UCL Study Abroad: Moscow
Sabina Trojanova is a third year undergraduate pursuing a BA in European Social and Political Studies with a year abroad in Moscow. In this video, Sabina reflects on living in Moscow, interning in a newsroom and getting to know Russian culture. She's also blogging about her travels while she's studying and living abroad:
Irina Prokhorova. “Tamizdat, Samizdat and the Traditional Literary Canon” (Keynote Lecture II)
TAMIZDAT: PUBLISHING RUSSIAN LITERATURE IN THE COLD WAR
International Conference and Book Exhibition December 10-11, 2018
Hunter College of the City University of New York Elizabeth
Hemmerdinger Hall, Room 706 (HE)
Organized by Yasha Klots (Hunter College) and Polina Barskova (Hampshire College)
Co-sponsored by the Harriman Institute of Columbia University, with the participation of the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies at NYU.
IRINA PROKHOROVA (New Literary Observer, Editor-in-Chief, Moscow)
“Tamizdat, Samizdat and the Traditional Literary Canon: Revising the History of 20th-Century Russian Literature”
Despite the tremendous accumulation of new knowledge in the recent decades about the non-conformist, underground culture, we still follow the traditional lines concerning the trends, genres, personalities and general development of Russian literature of the past century. Are we ready to write the other literary history, drastically reevaluating the dramatic interrelations of official censured texts with the emigre and tamizdat/samizdat literature? Is it possible to present an alternative literary canon based on different criteria? Can we altogether apply the word 'tradition' in the sense of uninterrupted cultural succession in relation to the Soviet period?
Irina Prokhorova is a cultural historian, literary critic, editor and publisher, as well as a social and political activist. In 1992 she founded the New Literary Observer publishing house, which at present comprises three scholarly periodicals and 100 books per year on literary criticism, philosophy, history, cultural & interdisciplinary studies, contemporary prose and poetry. She is a host of three live radio and TV programs on cutting-edge social and political issues. Irina Prokhorova is also the co-founder of the Mikhail Prokhorov Charitable Fund, which supports and promotes new Russian culture worldwide. She is the recipient of The Liberty Prize for contributions to Russian-American culture (2003), the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France, 2005), Andrei Bely Literary Prize (2006), the Legion of Honor Award (France, 2012).
Euro-Rus - Russia Tour Moskou 2015 - Interview Alexander Bochkarev
Interview with Mr. Alexander Bochkarev, director of the International Fund for Slavic Literature and Culture in Moscow
Marc Robinson on Russian Culture
Recorded for John Freedman's Theater (Plus) web column for The Moscow Times (themoscowtimes.com).
Marc Robinson talks about bringing groups of American students from St. Olaf College to Russia.
Russia, the Kievan Rus, and the Mongols: Crash Course World History #20
In which John Green teaches you how Russia evolved from a loose amalgamation of medieval principalities known as the Kievan Rus into the thriving democracy we know today. As you can imagine, there were a few bumps along the road. It turns out, our old friends the Mongols had quite a lot to do with unifying Russia. In yet another example of how surprisingly organized nomadic raiders can be, the Mongols brought the Kievan Rus together under a single leadership, and concentrated power in Moscow. This set the stage for the various Ivans (the Great and the Terrible) to throw off the yoke and form a pan-Russian nation ruled by an autocratic leader. More than 500 years later, we still have autocratic leadership in Russia. All this, plus a rundown of some of our favorite atrocities of Ivan the Terrible, and a visit from Putin!
Crash Course World History is now available on DVD!
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Yasha Klots. SocRealism on the Other Shore: Solzhenitsyn's 'Ivan Denisovich' at Home and Abroad
TAMIZDAT: PUBLISHING RUSSIAN LITERATURE IN THE COLD WAR
International Conference and Book Exhibition December 10-11, 2018
Hunter College of the City University of New York Elizabeth
Hemmerdinger Hall, Room 706 (HE)
Organized by Yasha Klots (Hunter College) and Polina Barskova (Hampshire College)
Co-sponsored by the Harriman Institute of Columbia University, with the participation of the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies at NYU.
YASHA KLOTS (Hunter College, CUNY)
Socialist Realism on the Other Shore: Solzhenitsyn's Ivan Denisovich at Home and Abroad
The groundbreaking publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in Moscow in 1962 both “emancipated” many literary works on the subject of Stalinism and, at the same time, precluded them from appearing in print at home. Rejected by Soviet editors, most of them began circulating in samizdat and eventually found their way to the West, where they were first published, whether with or without their authors’ knowledge or consent. This paper examines the political, social and literary reasons for the unprecedented success of Ivan Denisovich vis-à-vis those for the shared failure of Solzhenitsyn’s peers to see their works published in Russia around the same time. It explores the patterns of Solzhenitsyn’s enactment of some of the socialist realist conventions in Ivan Denisovich, as well as its quasi-conformity to Soviet mythology on the whole, and analyzes the reception of Ivan Denisovich abroad in the context of the “horizons of expectations” and aesthetic profile of tamizdat in the early 1960s.
Yasha Klots received his Ph.D. in Russian literature from Yale, where he worked with Tomas Venclova as his dissertation advisor. Before joining Hunter in 2016, he taught at GA Tech, Williams College and Yale. In 2014-2016, he was a Humboldt Foundation Fellow at the Research Center for East European Studies at the University of Bremen, Germany. His research interests include émigré literature and print culture, bilingualism and translation, Gulag narratives, and cityscapes. He is the author of articles on Varlam Shalamov, Boris Pasternak, Joseph Brodsky, Lev Loseff, Vladimir Nabokov, Marina Tsvetaeva, Ivan Bunin, Nina Berberova, as well as Russian children's poetry and New York City in Russian literature. In 2010, he published Joseph Brodsky in Lithuania (St. Petersburg: Perlov Design Center; in Russian), and co-translated, with Ross Ufberg, Tamara Petkevich’s Memoir of a Gulag Actress (DeKalb: Northern Illinois UP). His most recent book is Poets in New York: On City, Language, Diaspora (Moscow: NLO, 2016; in Russian), which includes his introduction and annotated interviews with 16 Russian and East European poets. He is currently working on a book Tamizdat, the Cold War and Contraband Russian Literature (1960-1970s) devoted to the circulation, reception and first publications of literary manuscripts from the Soviet Union in the West.
Looking into the Language of Russians | Clint Walker | TEDxUMontana
Languages are vital for cross-cultural communication, but they also act as a repository for cultural values. We take a glimpse into the collective psyche of Russian speakers by digging in the deep layers of the Russian language.
Clint Walker received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. An Associate Professor of Russian at the University of Montana, he teaches courses in language, literature and cinema. His research interests include 19th century Russian prose and how Moscow is reflected as a cultural space in 20th century literature and film.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at
Russian Cartoons are the Best Way to Understand the Russian Mentality
Vera Giovanna Bani, senior teacher in the Second Foreign Languages Studies Department at the FESS RANEPA, a philologist, literary translator, teacher with many years of experience, talks about the advantages of Russian education and disadvantages of Italian, and confesses her love for Moscow and Russian cartoons.
Closing of the Russian Mind? Expression, Creativity, and Culture in Putin's Russia
As political constraints tighten on free expression in Russia, PEN had the privilege of bringing to the United States four prominent Russian literary figures who are braving these currents to stand up for open discourse. Through public events and meetings with fellow writers, journalists, analysts, and policymakers, they shared from the inside how censorship and the closing of the creative space are being used to control the narrative of the past and the present. Together, we explored how the international literary, cultural, and human rights communities can support Russian intellectuals and help defend free expression in Russia. -
See more at:
???????? In Search of Putin’s Russia (Part IV) | State of the Arts
In Search of Putin’s Russia - State of the Arts
Steeped in literature, music, art and ballet, Russia has a long and vibrant history celebrating religion and cultural life.
Emphasising family and the motherland, the arts have played a major role since the demise of Communism to promote patriotism and nationhood.
In this episode of In Search of Putin's Russia, journalist and film-maker Andrei Nekrasov explores the relationship between Russian culture and politics and how the arts have been used to glorify Russia's past.
Nekrasov explores Moscow's film industry and how festivals have become co-opted by the state, twisting the memory of the Soviet Union and hiding its dark past.
He meets the owners of a small Moscow theatre company that was forced to close its doors after challenging President Vladimir Putin and pushing films promoting gay rights.
We also meet Russians at a conference honouring Stalin and ask whether acceptance of authoritarianism is a part of Russian culture.
And as Russians yearn for the return of their lost greatness, are the injustices committed in the days of glory being overlooked?
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Boris Groys. Today's Legacy of Classical Modernism. 2017
Boris Groys, Professor of Philosophy at The European Graduate School / EGS. Saas-Fee, Switzerland. August 19 2017. Public open lecture for the students of the Division of Philosophy, Art & Critical Thought.
Boris Groys is a philosopher, essayist, art critic, media theorist and an internationally renowned expert on Soviet-era art and literature, specifically, the Russian avant-garde. He is a Global Distinguished Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University, a Senior Research Fellow at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe, and a professor of philosophy at The European Graduate School / EGS. His work engages radically different traditions from French poststructuralism to modern Russian philosophy, yet is firmly situated at the juncture of aesthetics and politics. Theoretically, Boris Groys’s work is influenced by a number of modern and post-modern philosophers and theoreticians, including Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze and Walter Benjamin.
Born in the former German Democratic Republic, Groys grew up in the USSR. He studied philosophy, mathematics, and logic at Leningrad State University (now Saint Petersburg State University). While a student, he immersed himself in the unofficial cultural scenes taking place in Leningrad and Moscow, and coined the term “Moscow conceptualism.” The term first appeared in the essay “Moscow Romantic Conceptualism,” published in 1979, in the art magazine A-YA. During this time in the Soviet Union, Groys published widely in a number of samizdat magazines, including 37 and Chasy. Between 1976 and 1981, Boris Groys held the position of Research Fellow in the Department of Structural and Applied Linguistics at Moscow State University. At the end of this fellowship, he left the Soviet Union and moved to the Federal Republic of Germany.
In 1992, Groys earned his doctorate in philosophy from the Universität Münster, where he also served as an assistant professor in philosophy from 1998-1994. During this time, Groys was also a visiting professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, followed by another appointment at the University of Southern California, also in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature. From 1994 to 2009, Groys was Professor of Art History, Philosophy, and Media Theory at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe, where he remains a senior research fellow. In 2001, he was the Director of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and from 2003 to 2004, he spearheaded the research program Post-Communist Condition, at the Federal Cultural Foundation of Germany. He assumed the position of Global Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Science at New York University in 2005 and in 2009 he became a full Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at NYU. Groys is also a senior Fellow at the International Center for Cultural Studies and Media Theory at the Bauhaus Universität (Weimar); a member of the Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art (AICA); and has been a senior scholar at the Courtauld Institute of Art (London); and a fellow at the International Research Center for Cultural Studies (IFK, Vienna), Harvard University Art Museum, and the University of Pittsburg.
In the Anglo-American world, Boris Groys is best known as the author of The Total Art of Stalinism (1992), and for introducing the western world to Russian postmodernist writers and artists. His contributions stretch across the field of philosophy, politics, history, and art theory and criticism. Within aesthetics, his major works include Vanishing Point Moscow (1994) and The Art of Installation (1996). His philosophical works include A Philosopher’s Diary (1989), The Invention of Russia (1995), and Introduction to Antiphilosophy (2012). More recently, he has also published Under Suspicion: A Phenomenology of the Media (2000), Ilya Kabakov: The Man Who Flew into Space from his Apartment (2006), and The Communist Postscript (2010). In addition to these works, other significant works in art, history, and philosophy include: History Becomes Form: Moscow Conceptualism (2010), Going Public (2010), Art Power (2008), The Total Enlightenment: Conceptual Art in Moscow 1960-1990 (2008), Dream Factory Communism: The Visual Culture of the Stalin Period (2004), Apotropikon (1991), and Thinking in Loop: Three Videos on Iconoclasm, Ritual and Immortality (DVD, 2008), which is a trilogy of video-text syntheses, wherein Groys reads the composed text superimposed onto a collage of footage fragments taken from movies and film documentations.
Kalina. Russian Folk Song. Arr. S. Ekimov
Женский камерный хор Ирида. Руководитель Анастасия Вишневская. Концерт Вселенная Русского Хора. Международный фонд Славянской письменности и культуры.
Women's Chamber Choir Irida. Conductor Anastasiya Vishnevskaya. Concert The Universe of the Russian Choir. International Fund of Slavic Literature and Culture.
Moscow Out: Best of 2011
2011 has brought many exciting events to Russian and International cultural calendars. On this week's special Moscow Out program, RT's Martyn Andrews and the team will be looking over some highlights of the past year -- the best bits from their episodes produced over the past 12 months. From the opening of the Bolshoi to daring stunts caught on film. If you didn't catch these exciting moments during the year, then don't miss our festive-themed recap.
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RUSSIA UNDER PUTIN: PUTIN GROUND ZERO
The Fritt Ord Foundation, The New York Review of Books Foundation and the Russian online journal of politics and culture Colta.ru hosted the international conference ‘Russia Under Putin’ on Thursday, 29 November 2018 at Fritt Ord, Oslo.
10.00: PUTIN GROUND ZERO
Chair: Martin Paulsen, Chairman of the Board at the Rafto Foundation
Elena Milashina, investigate journalist for Novaya Gazeta, who has reported on events in Chechya, the Northern Caucasus and beyond. Recipient of the 2008 Andrei Sakharov Award, the 2014 International Woman of Courage Award and the 2016 Free Media Award.
Irina Prokhorova, Founding Editor of the New Literary Review and co-founder of the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation. Active in the party Civic Platform, resigned following the annexation of Crimea. Author of 1990: Russians Remember a Turning Point (2013)
Mischa Gabowitsch, Research Fellow at the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, author of Protest in Putin’s Russia (2016)
This panel would hear the testimony of journalists, writers, lawyers or human rights activists who are working, or have worked in Russia and have experienced at first hand the impact of the regime’s policies on human rights, freedom of speech and the rule of law and who in their professional lives may have chronicled, criticized and opposed these practices.
Irina Prokhorova at Hunter College (November 16, 2017)
A TALK ON BOOK PUBLISHING, FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND THE HUMANITIES IN RUSSIA FROM 1990s TO THE PRESENT. Nov. 16, 5:30-7:30 pm, Elizabeth Hemmerdinger Screening Center, Room 706 (Library), Hunter East Building.
Irina Prokhorova is editor-in-chief of The New Literary Observer publishing house in Moscow, which has provided a vital platform for scholarly, intellectual and artistic discourse in Russia since its inception in 1992, She and her publishing house are indispensable not only in Russia but also across Slavic Studies in the U.S. and worldwide. Ms. Prokhorova is a frequent guest at American and European universities and a contributor to international academic conferences, including the annual ASEEES (Association of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies).
IRINA PROKHOROVA graduated from the Philology Department of Moscow State University and wrote a dissertation on modernist English literature. In 2004, she cofounded the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation, a charity organization that supports cultural initiatives in the Russian regions and other ways of promoting Russian culture worldwide, for example, via the Transcript Translation Project, which supports translations of Russian literature into world languages. Since 2012, Prokhorova has hosted the program System of Values on RBC TV, and from 2013 to mid-2014 was the head of the Federal Civil Committee of the political party Civic Platform (her decision to stand down was motivated by the split in the party over the annexation of Crimea). As a media figure, publisher and intellectual, she has consistently supported numerous artists, scholars and journalists in their fight for civic values in Putin's Russia. She is the recipient of numerous Russian and international prizes and awards, including the Liberty Prize for contributions to the development of Russian-U.S. cultural relations, the Andrei Bely Prize for services to Russian literature, Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters of France, to name but a few.
Tango with Cows: Russian Futurism and Bourgeois Culture on the Eve of World War I
On October 30, 2015, the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia hosted the launch of the English-language edition of Vasily Kamensky’s “Tango with Cows,” curated by Eugene Ostashevsky and Daniel Mellis.
Tango with Cows, a book of Russian Futurist visual poetry, was published in the spring of 1914, at roughly the same time as the Zang Tumb Tumb of F.T. Marinetti and the first calligrammes of Guillaume Apollinaire. The Petersburg avant-garde writer Kamensky became the first European poet to train as an airplane pilot until crashing his Blériot XI during a show flight returned him to literature. As third partner of the Russian Futurist tour of 1913-1914 with Vladimir Mayakovsky and David Burliuk, Kamensky eagerly innovated in the fields of book art and visual poetry, printing his typographical experiments on brashly colored wallpaper. Composed at the height of the Russian tango craze, Tango with Cows provides us pictures of Moscow’s nightlife circa January 1914—the movies, the circus, the skating rinks, the modernist art gallery, the after-hours clubs, and, last but not least, the public baths—as it reminisces about the author’s flying over Warsaw and sailing to Constantinople. Ostashevsky and Mellis’s typographic translations of Kamensky, winners of the PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant, are being issued to celebrate the hundredth—or rather the hundred-and-first-and-a-halfth–anniversary of the original Russian publication.
Link to written event recap:
Secret Beauty of St Petersburg Women Exposed
Men from around the world find zero apprehension in dating St Petersburg Women.
With the advent of technological advances in international dating, foreign men have taken to dating Russian women in St Petersburg for nearly 2 decades, many finding lifelong partners in the process.
Men are more than ever starting to take advantage of this chance to meet and date Russian women who are also interested in starting a serious relationship.
Your first stop should be visiting the famous landmarks that Saint Petersburg has to offer. While traveling Russia, countless Saint Petersburg Women will be available for meeting and dating along the way.
Looking for your life mate is but one of many things to do in Russia. Women in Russia are known for their beauty and loyalty making them wonderful life partners.
St Petersburg, Russia is the right place for you to enjoy your well-deserved vacation, you'll expect a wonderful time as you explore their wild nightlife, extraordinary history and rich cultural traditions that have nurtured some of the modern world's greatest literature, music, and visual art. St Petersburg will surely inspire you and make you fulfill on your journey!
As you plan your next adventure take a time to look at this video and learn a thing or two about Russia and their gorgeous women.
WATCH. COMMENT. SHARE!
Independent Sources: The Black Russians
On this edition of Independent Sources hosted by Garry Pierre-Pierre, Zyphus Lebrun interviews a filmmaker, Yelena Demikovsky who is producing a documentary about the African Americans who sought refuge in Russia from the US' Jim Crow system of segregation. Sarah Pizon speaks to Dr. Marta Morena Vega and Desiree Gordon about the multi-million dollar relocation and renovation of one of the country's leading institutes for Afro Latino culture. Then we profile the Brooklyn designer Reuben Reuel who's got Beyonce's seal of approval. (Taped: 03-02-2015)
Independent Sources is where viewers meet the ethnic press. IS engages journalists from New York's ethnic and mainstream media in an insightful discussion of stories covered by ethnic newspapers, TV and radio stations and websites. Each show features an in-depth profile of a news organization or a reporter, along with a news roundup. Independent Sources IS an informative, innovative half hour about New York's fastest growing news sector.
Watch more Independent Sources at CUNY TV
The Silver Age of Russian Culture
Putin's Russia: Political, Economic, Social, and Cultural Developments in the Last 15 Years (2007)
Boris Akunin (Russian: Борис Акунин) is the pen name of Grigol Chkhartishvili (Russian: Григорий Шалвович Чхартишвили; Georgian: გრიგოლ ჩხარტიშვილი) (born May 20, 1956), a Russian writer of Georgian and Jewish origin. About the book:
He is best known as writer of detective and historical fiction. He is also an essayist and literary translator. Grigory Chkhartishvili has also written under pen names Anatoly Brusnikin, Anna Borisova and Akunin-Chkhartishvili.
Chkhartishvili was born in Zestaponi[1] to a Georgian father and a Jewish mother and since 1958 has lived in Moscow.[1] Influenced by Japanese Kabuki theatre, he joined the historical-philological branch of the Institute of Asian and African Countries of Moscow State University as an expert on Japan. He worked as assistant to the editor-in-chief of the magazine Foreign Literature,[1] but left in October 2000 to pursue a career as a fiction writer.[1]
Under his given name of Grigory Chkhartishvili, he serves as editor-in-chief of the 20-volume Anthology of Japanese Literature,[1] chairman of the board of a large Pushkin Library (Soros Fund),[1] and is the author of the book The Writer and Suicide (Moscow, The New Literary Review, 1999). He has also contributed literary criticism and translations from Japanese, American and English literature under his own name.[1] He is left handed, and has been known to smoke a pipe.
Under the pseudonym Boris Akunin, he has written many works of fiction, mainly novels and stories in the series The Adventures of Erast Fandorin, The Adventures of Sister Pelagia, The Adventures of the Master (following Nicholas Fandorin, Erast's grandson), all published in Russia by Zakharov Books, and the Roman-Kino (Novel-Film) series set during World War I. Akunin's specialty is historical mysteries set in Imperial Russia. It was only after the first books of the Fandorin series were published to critical acclaim that the identity of B. Akunin (i.e., Chkhartishvili) was revealed.
Chkhartishvili prefers to work with historical material and has been called the undisputed champion of Russian crime fiction given that as Boris Akunin he has written more than a dozen crime novels and has been widely appreciated by discerning readers . . . and has been translated into many languages.[2]
Akunin (悪人) is a Japanese word that translates loosely to villain. In his novel The Diamond Chariot, the author redefines an akunin as one who creates his own rules.[1]
Akunin has been critical of Vladimir Putin's domestic and foreign policies, including the annexation of Crimea in 2014.[3] In 2012, Putin attributed Akunin's critical attitudes to his Georgian background.
Image: Kremlin.ru [CC BY 3.0 ( or CC BY 4.0 ( via Wikimedia Commons