Episodes
Dec. 23, 2024
The Russia and China Brain Trusts
Who are those “experts” who sit in Washington DC and come up with policy toward China and Russia? You know, those academics, journalists, and think-tankers who generate the knowledge US officials rely on? David McCourt’s new ...
Dec. 16, 2024
A Tale of Two Nationalisms
Nationalists are not born. They are made. But how? That journey is far trickier. Fabian Baumann’s award-winning book, Dynasty Divided: A Family History of Russian and Ukrainian Nationalism , traces how one family in 19th-cent...
Nov. 25, 2024
Adapting Master and Margarita
In 2020, Russian-American filmmaker Michael Lockshin and his co-writer, Roman Kantor, were offered an impossible task: to adapt Mikhail Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita for the big screen. It was a daunting task to rewrite suc...
Nov. 18, 2024
Georgia in Crisis
Guest: Bryan Gigantino, co-host of the podcast Reimagining Soviet Georgia, on the context and causes for the current political crisis in Georgia.
Nov. 11, 2024
The World of Soviet Dissidents
Guest: Benjamin Nathans on To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement published by Princeton University Press.
Nov. 4, 2024
A Deep Dive into Kabardino-Balkaria
Guest: Ian Lanzillotti guides through the history of Kabardino-Balkaria in his book Land, Community, and the State in the Caucasus published by Bloomsbury.
Oct. 28, 2024
Soviet DIY Folk Museums
Guest: Erin Hutchinson on her award-winning article, “Gathering the Nation in the Village: Intellectuals and the Cultural Politics of Nationality in the Late Soviet Period” in the January 2023 issue of the Russian Review.
Oct. 21, 2024
Intimate Lives of International Communism
Guest: Maurice Casey on the “lost world” of international communism in his book, Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism’s Forgotten Radicals published by Footnote Press.
Oct. 14, 2024
Gulag Memory in Russia’s Far North
Guest: Tyler Kirk on After the Gulag: A History of Memory in Russia's Far North published by Indiana University Press.
Oct. 7, 2024
The Russia That Was Lost
Guest: Pavel Khazanov on The Russia That We Have Lost: Pre-Soviet Past as Anti-Soviet Discourse published by the University of Wisconsin Press.
Sept. 30, 2024
Free Marc Fogel!
Guest: Ambassador Eric Rubin on the efforts to free Marc Fogel, an American serving 14 years in the Russian prison for possessing 17 g of medical marijuana.
Sept. 23, 2024
A New History of Northern Eurasia
Guests: Marina Mogilner and Ilya Gerasimov on their new textbook, A New Imperial History of Northern Eurasia, 600–1700: From Russian to Global History published by Bloomsbury.
Sept. 9, 2024
The Sound of Socialism, Part 3
Guest: Andrea Bohlman on the curious history of the sound postcard in People's Republic of Poland.
Sept. 3, 2024
Women in Russian Politics
Guest: Valeria Umanets on women in municipal governance in the Soviet Union and under Putin.
Aug. 26, 2024
Illiberalism and Civil Society in Hungary
Guest: Daniel Mikecz on Civil Movements in an Illiberal Regime: Political Activism in Hungary published by Central European University Press.
Aug. 19, 2024
The Sound of Socialism, Part 2
Guest: Matthew Kendall on his article “Room for Noise in Soviet Sound Recording” in the Winter 2023 issue of the Slavic Review.
Aug. 12, 2024
The Sound of Socialism, Part 1
Guest: Gabrielle Cornish on the sound of Lenin's voice and other sounds of socialism.
Aug. 5, 2024
The Eastern International
Guest: Masha Kirasirova on The Eastern International: Arabs, Central Asians, and Jews in the Soviet Union's Anticolonial Empire published by Oxford University Press.
July 29, 2024
The Soviet Bid to Run the World
Guest: Sergey Radchenko on To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power published by Cambridge University Press.
July 1, 2024
The Rise and Fall of Yevgeny Prigozhin
Guests: Anna Arutunyan and Mark Galeotti on their new book Downfall: Prigozhin, Putin, and the New Fight for the Future of Russia published by Penguin.
June 24, 2024
Russians in Latvia
Guest: Kevin Platt on Border Conditions: Russian-Speaking Latvians Between World Orders published by Cornell University Press.
June 17, 2024
Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip
Guest: Lisa Kirschenbaum on Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists: Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip published by Cambridge University Press.
June 10, 2024
Soviet Afghan War and Islam
Guest: Vassily Klimentov on A Slow Reckoning: The USSR, the Afghan Communists, and Islam published by Cornell University Press.
June 3, 2024
Populist Elitism in Russia and the US
Guest: Alexandar Mikhailovic on the unlikely convergence of the American and Russian far-right.