CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

Timothy Nunan is a Lecturer (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) and a Freigeist Fellow at the Center for Global History at the Free University of Berlin. He is the author of Humanitarian Invasion: Global Development in Cold War Afghanistan (Cambridge UP, 2016). In this lecture he discusses how the Islamic Republic of Iran was founded on the slogan of “Neither East Nor West”–neither alignment with the...

In this lecture, Dr. Nikita Zakharov explores the political economy of media harassment in Russia by using a unique monthly dataset on the incidents of harassment of the media in Russian cities between 2004 and 2017 to establish political cycles driven by local elections. This research analyzed frequency of harassment incidents during the two months before a local election – a period that coincide...

This talk examines Soviet nationalities policy in Central Asia through the lens of a prosopographical overview of ethnic Kazakhs within the Kazakhstan’s pre-war nomenklatura, using biographical data to provide a statistical picture of Kazakhstan’s Party elite. Analyzing those Kazakhs who served as members of the republic’s Party Bureau between 1920 and 1937—examining when and where they were born,...

This talk introduces key themes from Scott Levi’s recent book on the Khanate of Khoqand, a surprisingly dynamic state that emerged over the course of the eighteenth century in eastern Uzbekistan’s Ferghana Valley. The lecture addresses the ways that political, economic, technological and environmental developments influenced life in Central Asia and contributed to the rise, and fall, of Khoqand. I...

The past three decades are marked by substantial improvements in many Reproductive Health indicators across the countries of Central Asia. Increases in aggregate levels of knowledge, access, and practice of family planning are particularly impressive and represent substantial improvements in the health and well being of women. However, are these benefits shared equally across all women? Employing...

When you enter to field to collect data for your dissertation or thesis, what are some basic safety precautions you need to consider? What does it mean to receive informed consent from individuals in a Tajikistani village? This short talk will delve into these and other related topics for you to consider as you prepare to enter the field. Christopher Whitsel has been involved with education in Cen...

China’s on-going policies of transforming Uyghurs have been increasing more rapidly than ever before. In this talk, Mr. Aksu discusses the main policies that the Chinese government is enforcing in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region; how did state policies influence the Uyghur people, and how different are these policies from previous ones. He explores these transforming policies by providing both q...

Patronage is often described as the ‘glue’ that binds Central Asian patronal presidents and elites, creating strong material incentives to uphold the political status quo. With one hand, the president rewards loyal elites, giving them access to ‘the fruits of office’ and other valued resources; with the other, the president punishes wayward elites, taking away whatever benefits they have accumulat...

The siege of Leningrad was one of the most tragic episodes of World War II. Blockaded for almost three years, the city suffered staggering losses; perhaps as many as one million civilians died, primarily of starvation. During the war, the Soviet state covered up the extent of the losses and propagated the story of Leningrad as a “hero city.” In the presentation, I seek to explain how and why this...

The lecture focuses on the structure of the legal profession, the lack of professional filters, and the priority of organizational, but not professional, rules and ethics norms. The problems of a non-organized legal market and the possibility to practice law in Russian courts with neither a professional license nor a formal legal education are presented together with the current project of legal m...

In the nearly two decades between the first transatlantic satellite television broadcast demonstration in 1962 and the rise of direct broadcast satellite service after 1980, the US and USSR developed two rival, intergovernmental satellite communications networks, the US-led INTELSAT and the Soviet-led Intersputnik. Yet this apparently typical story of Cold War competition and division conceals a m...

This lecture examines Michał Witkowski’s 2005 critically acclaimed novel Lubiewo (Lovetown). Witkowski’s novel builds an ethnography of a lost era, permeated with nostalgia for socialist Poland and for the seemingly plentiful queer sexual encounters in parks and Soviet barracks. In my reading of the novel, I demonstrate how Witkowski interrogates mainstream Polish narratives of moving from oppress...

Does electoral fraud stabilize authoritarian rule or undermine it? The answer to this question rests, in part, on how voters evaluate regime candidates who engage in fraud. Using a survey experiment carried out after the 2016 State Duma elections, we find that voters withdraw their support from United Russia candidates who are reputed to have used electoral fraud. This effect is especially large a...

This talk argues that the primary driver of turnout under autocracy is civic duty, just as in democracies. Using survey data from Russia, Professor Reuter presents evidence that the duty to vote is strongly felt among many voters, as well as linked with respect for the state and patriotism. Opposition voters, however, are more likely to feel alienated from the state and be less patriotic, giving a...

Since Yuri Lotman and Vladimir Toporov introduced the concept of the “Petersburg Text” in Russian literature, the idea of “reading” urban space through the lenses of a particular literary corpus has become popular among Russian literary scholars. But St. Petersburg also occupied a special place in the imagination of Russian Jews. As the capital of the Russian Empire, the city had the harshest rest...

Anna Müller discusses her new monograph, If the Walls Could Speak, an intimate account of the lives of female political prisoners in Stalinist Poland. Müller portrays the individuality, the humanity, and ultimately the resistance of a dedicated group of women who were incarcerated for their attempts to save Poland. Using archival documents and extensive interviews she opens up the world of gruelin...

A UW-Madison graduate student panel featuring: Victoria Sluka (Anthropology) Kramer Gillin (Geography) Piotr Puchalski (History) Zach Rewinski (Slavic) Degi Uvsh (Political Science) Graduate students from various departments across campus discuss their recent field research, give updates on their research to date, and provide suggestions for any graduate students planning field research in the fut...

Being lied to by politicians should feel perennially familiar to all of us, as dishonest politicians and political subterfuge are not new phenomena. Nonetheless, current forms of political dishonesty feel particularly distressing because the words produced by leaders are sometimes believed by followers only because they are spoken from positions of power and frequently repeated. Power and repetiti...

The Russian Supreme Court recently declared the Jehovah’s Witnesses to be an “extremist” organization. The April 2017 decision has placed the Jehovah’s Witnesses on the same legal footing as terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda. Witness publications can no longer be imported or printed domestically, and the organization’s administrative center outside of St. Petersburg has been shut down and...

World War I ended on the western front on November 11, 1918. That same day in Warsaw Joseph Pilsudski proclaimed Poland’s independence. This talk focuses on the short and long term significance of these two intertwined events. In addition, Pienkos discusses the roles of President Wilson and a Polish national army raised from immigrants to the United States--the first and only of its kind since.

Natalia Sats (1903-1993) is the mother of professional theatre for children and youth, that is, theatre by adults for young people. Starting as a 15-year-old in charge of the Children’s Theatre in Moscow shortly after the 1917 Revolution, Sats founded several theatres for young people and remained a major force in the field until her death in 1993. In many ways the life of Sats mirrors Soviet life...

When the Russian Constitution was adopted in 1993, many observers were critical of what they saw to be its super-presidential nature. This was a misreading of the actual document, and it also failed to take into account the potential difference between what the document says and how particular individuals interact with it. Some are highly constrained by it and others less so, but this is often les...

One of the most important developments in the study of Russian history in the last decade or so is the “religious turn,” which, among other things, has pushed the study of Russian Orthodoxy beyond the conventions of church, theology, and doctrine toward the study of lived religion. Yet, many of the same scholars who study Orthodoxy as everyday practice have unknowingly become entangled in the very...

Commercial entities operating across international borders face a number of legal and cultural hurdles. American companies negotiating with partners in Russia or Ukraine not only need to navigate the laws of those countries, but they are also obliged to follow US commercial law, including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Major on-the-ground differences in accepted business practices and c...

Ideal modern nation states have clearly defined borders and a sedentary population. People without a defined domicile who regularly cross national borders easily put such an order into jeopardy. This talk explores the problem of transhumance in the Soviet South Caucasus in the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s. Relying on documents of the Transcaucasian state and party institutions, it provides...