Episodes
Dec. 29, 2022
Ep 6 Cold War Colored Glasses
Teddy Goes to the USSR explored American tourism, KGB surveillance, consumerism, race, and daily life through Teddy Roe’s trip to the USSR. And many of Teddy’s observations were inevitably informed by the Cold War and Americ…
Dec. 29, 2022
Ep 5 Teddy Meets The Soviet People
American tourists expected few chances to meet Soviet people. You’d only see what Soviet officials wanted to show you. Touring the USSR, many assumed, was nothing more than a front row seat at a big show. And real Soviet lif…
Dec. 29, 2022
Ep 4: Teddy Talks about Race
Teddy had few “official” meetings in the USSR. A factory here. A collective farm there. Maybe a school or two. And there was one question Teddy’s hosts always asked: “Why are you still lynching Blacks?” American racism was a…
Dec. 29, 2022
Ep 3 Teddy Goes Shopping
Like many Americans, Teddy judged the USSR through a consumer lens. What could Soviets buy? How much? And what was up with those long lines and shortages? Teddy wasn’t very impressed. Yet, the “standard of living race” was a…
Dec. 29, 2022
Ep 2 Teddy Meets The KGB
Teddy assumed the KGB would monitor his travels around the Soviet Union. In Kiev, Teddy discovers that someone went through his luggage. And half-century later he learns his suspicions were correct. The KGB wrote a report on…
Dec. 29, 2022
Ep 1: Teddy Greets the USSR
Teddy Roe took an extraordinary trip to the USSR in 1968. For three months, he travelled from one end of the USSR to the other. Most Americans at the time believed the USSR was their greatest enemy. Teddy was among tens of t…
Dec. 16, 2022
Mental Health in Wartime Ukraine
Guests: Drs. Carmen Andreescu and Alex Dombrovski on their work on mental health in Ukraine though the Global Initiative on Psychiatry - USA.
Dec. 2, 2022
Kyivan Rus’
Guest: Christian Raffensperger on the place of Kyivan Rus' in the wider European medieval world.
Nov. 18, 2022
The Day of the Baptism of Rus
Guest: Sean Griffin on his prize winning article “Revolution, Raskol, and Rock ‘n’ Roll: The 1,020th Anniversary of the Day of the Baptism of Rus” published in the Russian Review.
Nov. 11, 2022
Between Memory and History in Ukraine
Guests: Victoria Smolkina and Georgyi Kasianov on the complexities of memory, history, and politics in narrating Ukrainian history.
Nov. 4, 2022
The Soviet Rock Scene
Guest: Artemy Troitsky reflecting on his life in the Soviet and Russian rock scenes.
Oct. 26, 2022
Working Through Stalinism
Guests: Polly Jones and Zuzanna Bogumil on memory, politics, and trauma of Stalinism.
Oct. 7, 2022
REEES Faculty Spotlight: Zoltan Kelemen
REEES faculty profile on Zoltan Zelemen about his research on neo-medievalism in international relations, law, and democracy.
Sept. 27, 2022
The Economic War
Guests: Ben Aris and Ilya Matveev on the Russian economy during wartime.
Sept. 20, 2022
Mixed Marriages in the USSR
Guest: Adrienne Edgar on Intermarriage and the Friendship of Peoples: Ethnic Mixing in Soviet Central Asia published by Cornell University Press.
Sept. 13, 2022
Remembering Anne Garrels
Rebroadcast of my 2016 interview with the recently departed Anne Garrels, author of Putin’s Country: A Journey into the Real Russia.
Sept. 6, 2022
Soviet Aid to West Africa
Guests: Alessandro Iandolo and Natalia Telepneva on Soviet engagement with West Africa during the Cold War.
Sept. 1, 2022
Rebroadcast: The Life and Times of Mikhail Gorbachev
Guest: William Taubman on Gorbachev: His Life and Times.
Aug. 9, 2022
Soviet WWII Mythologies
Guest: Jonathan Brunstedt on The Soviet Myth of World War II: Patriotic Memory and the Russian Question in the USSR published by Cambridge University Press.
Aug. 2, 2022
Queer Spaces in Imperial St. Petersburg
Guest: Olga Petri on Places of Tenderness and Heat: The Queer Milieu of Fin-de-Siècle St. Petersburg published by Cornell University Press.
July 26, 2022
Clientelism in Soviet Abkhazia
Guest: Timothy Blauvelt on Clientelism and Nationality in an Early Soviet Fiefdom: The Trials of Nestor Lakoba published by Routledge.
July 14, 2022
Limonov and the National Bolsheviks
Guest: Fabrizio Fenghi on It Will Be Fun and Terrifying: Nationalism and Protest in Post-Soviet Russia published by University of Wisconsin Press.
July 6, 2022
Russian Orthodox Converts in Appalachia
Guest: Sarah Riccardi-Swartz on Between Heaven and Russia: Religious Conversion and Political Apostasy in Appalachia published by Fordham University Press.
June 21, 2022
A Dissident Among Dissidents
Guest: Ilya Budraitskis on Russia's war in Ukraine, fascism, and his essay collection, Dissidents among Dissidents. Ideology, politics and The Left in Post-Soviet Russia published by Verso.