The Eurasian Knot

Guest: Mark Gamsa on Harbin: A Cross-Cultural Biography The post Harbin appeared first on The Eurasian Knot . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Guests: Paul Josephson and Sharyl Corrado on conquering nature, settlement, and Russian expansion in the Arctic and Sakhalin. The post Conquering Nature in Sakhalin and the Arctic appeared first on The Eurasian Knot . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ed Pulford and Soren Urbansky on the cross-cultural and diverse past and present of the Russian Far East. The post The Far East appeared first on The Eurasian Knot . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It all started with a letter to Stalin in 1935. And when a Kremlin clerk opened it, there was a piece of shit inside. Was the turd an insult? A way of saying to Stalin, “You’re a shit. Here’s some shit”? Perhaps. But I ended Part One of a Gift for Stalin on a different note: that the turd addressed to Stalin was no slight at all. It was, in fact, a gift. A little brown present for Comrade Stalin....

It’s Sunday, October 13, 1935, and someone, we don’t know who mails a letter from the outskirts of Moscow. It’s addressed: “Kremlin. To Comrade Stalin.” It arrives a few days later. And when Comrade Sentaretskya, one of the secretaries sorting Stalin’s mail, got to this letter, she had no reason to worry . . . . that is until she opened it. The post A Gift for Stalin, Part One: Dear Comrade Stalin...

It’s Sunday, October 13, 1935, and someone, we don’t know, who mails a letter. It’s addressed: “Kremlin. To Comrade Stalin.” Now, there was nothing odd about people writing Stalin. They wrote to him a lot. So, when Comrade Sentaretskaya, one of the secretaries sorting Stalin’s mail, got to this letter, she had no reason to worry . . . . that is until she opened it. Just what was in this letter? Fi...

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 life was hidden under layers upon layers of propaganda. So, if you wanted to see the truth of Soviet life—avoid officials and seek out “regular people.” Teddy wanted to seek out “...

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 global issue during the Cold War. And pointing to it was a strike at America’s Achilles heel. Soviet media devoted a lot of time to the Civil Rights Movement. And Teddy arrive...

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 front in the Cold War like any other. And Soviet communism was losing. But things were never so simple. By the late 1960s, Soviet people were consuming more than ever. They we...

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 him, complete with excerpts from his diary. What was in this report? What did the KGB hope to learn from Teddy? And what was this vast network for keeping tabs on tourists any...

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 thousands who toured the Soviet Union. Why did Americans want to travel there? Why did the Soviets want them to come? What just what was the tourist experience like? The post Ep...

Guests: Drs. Carmen Andreescu and Alex Dombrovski on their work on mental health in Ukraine though the Global Initiative on Psychiatry - USA . The post Mental Health in Wartime Ukraine appeared first on The Eurasian Knot . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Guest: Christian Raffensperger on the place of Kyivan Rus' in the wider European medieval world. The post Kyivan Rus’ appeared first on The Eurasian Knot . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 . The post The Day of the Baptism of Rus appeared first on The Eurasian Knot . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Guests: Victoria Smolkina and Georgyi Kasianov on the complexities of memory, history, and politics in narrating Ukrainian history. The post Between Memory and History in Ukraine appeared first on The Eurasian Knot . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Guest: Artemy Troitsky reflecting on his life in the Soviet and Russian rock scenes. The post The Soviet Rock Scene appeared first on The Eurasian Knot . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Guests: Polly Jones and Zuzanna Bogumil on memory, politics, and trauma of Stalinism. The post Working Through Stalinism appeared first on The Eurasian Knot . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

REEES faculty profile on Zoltan Zelemen about his research on neo-medievalism in international relations, law, and democracy. The post REEES Faculty Spotlight: Zoltan Kelemen appeared first on The Eurasian Knot . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Guests: Ben Aris and Ilya Matveev on the Russian economy during wartime. The post The Economic War appeared first on The Eurasian Knot . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Guest: Adrienne Edgar on  Intermarriage and the Friendship of Peoples:  Ethnic Mixing in Soviet Central Asia published by Cornell University Press. The post Mixed Marriages in the USSR appeared first on The Eurasian Knot . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

 Rebroadcast of my 2016 interview with the recently departed Anne Garrels, author of Putin’s Country: A Journey into the Real Russia . The post Remembering Anne Garrels appeared first on The Eurasian Knot . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Guests: Alessandro Iandolo and Natalia Telepneva on Soviet engagement with West Africa during the Cold War. The post Soviet Aid to West Africa appeared first on The Eurasian Knot . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Guest: William Taubman on  Gorbachev: His Life and Times . The post Rebroadcast: The Life and Times of Mikhail Gorbachev appeared first on The Eurasian Knot . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. The post Soviet WWII Mythologies appeared first on The Eurasian Knot . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Guest: Olga Petri on   Places of Tenderness and Heat: The Queer Milieu of Fin-de-Siècle St. Petersburg published by Cornell University Press. The post Queer Spaces in Imperial St. Petersburg appeared first on The Eurasian Knot . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.