Russian and East European Studies

Russian journalist and author Mikhail Zygar will discuss how the official historical narrative has changed in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and what might happen with it further.  He will also present his own work on creating new historical narratives to challenge the official one.

Elena Kostiuchenko will talk on the state of journalism in Russia today, her work at Novaia Gazeta, and her book, “I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country.” (2023)

Recent years have witnessed a growing affinity between radicalized right-wing movements in the United States and Russia, countries that have often viewed each other as intractable foes. This lecture will examine ethnonationalist movements and anti-globalist opinion-makers in both countries, with particular attention to justifications for the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and attitudes to Christian nationalism, LGBTQ+ identities, race, and performative identity. 

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A Beneficiary Showcase of Ukrainian Resilience through Art

This third annual event celebrates the culture and resilience of the nation of Ukraine with music, poetry, film, and more.  Featuring the New York Crimean Tatar Ensemble, with a parade of performances by the Middlebury College Choir, the student band Chapel Hill, Middlebury College’s Ukrainian students, and other special guests. Admission is free, and information about donating to Ukrainian relief organizations will be provided.

The opening of the first McDonald’s in Moscow on January 31, 1990, was widely seen as proof of the Soviet Union opening up to the outside world after years of Cold War isolation. McDonald’s decision to pull out of Russia within months of its full-scale attack on Ukraine in early 2022 was thus naturally seen as the end of an era. This talk will look at how we got from Point A to Point B. Why did Soviet leaders agree to allow McDonald’s in, first as a joint venture with the Moscow city soviet, and what did they hope to get out of it?

Fritz Bartel is a diplomatic historian at Texas A&M University. His book on the end of the Cold War (Harvard University Press, 2022), The Triumph of Broken Promises, has been widely praised for its political-economic interpretation of the demise of the Soviet Union and the rise of neo-liberalism in the United States.

Co-sponsored by the International Politics & Economics program

Yevgenia Albats, Yevgenia Albats, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government

— a Russian investigative journalist, political scientist, writer, and radio host — will talk about Russian society and politics in the context of Russia’s invasion of, and ongoing war in, Ukraine.

Free screening of 20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL (documentary, dir. Mstyslav Chernov, 2023), sponsored by Middlebury Russian Department and IGS-REES. An AP team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggle to continue their work documenting atrocities of the Russian invasion. As the only international reporters who remain in the city, they capture what later become defining images of the war: dying children, mass graves, the bombing of a maternity hospital, and more.

Matthew Rojansky will discuss the current state of the war in Ukraine and take questions from the audience.

Matthew Rojansky, the President and CEO of the U.S. Russia Foundation and a Distinguished Fellow at the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, is as much a regular at Congressional briefings and on prime-time news shows as he is on the streets of Moscow, Kyiv, or Berlin. One of the country’s leading analysts of US relations with Russia, Ukraine, and the region, he has advised governments and international organizations and leads track two diplomacy on Eurasian conflicts.

European University professor Anna Temkina, one of Russia’s leading gender theorists and sociologists, will discuss her research on childbirth practices in contemporary Russia and their relationship to producing women as both citizens and consumers.