Episodes
Feb. 17, 2025
Climate Change and Authoritarianism
Debates about climate change and what to do about it occur a perilous political climate. It’s a problem that requires international cooperation. But elected politicians increasingly deny climate change, break global agreemen…
Feb. 10, 2025
Recording Georgians in WWI POW Camps
In 1916, the German anthropologist Rudolf Pöch and musicologist Robert Lach set out to the Eger prisoner of war camp with a unique research agenda: to record the language and folk songs of Georgian prisoners from the Russian…
Feb. 3, 2025
Intellectual Roots of Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism has so many meanings that some say it has no meaning. Nailing down a consensus is also hampered by the fact that no one calls themselves a “neoliberal.” There’s even calls to abandon the term altogether since i…
Jan. 27, 2025
Saving Seeds During the Siege of Leningrad
In 1941, as Nazi forces laid siege to Leningrad, a group of Soviet botanists faced an unthinkable choice: eat their life’s work, a rare seed bank, or starve to death. This is the dilemma at the heart of Simon Parkin’s story …
Jan. 20, 2025
Russian Antifa vs Neo-Nazis
Vladimir Kozlov’s new book Shramy (Scars) explores street battles between anti-fascists and neo-Nazi skinheads in Moscow during the late 2000s. Kozlov is no stranger to these subcultures. He’s long been involved in Russian p…
Jan. 13, 2025
Romani Music and NGOs
Who speaks for whom within the Romani rights movement today? This is the question that drives Adriana Helbig’s investigation into the relationship between development aid and Romani musicians in her book, Resounding Poverty …
Jan. 3, 2025
Introducing: The Eurasian Climate Brief
The 2024 UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) ended in late November in Baku. Two weeks of intense climate negotiations unveiled deep divides—particularly between the Global North and South over climate finance and contentio…
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-cen…
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 su…
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.