Arts and Humanities Commons^™

I Return My Ticket, Caroline Caldwell

Honors Scholars Collaborative Projects

This project serves to open up an accessible way to introduce people to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s masterpiece novel, The Brothers Karamazov. Questions around human nature and the problem of evil are enduring and I have found more peace in the works of Dostoevsky than anywhere else. I know, however, that Russian literature and long novels in general are incredibly intimidating, so I chose to follow in the footsteps of Dave Malloy and his work Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 to create an approachable and engaging avenue to consume Dostoevsky in a more palatable fashion. Knowledge of other cultures …

Introduction. Dialogues With Shklovsky: The Duvakin Interviews 1967-1968., Slav N. Gratchev, Irina Evdokimova

Modern Languages Faculty Research

Dialogues with Shklovsky: The Duvakin Interviews 1967–1968 reflects the spirit of times—when the most dramatic events of the twentieth century were happening in Russia and the USSR. The first English translation of the 1967–1968 interviews with the founder of the Formalist School of literary theory, Viktor Shklovsky, this volume offers a slice of Russian micro-history that relies on the living voice of that history. Through the transcription of a six-hour phono-document, the readers will hear the voice of a real participant in events that for the longest time in the USSR were forbidden to be discussed or written about.

Don Quixote In Russia In The 1920s-1930s: The Problem Of Perception And Interpretation, Slav N. Gratchev

Modern Languages Faculty Research

This study logically continues my previous examination of the perception of Don Quixote in Russia throughout the early twentieth century and how this perception changed over time. In this new article, which will be the third in a sequence of five, I will again use a number of materials inaccessible to English-speaking scholars to demonstrate how the perception of Don Quixote by Russian intelligentsia shifted from being skeptical to complete admiration and even glorification of the hero. Don Quixote was increasingly compared with Prometheus, the most powerful and most romanticized personage of Greek methodology. Indeed, “. . . начав юмористический …

Karaoke At The Train Station, Joseph Crescente

MFA Program for Poets & Writers Masters Theses Collection

An American singing prodigy escapes to Russia following the death of his bandmate and stays after his last close relative – his mother – dies. It’s the late 1990s and he’s found a new home. After a decade in obscurity he makes a comeback by joining a Russian musical collective, but when they embark on a tour during the events in Crimea in 2014, accusations swirl about his past as a democracy promoter for a U.S.-funded NGO in Vladivostok. Condemned by the media as a spy, he’s eventually denounced by Rokko – the man who rediscovered him, mentored him, and …

Peter The Great And His Changing Identity, Emily Frances Pagrabs

Student Scholarship

Well aware of the perception that foreigners held of him, Peter the Great would never apologize for his nationality or his country. A product of his upbringing, Peter did have some qualities that many foreigners criticized as barbaric and harsh. Essentially, Peter I was simply a Russian. He was a product of his circumstances. A young boy who had grown up in a Russia in turmoil, Peter had been forced to fight for his right to rule his country. Once there, he would do what he thought was best in order to secure his country’s future. Although foreigners may have …

A Clash Of Fictions: Geopolitics In Recent Russian And Ukrainian Literature, Yvonne Howell

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

When the vast, multinational Soviet empire collapsed in 1991, the geopolitical structure it had struggled to maintain for most of the 20111 century - often by means of brutal repression and forced remobilization of entire populations - proved itself in the eyes of many to be fatally out of sync with the epochal norm of the nation-state. By the end of the 18th century, people in many parts of the world had begun to "imagine themselves" as nations and to organize politically into states whose primary function would be to protect, nurture, and (in a kind of Romantic feedback loop) …

Driving Force Of The Ukraine Crisis, Mark Mccarthy

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"For many people in North America, trying to understand what is taking place in Eastern Europe between Russia and Ukraine can be a bit confusing. Even Winston Churchill once described this part of Europe as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. "

Posting about the crisis in Ukraine from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/the-driving-force-of-the-ukraine-crisis/

All This Is Your World: Soviet Tourism At Home And Abroad After Stalin, Marko Dumančić

History Faculty Publications

Book Review in Nationalities Papers The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity

Popular Culture: Russian Folklore And Mores, Zara Abdullaeva

Russian Culture

The heroine of Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain," a Russian woman named Shosha, explains to Hans Kastorz, a German, what Russians mean by morals: "Morality? Do you want to know about morality? Well, we believe that morality is not to be found in virtue, that is, not in reason, discipline, good manners, or honesty; quite to the contrary, we find it in sinfulness, in danger to which one exposes oneself and evil which could devour us. We believe it is morally loftier to perish, to drive oneself into the ground, than to save one's soul. . . ."

Labor Culture: Labor Morality Under Socialism, Vladimir Magun

Russian Culture

Soviet leaders had always taken a keen interest in workers' behavior and labor motives and sought to keep labor morality under strict state control. A complex network of values and regulations was developed for this purpose after the October Revolution of 1917. They were best articulated in the "political economy of socialism" which purported to present a scientific picture of the country's economic life. Textbooks on socialist economy were widely circulated in the Soviet Union and appropriate courses included into a core curriculum for all higher education institutions in the country. Basic tenets of socialist political economy were taught in …

Civic Culture: Public Opinion And The Resurgence Of Civic Culture, Yuri Levada

Russian Culture

There has hardly been a stretch in Russian history more saturated with sweeping changes than the period between 1988-1993. Packed into this exceedingly brief historical era are the rise of "perestroika" and the fall of its illustrious leader, Mikhail Gorbachev; the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence in its place of 15 independent states; the August '91 communist putsch and the democrats' triumphant ascension to power; the proliferation of virulent ethnic conflicts and the recognition of the abiding need for cooperation; the bloody October '93 confrontation between the executive and legislative powers and the surprising strength that the …

Historical Culture: Russia In Search Of Itself, Boris Paramonov

Russian Culture

Russia's 75 year-long experiment with communism is over, but the question persists as to whether the Soviet regime was a historical aberration or an expression of the country's destiny. This question is as old as the Bolshevik revolution. It has produced a voluminous literature and will no doubt continue to attract attention in the near future. Alas, it can not be answered conclusively, for it is grounded in the questioner's ideological a priori and tells us more about the historian's biases than about Russian history.

Soviet Everyday Culture: An Oxymoron?, Svetlana Boym

Russian Culture

Mikhail Mishin, a Soviet satirist, wrote that Russians recognize themselves in the famous fairy-tale character Ivan the Fool. He bides his time napping on the heated furnace and gets up only to undertake major heroic feats. Ivan the Fool might be a great hero, but he has no idea how to survive his everyday life. Everyday life, captured in the Russian word byt, is a more dangerous enemy to him than the multi-headed fire-spitting dragon. The everyday is Russia 's cultural monster. The nation might worship its heroes and their fabled ability to withstand hell or high water, but …

Psychological Culture: Ambivalence And Resistance To Social Change, Alexander Etkind

Russian Culture

"National character," "modal personality," "collective unconscious," "ethnic mentality," "cultural identity" -- these and similar notions are designed to capture psychological traits that distinguish one social group from another. Attempts to isolate such hypothetical qualities are not different in principle from efforts to describe religious, legal, or other social patterns found among people who have lived together for a length of time, except that psychological constructs tend to focus on subjective characteristics and are somewhat harder to identify. For the first time, the link between culture and psychology came under close scrutiny in the nineteen century. German linguists Steinthal and Lazarus …

Intellectual Culture: The End Of Russian Intelligentsia, Dmitri N. Shalin

Russian Culture

No group cheered louder for Soviet reform, had a bigger stake in perestroika, and suffered more in its aftermath than did the Russian intelligentsia. Today, nearly a decade after Mikhail Gorbachev unveiled his plan to reform Soviet society, the mood among Russian intellectuals is decidedly gloomy. "The intelligentsia has carried perestroika on its shoulders," laments Ury Shchekochikhin, "so why does it feel so forlorn, superfluous, forgotten"? G. Ivanitsky warns that the intellectual strata "has become so thin that in three or four years the current genocide against the intelligentsia would surely wipe it out." Andrey Bitov, one of the country's …

The Intelligentsia Without Revolution: The Culture Of The Silver Age, Andrei Ariev

Russian Culture

The most effective definition of "the intelligentsia" might read: “Russian intellectuals who are generally opposed to the government.” But even Russia’s traditionally powerful government has collapsed at times, leaving a vacuum of authority. This was precisely the historical situation at the beginning of the twentieth century. It made an indelible impression both upon thinkers, such as Rozanov, and on politicians, such as Lenin.

Moral Culture: Public Morality And Private Responsibility, Igor Kon

Russian Culture

When Mikhail Gorbachev unfurled his reform banners in the late 1980's, many observers inside and outside Russia hailed perestroika as a moral renaissance. The Soviet Union was indeed a spiritually bankrupt society at the time, its citizens demanding a clean break with the past and yearning for a better future. Despite the new openness or glasnost, the changes have been slow in coming and often very controversial. A public opinion survey conducted in February 1991 showed the country morally adrift and deeply divided about the course of reforms.

Review Of The Iconostasis Of Peter The Great In The Peter And Paul Cathedral In St. Petersburg (1722-1729), Wendy Salmond

Art Faculty Articles and Research

Wendy Salmond reviews The Iconostasis of Peter the Great in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg (1722-1729) by Julia Gerasimova.

Berries (Iagody), Yvonne Howell

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

For centuries the berries that grow in the forests and swamps of northern Russia have been a crucial source of vitamin C, antioxidants, and other micronutrients that would otherwise be lacking in the locally-based diet of most Russians.

Kasha, Yvonne Howell

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

Russian kasha can refer to virtually any grain cooked into a porridge.

Russian Federation, Jeffrey K. Hass

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

The Russian political system remains subject to sudden radical change--this has been the basic logic of its political history since 1985. Only by understanding the processes and logics of that recent history of change can one understand the present and the (possibly radically different) future.

In December 1991 Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (the USSR's largest republic, known as RSFSR), joined Stanislav Shushkevich of Belarus and Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine in dissolving the Soviet Union and replacing it with the ill-defined Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The RSFSR was transformed into the Russian Federation, and …

Zamayatin, Evgeny Ivanovich (1884-1937), Yvonne Howell

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

Zamayatin, Evgeny Ivanovich (1884-1967), Russian engineer, fiction writer, critic-essayist, and editor. Zamayatin was born in the provincial town of Lebedyan in central Russia. He joined the Bolshevik Party in opposition to the tsar's regime while still a student of naval engineering in the imperial capital of St. Petersburg. He was imprisoned and exiled from St. Petersburg, an experience that provided material for his first short novels and stories.

Book Review: Chechnya: Tombstone Of Russian Power, Rory J. Conces

Philosophy Faculty Publications

From December 1994 to August 1996, Russia was engaged in the Chechen War, a Vietnam-style quagmire that exemplified, on the one hand, the end of Russia as a great military and imperial power, and, on the other hand, "one of the greatest epics of colonial resistance in the past century.'' No analysis can hope to understand the totality of forces that lend to the stability (or instability) of nations with large minority populations unless it first examines the conditions that led to the Russian defeat in Chechnya. At the center of that problem lies an interesting issue. What aspects of …

A Matter Of Give And Take: Peasant Crafts And Their Revival In Late Imperial Russia, Wendy Salmond

Art Faculty Articles and Research

Discusses the movement to revive peasant crafts in late imperial Russia. Resurrection of the handicrafts by the local peasant women in the 1870's, Russian artist Elena Penelova and her designs such as the bedside table with rosette motif and the interior of a peasant hut, Abramtsevo experiment, School of Folk Arts's teachings on drawing and traditional women's handwork to peasant girls.

Review Of Russian Housing In The Modern Age: Design And Social History, Wendy Salmond

Art Faculty Articles and Research

Wendy Salmond reviews Russian Housing in the Modern Age: Design and Social History, edited by William Craft Brumfield and Blair Ruble.

Review Of The Origins Of Modernism In Russian Architecture By William C. Brumfield, Wendy Salmond

Art Faculty Articles and Research

Wendy Salmond reviews The Origins of Modernism in Russian Architecture by William C. Brumfield.

The Solomenko Embroidery Workshops, Wendy Salmond

Art Faculty Articles and Research

This article reevaluates the Solomenko Embroidery Workshops in the context of late nineteenth century Russia's rapid establishment of art colonies and centers dedicated to restoring the handicraft industries of the kustar.