Episodes
April 22, 2024
Baku Oil and the Soviet State
Guest: Sara Brinegar on her book The Power and Politics of Oil in the Soviet South Caucasus: Periphery Unbound, 1920-29 published by Bloomsbury.
April 15, 2024
Gleaning for Communism
Guest: Xenia Cherkaev on her book Gleaning for Communism: The Soviet Socialist Household in Theory and Practice published by Cornell University Press.
April 8, 2024
The Tunguska Mystery
Guest: Andy Bruno on his new book Tunguska: A Siberian Mystery and its Environmental Legacy published by Cambridge University Press.
April 1, 2024
Sesame Street in Russia
Guest: Natasha Lance Rogoff on making Sesame Street in Russia in the turbulent 1990s.
March 25, 2024
Soviet Investigation of Nazi War Crimes
Guest: Paula Chan on the Extraordinary State Commission and its investigations in the Nazi atrocities in the Soviet Union.
March 11, 2024
Black Skies Over Krasnoyarsk
Guest: Mariia Koskina on Siberian industrialization, the environment and the black skies over Krasnoyarsk.
March 4, 2024
Revisiting Nagorno-Karabakh
Guests: Tigran Grigoryan (The Regional Center for Democracy and Security) and Kelsey Rice (Berry College) revisiting the ongoing conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Feb. 26, 2024
The Soviet Avant Garde
Guest: Natalia Krylova on life, love, language, and the Soviet Avant Garde.
Feb. 16, 2024
Russia’s Prison Knocking Language
Guest: Nicholas Bujalski on his prize-winning Russian Review article, “Tuk, tuk, tuk!” A History of Russia’s Prison Knocking Language.”
Feb. 9, 2024
Ukraine’s Gloomy Winter
Guest: Brian Milakovsky with a grim update on Ukraine, the war, and the shrinking prospects of even a lousy peace.
Feb. 2, 2024
A Century Without Lenin
Guest: Christopher Read on Vladimir Lenin's legacy 100 years since his death.
Jan. 26, 2024
Genealogy in Russia
Guest: Maria Lotsmanova on her genealogical journey to find information about her repressed great-grandfather, Jacob Jansen.
Jan. 12, 2024
The Black Russian
Guest: Vladimir Alexandrov on The Black Russian published by Grove Press.
Jan. 5, 2024
Recording Russia
Guest: Gabriella Safran on Recording Russia: Trying to Listen in the Nineteenth Century published by Cornell University Press.
Dec. 1, 2023
Making the Soviet Jew
Guest: Sasha Senderovich on How the Soviet Jew Was Made published by Harvard University Press.
Nov. 17, 2023
Defection and the Cold War
Guest: Erik Scott on defection, the Cold War, and the regulation of borders and movement in a globalizing world.
Nov. 10, 2023
Ainu Fever
Roma Shatrov is the founder of the Silent Cape Nature Park in Sakhalin. Irina Grudova is Ainu, the indigenous inhabitants of Sakhalin. Roma is obsessed with Ainu history and culture and has dedicated the Silent Cape to revitalizing their tradition.
Nov. 3, 2023
Fakes, Forgeries, and Frauds
Guest: Ilya Vinitsky on the persistence of fakes, forgeries, and frauds in Russian literary culture.
Oct. 27, 2023
The Cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh
Guests: Rafael Khachaturian and Richard Antaramian on Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Oct. 21, 2023
Islam, Repression, and Memory
Guests: Elmira Muratova and Michael Kemper on Islam in the Soviet and Post-Soviet contexts.
Oct. 13, 2023
Useable Pasts? Shamans, Spirituality and Resistance
Guest: Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer on the evolution of indigeneity and religion across the Soviet and post-Soviet divide.
Oct. 6, 2023
Theology after Gulag
Guest: Katya Tolstaya on theology, belief, and the remaning spiritual scars after Gulag.
Sept. 22, 2023
Christianity in China
Guests: Fenggang Yang and Kung Lap Yan on Christianity, worship, and religious persecution in China.