Family of Sites 
Revolution, Civil War, and the Formation of Bolshevik Anti-Free Press Discourse, 1917-1922
Scholars of the Soviet Union have written at length about the consolidation of Soviet state control over the media, the establishment of Glavlit and other…
Soviet Union
“Healthy Body, Healthy Mind”: the visual propaganda of personal care during the Cultural Revolution in the Stalinist State
The picture of “Comrade Lenin Sweeps the World Clean of Filth” (below) is a perfect illustration of Soviets’ axiological orientations: they felt a moral duty…
“Medicine Standing on its Head”: Snezhnevsky, Sluggish Schizophrenia and Soviet Political Abuse of Psychiatry
In this essay, I analyze political abuses of psychiatry in the Soviet Union by exploring Andrei Snezhnevsky’s diagnosis of sluggish schizophrenia—a fictional branch of schizophrenia….
The Allies in Siberia During the Russian Revolution
Despite its distance from the hotbed of Russian revolutionary violence, the city of Vladivostok and the Russian Far East experienced their own challenges and intrigue…
Nuclear War: How the United States and the Soviet Union Fought Over Information in Chernobyl’s Aftermath
April 26, 1986 began like any other day for the Soviet citizens of Pripyat, a little-known city of 50,000 in the Ukrainian SSR. At the…
The Evolution and Dissolution of the Soviet Kitchen
Just as the leadership, citizens, and politics of the USSR changed drastically between 1917 and 1991, so too the Soviet kitchen underwent innumerable changes from…
Cultivating Corn, Culture, and Curiosities: American Perspectives on the 1955 U.S.-Soviet Agricultural Exchange
Former New York Times correspondent Harrison E. Salisbury worked in the Soviet Union from 1949 until 1953 and covered the 1955 U.S.-Soviet Agricultural Exchange, in which twelve…
De Jure and De Facto: An Examination of the “Friendship of the Peoples” Policy and the 1937 Koryo Saram[2] Deportation
Even though we have lived in harsh conditions we the community of Koryo Saram[3] have helped each other like brothers. We have provided each other…
7 Facts about the April, 1991 Economic Crisis
The following text was written by Aleksei Rudevich and originally appeared in Russian on the website “Russian 7.” To read the original Russian, click here….
Responding to the Dual Threat to Kazakhness: The Rise of Alash Orda and its Uniquely Kazakh Path
In 1917, following the fall of the Russian empire, Alash Orda, a provisional Kazakh government formed by members of the Alash nationalist party, partially filled…
Trends in Soviet and Post-Soviet Udmurt Cultural Memory
“Are you talking about the Russians or the Udmurt?” “There’s no difference. The two cultures have been intertwined for so long that it’s really impossible…
Кем Быть: Whom Shall I Be: Children’s Literature; A Reflection on the Uncertainties of the Early Soviet Pedagogical Experimentation
Children’s literature of the Soviet Union never failed to mirror the volatile political climate of the Soviet state. Between the end of the civil war…
International Relations at the Lenin Library
The following piece is taken from The Russia Reader edited by Bruce Grant and Adele Barker (Duke University Press, 2010). The book is part of…
Youth Crime under Perestroika
In a Komsomolskaya Pravda article dated April 13, 1993, O. Karmaza wrote that “in recent times, we have destroyed everything that could be destroyed. This applies to…
The Soviet Union in Angola: Soviet and African Perspectives on the Failed Socialist Transformation
Africa’s drive for independence came to a head by the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War. It was seen by the Soviet Union…
Ordinary Men? Collaboration and Resistance in Occupied Mogilevskaya Oblast’
The subject of collaboration and resistance in occupied Europe is one of the most controversial issues related to the history of the Second World War….
Catholic and Protestant: Two Religious Periodicals and US-Soviet Relations, 1930-1950
From the time of the October Revolution in 1917, the United States had a tense relationship with the Soviet Union. The United States was, after…
Layers of Identity: Self-identity in U.S. child immigrants from the former Soviet Union
Geography and history have made Russian identity hard to define. Russia spans both Europe and Asia and is split between East and West. The Soviet-era…
Empire, Nationalities, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union
Michael Doyle defines empires as follows: “Empires are relationships of political control imposed by some political societies over the effective sovereignty of other political societies.”[1]…
From Vixen to Victim: The Sensationalization and Normalization of Prostitution in Post-Soviet Russia
Since the height of its popularity in the mid-1990s, the Moscow nightclub “Golodnaya Utka,” or “The Hungry Duck,” has been dubbed “Moscow’s first rape camp.”[1]…