee on the nuclear in Soviet and Post-Soviet Science Fiction.
November 9, 2019
Russians Under Nazi Occupation
Guest: Johannes Due Enstad on Soviet Russians under Nazi Occupation: Fragile Loyalties in World War II published by Cambridge University Press.
November 3, 2019
The Radioactive Mutants of Semipalatinsk
Magdalena Stawkowski on the rural Kazakh communities in the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site.
October 27, 2019
Society
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
Russians on Trump (Rebroadcast)
Guest: Laurence Bogoslaw on Russians on Trump: Press Coverage and Commentary published by Eastview.
July 13, 2019