Episodes
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 extraordina…
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…
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,…
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.
Nov. 19, 2021
The Lenfilm Art House
Guest: Catriona Kelly on Soviet Art House: Lenfilm Studio under Brezhnev published by Oxford University Press.
Nov. 15, 2021
The Things of Late Soviet Life
Guest: Alexey Golubev on The Things of Life: Materiality in Late Soviet Russia published by Cornell University Press.
Nov. 5, 2021
Soviet Flower Power
Juliane Furst on Flowers through Concrete: Explorations in the Soviet Hippieland and Beyond published by Oxford University Press.
Oct. 29, 2021
Russia Upside Down
Guest: The Americans creator Joe Weisberg on Russia Upside Down: An Exit Strategy from the Second Cold War published by Public Affairs.
Oct. 22, 2021
The Return of the Romanovs
Guest: Russell Martin on the recent wedding of George Romanov and Victoria Romanovna Bettarini.
Oct. 18, 2021
Cold War from the Margins
Guest: Theodora Dragostinova on The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene, was published by Cornell University Press.
Oct. 8, 2021
The Vampires of A. K. Tolstoy
Guest: Irina Erman on her article “Nation and Vampiric Narration in Aleksey Tolstoy’s “The Family of the Vourdalak” published in the January 2020 issue of The Russian Review.