Two short audio pieces from the Monterey Summer Symposium on Russia. “The Great Russian Trash Crisis” by Seth Farkas and “An Empty Pedestal: Ukraine after Leninopad” by Sabrina Beaver.
Guest: Erica Fraser on Military Masculinity and Postwar Recovery in the Soviet Union published by the University of Toronto Press.
Faculty Spotlight on the University of Pittsburgh’s Olga Klimova.
Faculty Spotlight on the University of Pittsburgh’s Katie Manukyan.
Guests: Marina Dmukhovskaya and Georg Wallner about their podcast project Mesto47.
Magdalena Stawkowski on the rural Kazakh communities in the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site.
Guest: Andrew Sloin on The Jewish Revolution in Belorussia: Economy, Race, and Bolshevik Power published by Indiana University Press.
Guest: Sonja Schmid on Producing Power: The Pre-Chernobyl History of the Soviet Nuclear Industry published by MIT Press.
Guest: Eleonor Gilburd on To See Paris and Die: The Soviet Lives of Western Culture published by Harvard University Press.
Guest: Lana Parshina on The Death of Hitler: The Final Word published by Da Capo Press.
Guest: Caress Schenk on Why Control Immigration? Strategic Uses of Migration Management in Russia published by University of Toronto Press.
Guest: Jeff Sahadeo on Voices from the Soviet Edge: Southern Migrants in Leningrad and Moscow published by Cornell University Press.
Guest: Edyta Bojanowska on A World of Empires: The Russian Voyage of the Frigate Pallada published by Harvard University Press.
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.
Roundtable discussion marking the 30th anniversary of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. Participants include Timothy Garton Ash, Bridget Kendall, and Jens Reich.