Episodes
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.
June 14, 2022
Russia in the Red Mirror
Guest: Gulnaz Sharafutdinova on The Red Mirror: Putin’s Leadership and Russia’s Insecure Identity published by Oxford University Press.
June 7, 2022
Life and Death in the Donbas
Guest: Brian Milakovsky on everyday life in the Donbas and the effort to evacuate civilians.
May 24, 2022
Central Asia Past and Present
Guest: Adeeb Khalid on Central Asia: A New History from the Imperial Conquests to the Present published by Princeton University Press.
May 17, 2022
Everything Was Forever Until
Guest: Alexei Yurchak on perestroika, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the experiences of the last Soviet generation.
May 16, 2022
Trailer 2: Teddy Goes to the USSR
Coming May 30! - Teddy Goes to the USSR, a new six-part podcast series follows one such American, Teddy Roe, to shine light on Soviet tourism, police surveillance, consumerism, race, and everyday life through his extraordinary three-month trip to the ...
May 10, 2022
Suffering and Survival in Leningrad
Guest: Jeffrey Hass on The Human Condition under Siege in the Blockade of Leningrad, 1941-1944 published by Oxford University Press.
May 9, 2022
Trailer: Teddy Goes to the USSR
Coming May 30! Teddy Goes to the USSR, a new six-part podcast series follows one such American, Teddy Roe, to shine light on Soviet tourism, police surveillance, consumerism, race, and everyday life through his extraordinary three-month trip to the Sov...
May 3, 2022
The Collapse of the Soviet Union
Guest: Vladislav Zubok on Collapse: The End of the Soviet Union published by Yale University Press.
April 26, 2022
Stalinism, Memorial, and Perestroika
Guest: Nanci Adler on Memorial, Stalinist repression, and Russia's incomplete transitional justice.
April 19, 2022
Perestroika in the Periphery: Tajikistan
Guest: Isaac Scarborough on perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet system in Tajikistan.
April 12, 2022
Esperanto in Revolutionary Russia
Guest: Brigid O'Keeffe on Esperanto and Languages of Internationalism in Revolutionary Russia published by Bloomsbury.
March 22, 2022
Soviet Pronatalism
Guest: Mie Nakachi on Replacing the Dead: The Politics of Reproduction in the Postwar Soviet Union published by Oxford University Press.
March 15, 2022
Letters to Perestroika
Guest: Courtney Doucette on letter writing, Nina Andreeva, and perestroika "from below."
March 6, 2022
Stalin and His Books
Guest: Geoffrey Roberts on Stalin’s Library: A Dictator and His Books published by Yale University Press.
Feb. 25, 2022
Russia, Ukraine, and the West
This discussion was recorded on Wednesday, February 23, 2022, the morning before Russia invaded Ukraine. - - Guests: Michael Kimmage, Marlene Laruelle, and Fyodor Lukyanov on the ongoing geopolitical crisis between Russia, Ukraine and the West.
Feb. 18, 2022
Russia’s Labor Dilemma
Stephen Crowley on Putin’s Labor Dilemma: Russian Politics between Stability and Stagnation published by Cornell University Press.
Feb. 11, 2022
Ditching Communism in Poland
Guest: Tom Junes on Poland in the 1980s and its legacies.