By Marcus Golding The fall of the Soviet Union is usually understood from two angles. One argues that the Soviet state could not keep up with the United States’ military superiority and, therefore, collapsed under economic strain. The other perspective suggests that western Europe and the U.S., and specifically the administration of President Ronald Reagan […]
Watch: The Wider Arc of Revolution: The Global Impact of 1917 (Part II)
To commemorate the centenary of the Russian Revolution, the UT Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies held an international conference entitled, “The Wider Arc of Revolution: The Global Impact of 1917.” The second keynote speech was given by Professor Lisa Kirschenbaum, Professor of History at West Chester University. Professor Kirschenbaum has published three […]
Watch: The Wider Arc of Revolution: The Global Impact of 1917 (Part I)
To commemorate the centenary of the Russian Revolution, the UT Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies held an international conference entitled, “The Wider Arc of Revolution: The Global Impact of 1917.” The first keynote speech was given by Sheila Fitzpatrick, preeminent historian of Russia and the Soviet Union, Professor of History at The […]
The Man Who Loved Dogs, by Leonardo Padura (2013)
By Rebecca Johnston Leonardo Padura is arguably one of Cuba’s most untouchable writers. He made his name first as an investigative journalist, and then as the author of the Havana Quartet detective series, sometimes described as “morality tales for the post-Soviet era.” The Man Who Loved Dogs is by far his most ambitious work. A […]
China Today: Communism for Americans in the 1930s
By Fei Guo China Today was a monthly periodical and the official organ of the American Friends of the Chinese People (AFCP), an organization formed by a group of American Communist Party members and left-leaning intellectuals devoted to introducing the Chinese communist revolutionary movement to Americans. Located in New York, the AFCP also organized public […]
American Girls in Red Russia: Chasing the Soviet Dream
Historians of the Russian empire have used Soviet citizen’s diaries to gain insights into “Stalinist subjectivity,” that is, the ways that individuals actively incorporated the Bolshevik ideal into their very sense of themselves. But diaries and other intimate sources have barely been tapped as a means of exploring ways in which the Soviet system likewise brought meaning to the lives of Americans and other foreigners. American women’s diaries and letters reveal both their genuine excitement—about Soviet schools, theatre, public spectacles, nurseries, workers’ housing, laws supporting maternal and child health, the “new morality,” and the simple fact of women’s visibility in public life.
Media and Politics From the Prague Spring Archive
By Ian Goodale In an unpublished letter to the Soviet daily newspaper Izvestiia, Liudmila Chukovskaya wrote that “muteness has always been the support of despotism.” This quote is cited in the booklet, Czechoslovakia and Soviet Public, compiled by the Radio Liberty Committee in New York in August 1968 to analyze the coverage of the Soviet invasion of […]
Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Soviet Central Asia, By Douglas Northrup (2003)
By Natalie Cincotta When the Soviets launched their campaign, known as the hujum, against the veil in Uzbekistan in 1927, their goal was not just to liberate women. Without a class framework or a working class to build socialism in Uzbekistan, Soviet activists instead attempted to transform society through the liberation of women. Northrop argues that a woman’s behavior […]
The Enemy Within: Cold War History in FX’s The Americans
By Clay Katsky Those who watch the television show The Americans share a secret with its protagonists: they are not a quintessential American couple living in the suburbs of D.C.; they are, in fact, spies for the Soviet Union. Set against the backdrop of a resurgent Cold War in the early 1980s, this serialized spy […]
American Zionism and Soviet Jews
During the early 1960s American Jews began realizing the severity of the anti-Semitic policies under which the 3 million Jews in the Soviet Union were living. This sparked an organized effort across American Jewish communities to raise awareness about the human rights violations being faced by Soviet Jews.