Corruption had always run rampant in Russia/ the Soviet Union. It was part of life because it had occurred for generations. People in the business world expected a bribe to facilitate contracts and permits. Police officers did not want a ticket to be paid through the city. But most of all in the 1990s after […]
It’s hard to believe that this is the last blog post of the year already. As I sat down to research for a topic to write about this week, I found something rather peculiar: the Anti-Alcohol Campaign. What? An anti-alcohol campaign in Russia? I was taken aback to say the least. Alcohol is a staple […]
Until it was no more.….Our last weekly digest takes up the culture of the collapse of Soviet communism, a way of being that seemed extraordinarily stable, at the same time it displayed perplexing contradictions. For this last post, please use a cultural artifact or phenomenon of the late eighties to examine the end of the Soviet Union. Good inspiration is […]
Read more
“To a considerable extent, today’s war in Chechnya seems a replay of Imam Shamil’s jihad of 150 years ago only because both sides read Tolstoy at school and build their expectations on imagery from the past.” — Georgi Derluguian For this final unit of the course we will examine the cultural frameworks that inform the history of Russia’s involvement in […]
Read more