Episodes

Guest: Artan Hoxha on his new book, Sugarland: The Transformation of the Countryside in Communist Albania published by Central European University Press.

Guest: Russian poet Dmitrii Bykov on the War in Ukraine, the role of art in politics, satire, his poisoning in 2019, protest, love and family.

Guest: Sara Brinegar on her book The Power and Politics of Oil in the Soviet South Caucasus: Periphery Unbound, 1920-29 published by Bloomsbury.

Guest: Xenia Cherkaev on her book Gleaning for Communism: The Soviet Socialist Household in Theory and Practice published by Cornell University Press.

Guest: Andy Bruno on his new book Tunguska: A Siberian Mystery and its Environmental Legacy published by Cambridge University Press.

Guest: Natasha Lance Rogoff on making Sesame Street in Russia in the turbulent 1990s.

Guest: Paula Chan on the Extraordinary State Commission and its investigations in the Nazi atrocities in the Soviet Union.

Guest: Karl Schlogel on the lost world of Soviet civilization.

Guest: Mariia Koskina on Siberian industrialization, the environment and the black skies over Krasnoyarsk.

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.

Guest: Natalia Krylova on life, love, language, and the Soviet Avant Garde.

Guest: Nicholas Bujalski on his prize-winning Russian Review article, “Tuk, tuk, tuk!” A History of Russia’s Prison Knocking Language.”

Guest: Brian Milakovsky with a grim update on Ukraine, the war, and the shrinking prospects of even a lousy peace.

Guest: Christopher Read on Vladimir Lenin's legacy 100 years since his death.

Guest: Maria Lotsmanova on her genealogical journey to find information about her repressed great-grandfather, Jacob Jansen.

Guest: Vladimir Alexandrov on The Black Russian published by Grove Press.

Guest: Gabriella Safran on Recording Russia: Trying to Listen in the Nineteenth Century published by Cornell University Press.

Guest: Sasha Senderovich on How the Soviet Jew Was Made published by Harvard University Press.

Guest: Erik Scott on defection, the Cold War, and the regulation of borders and movement in a globalizing world.

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.

Guest: Ilya Vinitsky on the persistence of fakes, forgeries, and frauds in Russian literary culture.

Guests: Rafael Khachaturian and Richard Antaramian on Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Guests: Elmira Muratova and Michael Kemper on Islam in the Soviet and Post-Soviet contexts.

Guest: Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer on the evolution of indigeneity and religion across the Soviet and post-Soviet divide.