Power, Light and Yet Another Transition

CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

#Central Asia #CREECA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison #Center for Russia #Central Asia at the University of Wisconsin #East Europe #Podcasting Education

57:50

Alex (@alex_kamenca) and Carley (@carleymitus) are both members of our Action Academy Community that purchased TWO small businesses last thursday! Want To Quit Your Job In The Next 6-18 Months Through Buying Commercial Real Estate & Small Businesses? 👔🏝️ Schedule A Free 15 Minute Coaching Call With Our Team Here To Get "Unstuck" Want to know which investment strategy is best for you? Take our Free Asset-Selection Quiz Check Out Our Bestselling Book : From Passive To Passionate : How To Quit Your Job - Grow Your Wealth - And Turn Your Passions Into Profits Want A Free $100k+ Side Hustle Guide ? Follow Me As I Travel & Build: IG @brianluebben ActionAcademy.com…

for ca. et år siden 48:21

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The lecture will provide insight into the particular (and sometimes peculiar) challenges Central Asian states faced in their energy systems during the first 30 years of independence as they struggled to provide reliable energy at home and secure resource markets abroad. It will then turn to examine what the global transition away from fossil fuels portends for Central Asia’s future. About the Speaker: Theresa Sabonis-Helf is a Professor of the Practice at Georgetown University. She is based in the Georgetown School of Foreign Service Master’s Degree program, and serves as the Inaugural Chair of the Science, Technology and International Affairs concentration. Prior to joining Georgetown, she was a Professor of National Security Strategy at the National War College in Washington DC for 18 years. She has lived and worked in seven countries of the Former USSR, has assisted two nations with the development of their first National Security Strategies, has written a textbook on Caucasus regional energy issues, and has co-edited two volumes on Central Asia’s political and economic transition. She has also published and lectured extensively on energy security, climate change policies, critical infrastructure resilience and security, post-Soviet energy and environmental issues, energy transition, and the politics of electricity. She is a frequent advisor to NATO and to the US government. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She holds a PhD in Political Science from Emory University, and an MPA in International Affairs from Princeton University.

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CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

Power, Light and Yet Another Transition

CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

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published for ca. et år siden

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169 episoder

#Central Asia #CREECA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison #Center for Russia #Central Asia at the University of Wisconsin #East Europe #Podcasting Education

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CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

1
Intent to Destroy: Russia’s Two-hundred-year Quest to Dominate Ukraine 45:17

for 8 dage siden45:17

45:17

About the Lecture: In this book presentation, Finkel uncovers the deep roots of the Russo-Ukrainian War. Following the rise of Russian nationalism in the nineteenth century, dominating Ukraine became the cornerstone of Russian policy. The Russian Empire, USSR and Putin’s Russia had long used violence to successfully crush Ukrainian efforts to chart a separate path. Today’s violence is just a more extreme version of Russia’s past efforts. But unlike in the past, the people of Ukraine have overcome their deep internal divisions, and this rise of civic Ukrainian nationalism explains the successful resistance to the invasion. About the Speaker: Eugene Finkel (UW PhD in Political Science) is the Kenneth H. Keller Professor of International Affairs, Johns Hopkins SAIS. Finkel’s most recent book is Intent to Destroy: Russia’s Two-Hundred-Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine (Basic Books, 2024). He is also the author of Ordinary Jews: Choice and Survival during the Holocaust (Princeton University Press, 2017), and co-author of Reform and Rebellion in Weak States (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and Bread and Autocracy: Food, Politics and Security in Putin’s Russia (Oxford University Press, 2023). His articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, and other journals. Finkel also published articles and op-eds in The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Foreign Affairs, The Spectator and other outlets.…

CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

1
“If not us, then who?”: Understanding Ukrainian Civilians’ Engagement in the War Effort Since February 2022 52:33

for 5 weeks siden52:33

52:33

About the Lecture: Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, analysts and observers around the world were shocked and surprised that Ukraine did not fall in a matter of days or weeks. Instead people across the country resisted with both military and civilian means, halting the Russian advance. Surveys indicate that over 80% of the Ukrainian population contributed to the war effort in some way (e.g. Onuch et al 2022, 2023), suggesting that Ukrainian civilians have made a crucial, if hard-to-quantify, contribution to Ukraine’s continued resistance. However, scholarship on civilian wartime engagement more broadly tends to focus on decisions to join the military or to flee following the onset of conflict – meaning that our understanding of how and why civilians mobilise in non-combatant roles is limited. Drawing on recent fieldwork conducted in Ukraine, this talk discusses the diverse roles Ukrainian civilians are playing in the war effort and what motivates this engagement, particularly in parts of Ukraine most acutely impacted by the war. The discussion will also contextualize this engagement in Ukraine’s longer history of civilian mobilization, based upon Emma’s doctoral research into mass mobilization in Ukraine prior to 2022. About the Speaker: Emma Mateo is a postdoctoral fellow at New York University’s Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia. She studies political behaviour in times of crisis, such as mass protest and war, with a regional focus on eastern Europe, particularly Ukraine and Belarus. Her current monograph project explores civilian responses to conflict, focusing on the case of Ukrainian mobilisation during the Russo-Ukrainian war. Drawing upon fieldwork in Ukraine and systematic analysis of local and social media data, the project investigates the actions and motivations of ordinary Ukrainians in different local contexts who engaged in the war effort as civilians. Emma also researches subnational mobilisation during mass protest, mapping and analysing local protests Belarus and Ukraine for her doctoral research. Emma’s interest in the intersection of protest, civil society, media and technology has led her to make innovative use of social media data, such as Telegram Messenger. Her work has been published in Post-Soviet Affairs and Social Media + Society, and featured at major conferences and expert workshops in the US, Canada, UK, and EU. She has previously worked at Columbia University as a Postdoctoral Fellow at The Harriman Institute, and Adjunct Lecturer in Sociology. Emma holds a PhD in Sociology (2022) and MPhil in Russian and East European Studies (2018) from the University of Oxford, and a BA in Modern Languages (Russian, French and Ukrainian) from the University of Cambridge.…

CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

1
Power and Possession in the Russian Revolution 56:31

for 9 weeks siden56:31

56:31

[About the Lecture:] The revolutions of 1917 swept away not only Russia’s governing authority but also the property order on which it stood. The upheaval sparked waves of dispossession that rapidly moved beyond the seizure of factories and farms from industrialists and landowners, envisioned by Bolshevik revolutionaries, to penetrate the bedrock of social life: the spaces where people lived. In Power and Possession in the Russian Revolution, Anne O’Donnell reimagines the Bolsheviks’ unprecedented effort to eradicate private property and to create a new political economy—socialism—to replace it. O’Donnell’s account captures the story of property in reverse, showing how the bonds connecting people to their things were broken and how new ways of knowing things, valuing them, and possessing them coalesced amid the political ferment and economic disarray of the Revolution. O’Donnell reminds us that Russia’s postrevolutionary confiscation of property, like many other episodes of mass dispossession in the twentieth century, largely escaped traditional forms of record keeping. She repairs this omission, drawing on sources that chronicle the lived experience of upheaval—popular petitions, apartment inspections, internal audits of revolutionary institutions, and records of the political police—to reconstruct an archive of dispossession. The result is an unusually intimate history of the Bolsheviks’ attempts to conquer people and things. The Bolsheviks’ reimagining of property not only changed peoples’ lives and destinies, it formed the foundation of a new type of state—one that eschewed the defense of private property rights in favor of an enduring but enigmatic new domain: socialist state property. [About the Speaker:] Anne O’Donnell is Associate Professor of History at New York University. Her first book, Taking Stock: Power and Possession in Revolutionary Russia, charts the rise of illiberal Soviet statecraft through the conquest of the urban material environment. It is a history of market-making in reverse: of how people have lost their worlds of things; how they have taken things from one another; how they scrambled conventional indicators of value, and how these searingly intimate, yet widely shared experiences coalesced into a staging ground for socialist revolution. Her next project will be a study of the study of poverty in the post-war Soviet Union.…

CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

1
Writing the Soviet History of Philosophy in the 1960s–1980s 47:16

for 12 weeks siden47:16

47:16

About the Lecture: During the 70 years of its existence, the Soviet Union claimed to be a communist state based on the philosophical doctrines of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and, at the later stages, Vladimir Lenin. This made philosophy a mandatory course in every Soviet university and led to the creation of a peculiar version of the history of philosophy. Leading Soviet specialists, such as Valentin Asmus and Igor Narskii, interpreted the history of philosophy as a dialectical struggle of oppositions, such as materialism and idealism, religion and science, bourgeoisie and proletariat. Consequently, they divided philosophers of the past into two camps: allies, whose theories preceded dialectical materialism, and foes, who belonged to the idealistic camp. This talk will highlight the principal patterns of the Soviet approach to the history of philosophy and illustrate them through the case study of Igor Narskii’s interpretation of David Hume’s theory. About the Speaker: Viacheslav Zahorodniuk was an assistant professor at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. He defended his PhD thesis, “The evolution of the ‘idea’ concept in the British philosophy of the 17-18th centuries,” devoted to Locke’s, Berkeley’s, and Hume’s epistemology. Zahorodniuk was a postdoc in the Department of Philosophy at the University, working on a project on Hume’s theory of knowledge. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for the Research in Humanities, working on the project “Early Childhood in the Early Modern: Locke’s Accounts on Children Perception.” His interests also include Soviet studies, and an article, “Painted Red: The Soviet interpretations of Hume’s epistemology,” is forthcoming in Hume Studies.…

CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

1
Mapping Land Use and Habitat Changes in the Caucasus Through Spy Satellite Data 41:48

for 20 weeks siden41:48

41:48

About the lecture: The legacy of past human activities strongly shapes current landscapes and ecosystems, with today’s actions set to leave similar long-term impacts. Predicting future landscape changes, however, requires a thorough understanding of past ones, yet most land and habitat change studies are limited to recent decades—starting only in the 1980s with the availability of 30-m satellite data or in the 2000s with commercial high-resolution satellites. This presentation will introduce an alternative approach, using high-resolution imagery from the 1960s U.S. Corona spy satellites series to trace landscape changes over the past half-century. Focusing on the diverse Caucasus region, with its wide variation in elevation, climate, ecosystems, and historical land-use patterns, this presentation will highlight methods to create detailed land cover maps capturing landscapes before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. These historical maps provide a unique perspective on land changes, as well as habitat changes for wild species. This presentation will underscore the value of 1960s spy satellite data for understanding long-term land cover and habitat changes of large ungulate species, offering new insights into historical land use and its implications for wildlife and conservation. About the speaker: Afag (pronounced ah-fah) is a remote sensing and conservation expert with extensive field experience in the Caucasus region. Currently an Honorary Fellow at the SILVIS Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (https://silvis.forest.wisc.edu/people/), she holds a PhD in Forestry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Postgraduate Diploma in Wildlife Conservation from the University of Oxford. Afag’s research employs high-resolution satellite data to map historical land cover in the Caucasus eco-region, investigating long-term landscape changes and their impacts on wild habitats. Her past work has contributed to projects in wild mammal species’ reintroduction, habitat management, and human-wildlife conflict mitigation, and she has shared her findings in various publications (link to google scholar – https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=sqSt3H4AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao). In addition, employed as a data scientist at Spatial Informatics Group (SIG), she is currently involved in environmental projects in developing countries. Fluent in three languages and conversant in two others, Afag brings a global perspective to her work.…

CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

1
Post-Protest “Misdemeanorland”: An Ethnography of Legal Repression and Legal Resistance in Russia 46:38

for 24 weeks siden46:38

46:38

About the Lecture: The legal repression of opposition protests in pre-war Russia is characterized by the deployment of a bifurcated repressive system. This system relies, on the one hand, on “administrative” offenses and, on the other hand, on the criminal justice system to punish protesters. Following the demonstrators from the streets to the police bus, the police precincts and the court, this talk analyzes the case of relatively low-stakes prosecutions for protest-related “administrative” offences and the defensive legal mobilization that they prompted. This use of law and rights claims and sustained organization of legal aid and information support for prosecuted individuals in cases, where a guilty verdict is all but certain, speaks to the broader question of authoritarian legality and constant oscillation of defense actors and defendants themselves between belief and disbelief in law. About the Speaker: Renata Mustafina is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. Renata is a law and society scholar with research interests in authoritarian legality, legal mobilization, and defense lawyering in repressive settings, as well as in critical approaches to human rights. Her book manuscript, tentatively titled “Against Impossible Odds: Defensive Legal Mobilization in Russian Protest-Related Prosecutions,” ethnographically studies the legal aftermath of opposition protests in pre-war Russia (2012-2017). Renata holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Sciences Po, an M.A. in Sociology from École Normale Supérieure, and an undergraduate degree in International Relations from Moscow State University…

CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

1
Rivers and Society in Late Soviet Georgia: Nation, the Environment and the Everyday 46:20

for 25 weeks siden46:20

46:20

About the Lecture: Georgia’s 26,000 rivers connect citizens to nature, to their childhood, to their unique regions, each of which has its “mother-river.” The sounds of rushing water as well as the sights and scents of riverside gatherings provoke powerful memories and remain central to Georgian identity. Rivers also form the republic’s economic backbone. This presentation will focus on late Soviet Georgia, when hydroelectricity and gravel taken from riverside quarries joined irrigation and fishing as key contributors to Georgia’s development. Decisions on how to use rivers—at the republic and everyday level—governed the type of state and the spaces where Georgians worked and lived. These decisions, often haphazard and sometimes reversed, manifest a far more complicated dynamic than a simple dichotomy between modernization and conservation. They also implicated a wide range of actors beyond government and expert circles. Rivers themselves, finally, were far from passive actors in these decisions and contests. This presentation, based on oral histories, ethnography and archival sources, will blend human and non-human histories as well as deconstruct late Soviet Georgian state and society through riverine interactions. About the Speaker: Jeff Sahadeo is a professor at the Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada). He received his PhD in History from the University of Illinois. He is the author of Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, 1865-1923 (Indiana University Press, 2007) and Voices from the Soviet Edge: Southern Migrants in Leningrad and Moscow (Cornell University Press, 2019). He has published in Slavic Review, Journal of Modern History, Central Asian Survey and other major outlets. His first article from his current project on rivers in tsarist and Soviet Georgia, “The Mtkvari River’s Many Faces: Symbolism, Space and Agency in Late Imperial Tiflis,” is available open access at https://doi.org/10.22215/cjers.v17i1.4436…

CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

1
Estonia’s Nordic Identity: History and the Present 55:45

for 25 weeks siden55:45

55:45

About the Lecture: The idea of Estonia as a Nordic country gained traction in the late 19th century alongside the rise of Estonian nationalism. As Germany and increasingly also Russia came to be perceived as historical adversaries of the Estonian nation, Sweden’s arguably benevolent influence on Estonia’s history in the 17th century ‘good old Swedish times’ provided the Estonian national movement with an alternative model not just for their understanding of Estonia’s history but also for its political future. The presentation that is based on Mart Kuldkepp’s recent book Nordic Estonia will highlight the continuous efforts of early Estonian nationalists to position the country within the Nordic cultural sphere both before the achievement of Estonia’s independence, and after, with the leaders of the interwar-era independent Estonian state consistently seeking alignment with Sweden and other Nordic nations. Not least in terms of security policy, the recognition of this identity by other Nordic countries was seen critical in shaping Estonia’s geopolitical relationships. Yet it is only in the recent decades that it has found somewhat broader resonance and acceptance abroad. Today, when all the Nordic and Baltic states are members of NATO and most of them also of the EU, the ‘Nordic’ label is perhaps less important as a form of self-identification than it used to be. Yet it remains an exceptionally strong regional brand, and in the minds of most Estonians, their Nordic identity strongly contrasts with other, usually externally imposed labels, such as ‘Baltic’ or ‘post-Soviet’. About the Speaker: Mart Kuldkepp is Professor of Estonian and Nordic History at University College London in the UK. He defended his PhD at University of Tartu in Estonia in 2014 and joined UCL in 2015, where he has worked as lecturer, associate professor and professor. A few months ago, his book Nordic Estonia: The Birth of a Nation State was published in Estonia, tracing the political and intellectual history of the idea of Estonia’s Nordic identity in the first decades of the 20th century. He is currently a visiting professor at Yale University.…

CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

1
Russia’s War against Ukraine and The February 24th Archive Project 42:33

for 27 weeks siden42:33

42:33

Solidarity Networking and Ukrainian Mental Maps: Russia’s War against Ukraine and The February 24th Archive Project About the Lecture: I am an East European intellectual and political historian by training, and a student of map prejudices by practice. For a digitally activist Ukraine, the February 24th Archive is a polyphonic treasure trove of solidarity and resistance to Russia's war of aggression. My archive bridges six main multilingual groups: (1) professionally trained field experts in Ukrainian Studies; (2) interested nonspecialists in and beyond academe; (3) leading journalists; (4) OSINT amateurs and mapmakers, who catalogue war crimes and build cases with evidence for criminal prosecution; (5) diplomats and policymakers; and (6) most crucially, a voting citizenry that crosses ideological lines, hoping to raise literacy against malignant disinformation. While we commonly think about how social media divides and polarizes in 2024, I will introduce strategies on how I have worked against over the past three years against currents of unseen algorithms on digital platforms. I take inspiration for my ongoing Twitter/X war archive from scholarly work in the history of social and radical cartography, and ongoing Ukrainian war documenting projects. My goal for the February 24th Archive is to respect Ukrainian privacy and ethical issues toward a future Nuremberg tribunal moment, while basing a rolling public war digital record in a daily working Global Commons which is too often flooded with disinformation. About the Speaker: Steven Seegel is Professor of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Map Men: Transnational Lives and Deaths of Geographers in the Making of East Central Europe (University of Chicago Press, 2018); just translated into Russian (Academic Studies Press, 2024); Ukraine under Western Eyes (Harvard University Press, 2013); and Mapping Europe's Borderlands: Russian Cartography in the Age of Empire (University of Chicago Press, 2012). He has been a contributor to Chicago's international history of cartography series, and he has translated over 300 entries from Russian and Polish for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, in multiple volumes, published jointly by USHMM and Indiana University Press. Professor Seegel is a former director at Harvard University of the Ukrainian Research Institute's summer exchange program. From 2019 to 2022, he hosted 89 author-feature podcast interviews on the popular New Books Network. He is the founder of The February 24th Archive, an ongoing 24-hour community-driven, public-facing digital project focused on building global solidarity for Ukrainians, with 1000s of threads and averaging 30 million people in 75 countries per month across the world. Professor Seegel was awarded the Vega Medal of 2024 by the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography (SSAG) for his scientific contributions to human geography. He received the gold medal from King Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden on 22 April, celebrated annually as Earth Day.…

CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

1
“Reporting from a Lost Country,” a conversation with Elena Kostyuchenko 1:05:13

for 29 weeks siden1:05:13

1:05:13

About the Lecture: This conversation will be devoted to Elena Kostyuchenko’s book I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country (2023), “a haunting book of rare courage,” as Clarissa Ward, CNN chief international correspondent, called it. In March 2022, as a correspondent for Russia’s last independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, Kostyuchenko crossed the border into Ukraine to cover the war. It was her mission to ensure that Russians witnessed the horrors Putin was committing in their name. I Love Russia stitches together reportage from the past fifteen years with personal essays, assembling a kaleidoscopic narrative that Kostyuchenko understands may be the last work from her homeland that she’ll publish for a long time—perhaps ever. It exposes the inner workings of an entire nation as it descends into fascism and, inevitably, war. I Love Russia earned several distinctions, including a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and TIME, and the Pushkin House Book Prize (London, U.K.). About the Speaker: Elena Kostyuchenko is a Russian journalist; in 2024-2025, she is a Fellow at The Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Harvard University. She was born in Yaroslavl, Russia, in 1987, and she spent seventeen years reporting for Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s last major independent newspaper, until it was shut down in the spring of 2022 in response to her reporting from Ukraine after the start of the Russian invasion. She is the author of two books published in Russian, Unwanted on Probation and We Have to Live Here, and is the recipient of the European Press Prize, the Free Media Award, and the Paul Khlebnikov Prize. This event is part of the CREECA lecture series, which is held on Thursdays at 4:00 pm. Coffee, tea, and cookies served starting at 3:45. **This talk was co-sponsored by the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the Center for Journalism Ethics.**…

CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

1
Russian-Speaking Latvians at the Borders of Global History 53:53

for 30 weeks siden53:53

53:53

About the lecture: In December 1989, in officially recognizing the authenticity of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact’s secret protocol, the USSR Congress of People’s Deputies evinced the hope that the globally divided historical consciousness of the Cold War would be replaced with a new conception of the past, reflecting “a whole and mutually interdependent world and increasing mutual understanding.” While there was cause for hope in the immediate post-Soviet years that such a “flat earth” of shared accounts of history—the foundation for a world of shared political values—would emerge, subsequent decades led to renewed, often weaponized fragmentation of historical vision across political borders, and especially at the border separating Europe from the Russian Federation. However, in distinction from the Cold War opposition of ideologically differentiated accounts of history, current standoffs relate to the application of the most basic terms—empire, nation, fascist, genocide, socialist, liberal—which are applied on both sides of borders and conflict zones, yet with opposed significance. Rather than a confrontation of historical ideologies, this is a standoff of historical ontologies. In this presentation of his recently published book "Border Conditions: Russian-Speaking Latvians Between World Orders", Platt will examine the etiology of this ontological conflict, as it emerges from the experience of a population that has been located since the end of the Cold War in the interstitial zone at the borders of Europe: Russian-speaking Latvians. Their world, riven by contradiction, offers a vantage, as through a keyhole, toward globally shared conditions of historical and political incoherence and conflict at the start of the twenty-first century. About the speaker: Kevin M. F. Platt is Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His scholarly work focuses on Russian and East European culture, history, poetry, and fiction. He is author or editor of a number of scholarly books, among them "Terror and Greatness: Ivan and Peter as Russian Myths" (Cornell, 2011), "Global Russian Cultures" (Wisconsin, 2019), and, most recently, "Border Conditions: Russian-Speaking Latvians Between World Orders" (Cornell/NIUP, 2024). His translations of Russian and Latvian poetry have appeared in "World Literature Today:, "Jacket2", "Fence", and other journals. He is the founder and organizer of the poetry translation symposium Your Language My Ear. His current project is entitled “Cultural Arbitrage in the Age of Three Worlds.”…

CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

1
Secrets of State 54:20

for 31 weeks siden54:20

54:20

About the Lecture: The National Security Archive, based at George Washington University, has pioneered the use of the Freedom of Information Act to open classified U.S. files, and then to match those American primary sources with newly opened (and often now closed) archives in the former Soviet Union and countries of the Warsaw Pact. This presentation will draw on materials from the Archive to shed light on major events of recent history, such as the last “superpower summits” (between Gorbachev and Reagan, and later Gorbachev and George H.W. Bush), the miraculous revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe, Yeltsin’s turn to authoritarianism in Russia in the 1990s together with the “market bolshevism” (Peter Reddaway’s phrase) of economic reform, what Gorbachev and Yeltsin heard from Americans and Europeans about NATO expansion, nuclear follies from Semipalatinsk to Pervomaysk, and the existential threats to humanity (nuclear and climate) that make the U.S. and Russia “doomed to cooperate” (in Sig Hecker’s phrase). About the Speakers: Tom Blanton is the director since 1992 of the independent non-governmental National Security Archive at George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org). His books have been awarded the 2011 Link-Kuehl Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, selection by Choice magazine as “Outstanding Academic Title 2017,” and the American Library Association’s James Madison Award Citation in 1996, among other honors. The National Freedom of Information Act Hall of Fame elected him a member in 2006, and Tufts University presented him the Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award in 2011 for “decades of demystifying and exposing the underworld of global diplomacy.” His articles have appeared in Diplomatic History, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, and the Washington Post, among many other journals; and he is series co-editor for the National Security Archive’s online and book publications of more than a million pages of declassified U.S. government documents obtained through the Archive’s more than 60,000 Freedom of Information Act requests. Dr. Svetlana Savranskaya is director of Russia programs (since 2001) at the National Security Archive, George Washington University. She earned her Ph.D. in political science and international affairs in 1998 from Emory University. She is the author, with Thomas Blanton, of the book The Last Superpower Summits: Gorbachev, Reagan and Bush, (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2016), and editor of the book by the late Sergo Mikoyan, The Soviet Cuban Missile Crisis: Castro, Mikoyan, Kennedy, Khrushchev and the Missiles of November (Stanford: Stanford University Press/Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2012). Dr. Savranskaya won the Link-Kuehl Prize in 2011 from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, recognizing the best documentary publication over the previous two years, for her book (with Thomas Blanton and Vladislav Zubok) “Masterpieces of History”: The Peaceful End of the Cold War in Europe 1989 (Budapest/New York: Central European University Press, 2010). She is author and co-author of several publications on Gorbachev’s foreign policy and nuclear learning and the end of the Cold War, and numerous electronic briefing books on these subjects. She serves as an adjunct professor teaching U.S.-Russian relations at the American University School of International Service in Washington D.C. (since 2001).…

CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

1
Writing the Twentieth Century in Post-Stalin Russia 50:07

for 33 weeks siden50:07

50:07

About the lecture: This talk will offer an overview of Professor Shevelenko’s current book-length project and will focus on a few case studies. The book examines artistic and intellectual tendencies that shaped the thinking about the “age of extremes” (to use Eric Hobsbawm’s appellation for the twentieth century) during the late Soviet and post-Soviet period. This research analyzes the quest for narrative forms and techniques and, more broadly, representational strategies that the authors chose in order to capture the experience of society and individuals confronting the failure of political modernization and the disruption of social structures. About the speaker: Irina Shevelenko is Professor of Russian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of CREECA. Her research interests include Russian modernist literature and art, late Soviet and post-Soviet culture, Russian poetry, and nationalism studies. She is the author and editor of several books in English and Russian, including Reframing Russian Modernism (edited volume, 2018) and Russian Archaism: Nationalism and the Quest for a Modernist Aesthetic (2024).…

CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

1
A Colonial Muslim History of China and the World 59:18

for 36 weeks siden59:18

59:18

A Colonial Muslim History of China and the World The Tarikh-i Ḥamidi of Mullah Musa Sayrami (1836–1917) is celebrated as a monument of Uyghur literature and the preeminent Muslim history of nineteenth-century Xinjiang (East Turkestan). Yet it is more than a chronicle — it is a history of the world as seen from the heart of Eurasia and an argument about the nature of politics and faith. Sayrami’s work is also multilayered, polyvocal text, and one that bears recontextualization and rereading through different analytical approaches. This talk explores the Tarikh-i Ḥamidi in terms of its interaction with other Muslim and Chinese sources and as a colonial, transcultural text that advances insightful observations of Chinese power and new ideas about its workings. About the Speaker: Eric Schluessel is associate professor of history and international affairs at the George Washington University and director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies. His first monograph, Land of Strangers: The Civilizing Project in Qing Central Asia, won the 2021 Fairbank Prize in East Asian History. Schluessel has also authored a textbook for reading the Chaghatay language and translated the Tarikh-i Ḥamidi, the quintessential Uyghur chronicle of the nineteenth century. His research has been funded by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and at the Institute for Advanced Study. Schluessel continues to research the social and economic history of China and Central Asia.…

CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

1
The Formulation and Flow of National Identity from the Late Czarist Times to Today 1:14:10

for 38 weeks siden1:14:10

1:14:10

From Moldova to Tajikistan, from Belarus to Uzbekistan: The Formulation and Flow of National Identity from the Late Czarist Times to Today Riordan will explore the formulation of identity over the past 150 years in Moldova, Tajikistan, Belarus and Uzbekistan. Drawing on decades of on-the-ground work and research across all four countries, Riordan will discuss his findings on the trajectory of national identity and how it continues to shape the political discussion in each country today. About the Speaker: John P. Riordan is a career Foreign Service Officer in the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). He currently serves as the Deputy Mission Director at USAID/Moldova. Prior to Moldova, he was on assignment as a Development Advisor to U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) in Tampa, Florida (2017-2020). Riordan was the USAID Country Director in Uzbekistan (2014-2017), where he served for multiple, extended periods of time as acting Deputy Chief of Mission. He was also USAID’s Country Director in Belarus (2009-2013). In both Belarus and Uzbekistan, Riordan pioneered the leveraging of Baltic partner expertise and regional knowledge in order to advance shared objectives. He was recognized in 2017 with a Diploma of Commendation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia for his decade contribution to fostering a close relationship between Latvia and the United States and in jointly providing support for Belarus and Central Asian countries. Riordan was the USAID Development Adviser to the command group at Combined Joint Task Force 101 and 82 in Bagram, Afghanistan (2008-2009). Riordan served two assignments in Iraq (2006 and 2008, respectively) as the Deputy Director of USAID’s Governance and Provincial Reconstruction Team Office during the U.S. Government “surge,” and then helped to launch the Joint Interagency Task Force at Multi-National Forces-Iraq. He also served at the Agency’s mission in Romania (2005-2006). Riordan was honored to be the first Foreign Service Officer selected for an academic year in the Advanced Military Studies Program at the Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas (2007- 2008). While there, Riordan produced a monograph, Red D.I.M.E., which drew on original research on the Basmachi Resistance Movement against the fledgling Bolshevik forces of the Soviet Union in the Ferghana Valley region of Central Asia in order to apply historical and political lessons to irregular warfare in complex, adaptive environments. Before joining USAID, Riordan lived and worked in the Ferghana Valley region of Central Asia. He lectured at Ferghana State University and was the first American to conduct research in the Ferghana City archives as a Fulbright scholar in Uzbekistan. He also collected oral histories of Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Russian, and Tajik World War II veterans in order to better understand the formation of Soviet identity in Central Asia (2002-2003). He was also a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Ferghana Valley region of Kyrgyzstan (1998-2000), and worked as the Office Director of the State Department funded Freedom Support Act/Future Leader Exchange Program (FSA/FLEX) in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan (2000-2001). Riordan earned a master’s in military arts and sciences from the School of Advanced Military Studies at the Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan., and a master’s in Russian, East European, and Central Asian studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was awarded a Foreign Language Area Scholarship while at Wisconsin for the study of the Uzbek language and spent three summers on scholarship at Indiana University studying Russian, Uzbek, and Turkmen. He completed his undergraduate degree in Political Science at Marquette University, where he was selected for an internship on Capitol Hill via Marquette’s Les Aspin Center for Government.…

CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

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