Vestnik was launched by SRAS in 2004 as one of the world’s first online academic journals focused on showcasing student research. We welcome and invite papers written by undergraduates, graduates, and postgraduates. Research on any subject related to the broad geographic area outlined above is accepted. If you have written solid research eligible for publication according to the guidelines listed here, please submit it.
In this, its seventeenth issue, Vestnik takes a diverse look at Russia-related student research into literature, culture, history, and economics.
We have a pair entries on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. In Suicide as a Final Reconciliation of Conflicting Identities in The Brothers Karamazov, Rachael Daum, a graduate student at Indiana University, uses Emil Durkheim’s theories to analyze how suicide is portrayed in the classic novel. In The Hero of Cana: Alyosha’s Ode to Joy, Katie Bascom, a senior at the University of Notre Dame, finds a deeper understanding of the character of Alyosha and of the novel as a whole by examining both through the prism of a single scene in which Alyosha sings Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode to Joy.”
We also have two works that mix history and culture. Adam Lieberman, who holds an MA from Middlebury College, presents A Conflict of Traditions: Caucasian Cultural Barriers in 19th Century Russian Literature, which analyzes the portrayal of Caucasian cultures in works by Pushkin, Lermontov, and Tolstoy. Anastasia Shmytova, a student at Smolny College, presents new research on the debate surrounding the historically complicated politics of Dmitry Shostakovich in The Decree of 1948: Shostakovich’s Rehabilitation.
De Jure and De Facto: An Examination of the “Friendship of the Peoples” Policy and the 1937 Koryo Saram Deportation is an ambitious study of Stalin’s first ethnic-based mass deportation and was written by Isabel Kim Dzitac, a graduate student at Columbia University and the London School of Economics.
We also have two papers covering issues currently affecting global affairs. Europe’s Conflicting Metanarratives, by Jordan Milot, an undergraduate at North Carolina State University, looks at the fundamental differences between Europe’s and Russia’s worldview through metanarrative theory. Russia’s Current Economic Conundrum, by Jakub Kučera, a Ph.D. student at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, offers an in-depth view of Russia’s recent economic history and its current economic crisis. Lastly, in Kyrgyzstan Prepares to Join the Eurasian Economic Union, SRAS Home and Abroad Scholar Sophia Rehm, a recent graduate of the University of Chicago, discusses how Kyrgyzstan’s ascension to the EEU might affect the country economically and politically.
We hope you will find this issue interesting and informative. Share it with your friends, classmates, and colleagues if you do!
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ISSN 1930-286X
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Articles available individually in HTML below
2015-04-20 – Kyrgyzstan Prepares to Join the Eurasian Economic Union
2015-04-17 – Russia’s Current Economic Conundrum
2015-04-16 – Europe’s Conflicting Metanarratives: EU Russia Relations
2015-04-15 – Caucasian Cultural Barriers in 19th Century Russian Literature
2015-04-15 – “Friendship of the Peoples” Policy and the 1937 Koryo Saram Deportation
2015-04-15 – The Decree of 1948: Shostakovich’s Rehabilitation
2015-04-15 – Brothers Karamazov: Alyosha’s Ode to Joy
2015-04-08 – Suicide in The Brothers Karamazov
