The Slavic Connexion

Happy Holidays, y'all! On this episode, Lera gets to sit down and chat with Dr. Juliane Fürst who unpacks 10 years worth of research and personal explorations in the Soviet Hippie movement as published in her latest book from Oxford University Press. Her stories will thrill, so gather 'round and take a listen. We hope you enjoy! ABOUT THE GUEST Juliane Fürst is head of the department of Co...

On this, the 30th anniversary of the institution of martial law in Poland (which took place on December 13th, 1981), we talked with Eastern Europe historian Tomek Jankowski to commemorate this momentous point in modern history which roughly coincides with the release of the 2nd edition of his comprehensive and entertaining history of Eastern Europe. Sharing with us his personal experiences and sto...

Lera and Zach talk with Atlantic Council fellow and prolific American journalist Vladislav Davidzon. Davidzon has extensively covered the Belarussian protests from within Minsk, Ukrainian political and cultural developments since 2014, and Russian elections and Navalny's impact on Moscow politics and policies. His new book From Russia With Love is now available. You can find it here: https://w...

Mark Temnycky, a Ukrainian-American journalist, breaks down the Nord Stream 2 issue, its timeline, and its relation to the energy situation in Europe. He expounds on the Biden administration's reversal on its position concerning the pipeline, and explains the security concerns that a working Nord Stream 2 that bypasses Belarus and Ukraine creates for America, NATO, and Europe in general. Thank...

Dr. Johanna Mellis, a former D1 swimmer and current history professor at Ursinus College, joins Lera for a lively conversation on the history of sports in Hungary during the Cold War. They also touch on the Olympics (past and present), sport diplomacy, and the development of competitive sports on an international plane. For a great visual timeline of Sport in the Cold War and further related resou...

Author Jordan Steven Sher, a social worker and former teacher based in California, joins Lera and Cullan to talk about his new historical fiction novel which authentically and carefully explores the grossly overlooked Bosnian Genocide of Muslims and Catholic Croats during the Bosnian War of 1992-95, as carried out by Slobodan Milošević. You can find out more about Jordan's book (entitled And S...

In this episode, Patrice Dabrowski takes us on a historical journey through the highly understudied Carpathian Mountains of Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine. Her brand new book details the many forces at play in the mountainous region over the years from 1860 to 1980 and shows how this area gradually went from terra incongita to tourist attraction. We hope you enjoy! ABOUT THE BOOK In The Carpathians...

On this episode, Marko Dumančić joins Lera and Cullan to talk about his recently published monograph entitled Men Out of Focus: The Soviet Masculinity Crisis in the Long Sixties wherein he unpacks the changing conceptions of men in post-Stalinist society by taking a deeper look at Soviet films made at the time. This is a fun conversation, riddled with film talk. We hope you enjoy! ABOUT THE GUEST...

In this episode, Dr. Nunan explores the nuances of the Soviet Union’s relationship with Islam throughout its lifetime, both inside and outside of its borders, before diving into the varied strategies of Soviet nation building efforts within Afghanistan as well as this ever important Central Asian country’s experience in the Cold War overall. With Afghanistan spanning news headlines, this episode i...

Dr. Siobhán Hearne joins Katya to talk about her new book, Policing Prostitution: Regulating the Lower Classes in Late Imperial Russia, a social history of prostitution in last decades of the Russian Empire. Dr. Hearne uses archival research conducted in Moscow, St Petersburg, Arkhangelsk, Riga, Vilnius, Minsk, Kyiv and Tartu to examine how prostitution and its regulation functioned in different p...

Dr. Robert Hamilton of the U.S. Army War College returns to the show to speak with hosts Lera and Zach about the future of Afghanistan and the fate of the region's security architecture. Currently on leave to serve as advisor to the Georgian Ministry of Defense, Dr. Hamilton discusses the role of the Georgian military in the Afghanistan War and what the U.S. withdrawal (and Taliban rule) means...

Zoltán Ginelli from Budapest joins Zach and Cullan to talk about his field of critical geography and the framing of colonial history of Central Europe following both World War II and the Cold War. We hope you enjoy this conversation! ABOUT THE GUEST Zoltán Ginelli is an independent researcher and a critical geographer, historian of science and global historian. His research is in the geographies o...

On this episode, Professor Dina Fainberg joins Zach and Lera to talk about her latest book, the highly readable "Cold War Correspondents" in which she highlights stories of Soviet and American journalists and draws fascinating parallels to the US-Russia media landscape today. We hope you enjoy! ABOUT THE GUEST Dr. Dina Fainberg is a Lecturer in Modern History and the Director of History...

On this special (musical) episode, guest host Sophia Kontos helps us understand Eurovision and break down the politics and ploys behind the song entries themselves, focusing on three major countries: Greece, Turkey, and Ukraine. Eurovision is an annual televised European Song Contest started in 1956 to boost morale and European integration after WWII. When Greece won in 2005, Sophia, whose Dad is...

On this episode, Professor David Moon from the UK joins Tom and Lera to talk about the fascinating personal journey which led to the release of his latest book, The American Steppes: Unexpected Russian Roots of Great Plains Agriculture. He clearly delineates how the kernels of his transnational research all began during his tenure at The University of Texas at Austin, demonstrating that in fact &q...

Our wonderful guest is Dr. Sarah Phillips, director of the Russian and East European Institute at Indiana University Bloomington. Dr. Phillips walks us through her remarkable anthropological career in the Slavic world from her beginnings in the 90s with studying the effects of Chernobyl to her many social activism projects in Ukraine, taking us to her present fascination with the culture that deve...

On this episode, Professor Nana Osei-Opare from Fordham University joins Lera and Cullan to talk about the history of Ghana's independence from Great Britain and the way in which this country in West Africa looked to the Soviet Union to build itself as an "industrialized, socialist" post-colonialist state. Many black thinkers across the world saw the USSR as a space of equality and f...

In this episode, Matt speaks with Dr. Oksana Lutshyshyna, acclaimed fiction author and beloved professor at UT Austin, about her most recent book Ivan and Feba (Іван і Феба), as well as about her earlier work Love Life (Любовне життя), humor in her writing, her inspirations, and the state of American and Ukrainian politics and literature. A few weeks ago, Dr. Lutshyshyna won Ukraine's highest...

In honor of Women's History Month, we have a special episode featuring American Studies professor Dr. Julia Mickenberg who joins us to talk about her spectacular book "American Girls in Red Russia" which explores the intimate lives of American women who traveled to the USSR chasing the "Soviet Dream." We hope you enjoy! ABOUT THE GUEST Julia L. Mickenberg grew up in Connect...

On this special episode, we have renowned expert on far right youth movements, Dr. Cynthia Miller-Idriss who joins us courtesy of UT's ISPRII (the Initiative for the Study of Politico-Religious Ideation and Influence). ISPRII guest host Eliza talks with Dr. Miller-Idriss about her research and latest book, Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right . This is a fascinating episode on a very...

In this episode, Matt is joined by Dr. Kathryn Stoner of Stanford University to talk about her new book, Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order. The book pushes back at some misconceptions about Russia’s place in the international system while offering a new perspective on how the West should approach Russia. Matt and Dr. Stoner discuss how the book informs ongoing policy...

Once again, Dr. Mark Galeotti joins Matt to discuss yesterday's sentencing of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and what it means for Russia's short and long term future. Is this the end of the first installment of Navalny’s battle with the Kremlin, which peaked with his poisoning at the hands of the FSB in August 2020? Mark lays out Navalny’s possible next steps, and how the ongoi...

From St. Petersburg, Angelina Davydova, Environmental journalist and head of the German Russian Office of Environmental Information, graciously joins us to give us the surprising facts on environmental activism, protests, and reforms in Russia. She talks about the very real effects of climate change in that part of the world, including the fires in Siberia, the record high temperatures, and the me...

Samantha chats with Dr. Dimitar Bechev on the geopolitics of the Balkans and the stratagems of Russia in the region. Dr. Bechev also discusses Russia's relationship with Turkey and Turkey's ties with the US and how these affect the countries nested in the Balkans which have fallen out of US foreign policy priority since the George W. Bush administration. ABOUT THE GUEST Dimitar Bechev is t...

Амар мэндээ or hello and Happy New Year! Dr. Kathryn Graber of Indiana University Bloomington joins the show to talk about her research on the Buryat language and minority-language media in Russia’s Buryat territories, a multilingual region of eastern Siberia on the Mongolian border. Her fifteen years of research in this area is the foundation of her new book, Mixed Messages: Mediating Native Belo...