All Events

This documentary film tells the story of Dragica Srzentić, whose century-long life offers insight into the rarely mentioned aspects of the ex-Yugoslav intellectual and ideological maze of the eight states in which this Istrian-born woman has lived - Austria-Hungary, the Kingdom of Italy, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the Independent State of Croatia, The Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, Croatia, and Serbia.

In view of Dragica Srzentić’s experiences as a member of the Yugoslav resistance during the Nazi...

In this seminar, I will explore Muslim minority representation in 25 Western and 20 post-communist legislatures, using descriptive and inferential statistics as well as qualitative and historical comparisons.  On average, Muslims remain severely underrepresented in most Western legislatures, while they are almost proportionately represented in most post-communist ones.  In explaining this variation, I will focus on forms of "consociational" power-sharing (including legacies of Communist-era affirmative action and multi-confessional power...

During the Second World war and its immediate aftermath, East-Central Europe experienced a concerted effort to redraw political borders and adjust them to the ethno-scoial map. A key policy in this drive was population exchange. Based on the mass population exchange between Poland and the Soviet Ukraine, this talk will address different aspects of the phenomenon of population transfers, such as their relations to wartime experience, common features of the various postwar transfers, the distinct aspects of the Soviet conception and practice of this orchestrated peaceful migration, and,...

This lecture contests the concept of Asiatic and oriental despotism and conventional taxonomies of state formations.  It shows that Russia and the Inner Asian powers in the early modern and modern periods were hardly as despotic and had more capital than Tilly and others have asserted.   These empires were characterized by flexible imperial repertoires and by widely shared political and institutional innovations, especially those regarding warfare.   This perspective shifts the analytical emphasis away from the West and provides an original explanation of the forms...

In the early eighteenth century, the cult of Bohdan Khmelnytsky as the mid-seventeenth-century founder of the Cossack Hetmanate and the liberator of his people from "Polish bondage" took full shape. Answering the Ukrainian elite’s needs for historical legitimacy in the decades after the Russian victory at the Battle of Poltava (1709), the Khmelnytsky cult served as a justification for Ukrainian autonomy and privileges. The talk will examine the depiction of Khmelnytsky in the Hrabianka chronicle or “Events of the Most Bitter War,” the most widely disseminated...

Celebrate Estonia's rich culture and history through film at Estonian Cultural Evning at Stanford University.

EVENT SCHEDULE:

The push and pull between language innovators and archaists in Russia dates back at least two centuries to the time of Shishkov and Karamzin and takes on particularly acute cultural meaning during times of radical social change. Particularly when members of a society in flux are looking for alternative guideposts and anchors, language becomes a potent symbol of continuity and change, of traditional and new thinking, of stability and innovation. In the most recent rendition of this battle for authority and identity through language, the period of change (beginning with perestroika and...

For the past 13 years, Russian leader Vladimir Putin has conducted an annual televised phone-in show, Telemost, during which he responds to questions posed by his citizens. The stenographic records of these meetings provide interesting material on the image of political power in Russia. They offer insight into what kind of image of a political leader is promoted by the Kremlin, i.e. what features of a leader are emphasized, how society is reflected onto itself by the creators of Telemost and, last but not least, they reveal the background of this PR-process. Furthermore, the evolution of...

Russia as a great power is a long-standing yet often misunderstood subject, too often separated from considerations of Russia’s realistic foreign policy options, given the country’s geography, neighbors, institutional makeup, and aspirations.  Stalin’s dictatorial regime and terror are much studied, yet rarely linked sufficiently to the question of Russian power in the world.  How can we best combine the study of Russian power in the world and Stalin’s ascent and actions as dictator?   What is it about Russia that helped bring about a Stalin?...

At the 20th Party Congress in 1956, Khrushchev had a nuclear scientist envision a radiant future where the atom would power industries in remote regions and turn deserts into gardens. Two decades later, the vision had become a reality on the desert peninsula of Mangyshlak in Western Kazakhstan - a region uninviting for permanent settlement, but abundant in natural resources. Dubbed the first city of the Scientific-Technological Revolution, the nuclear oasis of Shevchenko relied on a fast breeder reactor for water desalination and energy production....

Ethan Pollock’s current research project tells the history of the Russian bathhouse (bania) in order to gain new perspectives on Russian identity, traditional and modern notions of health and hygiene, and the evolution of ideas about community and sociability. It is under contract with Oxford University Press.

Ethan Pollock has examined previously-inaccessible Soviet archives to analyze the intersection of political power, official ideology, and scientific knowledge in the Soviet Union.

An associate professor of history at Brown University, he...

A lunchtime discussion with political commentator Slawomir Sierakowski, founding director of Krytyka Polityczna (Political Critique), the largest progressive political movement in eastern Europe.

Mr. Sierakowski will discuss the formation and mission of the movement, engagement of an international network of progressive intellectuals, and the process of reinventing a new European left. He will also explore the difference between party politics and the political in Poland and between protests and social movements on the global stage.

Readings in advance of the...

It can be argued whether or not Lion Feuchtwanger’s travelogue “Moscow 1937” did indeed spawn “one of the greatest scandals in the history of world literature”, as an internet commentary claims. Nevertheless, it is beyond contention that the lean book did already polarize opinions when it was first published in 1937 and continues to evoke strong reactions to this day. Already the reaction of contemporaries was – apart from a few exceptions – dismissive; since then, the tenor has rather become more critical: The travelogue is nowadays...

Free and open to the public.

Sports and politics are inevitably intertwined and nowhere more than in the Olympic Games. Amidst the controversy surrounding the Games of 1980 in Moscow was the sailing regatta in the Estonian capital of Tallinn. A sporting event taking place in an occupied country, as Estonia had been annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, posed a dilemma for the national Olympic committees and, especially, for emigrant Estonians. Although it is generally assumed that the Estonian population opposed the event, an analysis of the discussion within the Estonian government-in-exile shows variations on the...

This seminar will examine the process by which Soviet camera operators confronted and decided to film sights of Nazi atrocity, and inserted them within a narrative frame. We will examine the conventions imposed by the Soviet visual media upon representations of this suffering, consider how these conventions shape understanding for audiences then and now, and compare these visual grammars of what we came to know as the Holocaust with those that govern images generated by the perpetrators or by the Western Allies in their images of the liberation of the camps. Finally, we will reflect upon...

More than ever before ethnographic film nowadays deals with contemporary social problems and serves to address current political issues. Traditional society, long the most common topic of such films in Serbia and in the Balkans, is now almost extinct.  Still, there are some similar values maintained in modern society. Thus, these films often demonstrate first-hand experiences of ordinary people and, therefore, should be regarded as an invaluable testimony of reality in time and space . Ethnographic films can showcase an exciting cultural blend of Serbia today...

While in the last 25 years the history of women historians in Western Europe and the United States and their contributions to historiography have been widely researched, women historians in the Russian Empire have been totally ignored. This talk presents fifty women, born between 1804 and 1884, who can be identified as historians (in a broad sense), in order to outline their collective biography, including their family backgrounds, fathers, brothers and husbands, education, occupations, and political activities. These women of different ethnic origins made significant contributions to...

This presentation uses Russian social media as a lens for exploring the relationship between individuals, society and online communication technologies. It proposes a framework for comparative international analysis that leverages three interconnected elements – history, network structure and media ecology. On the basis of these three elements, Alexanyan examines Russia’s social media ecology and its relationship to Russia’s broader socio-political environment, articulating the various factors that have influenced the specific evolution of social media in...

African-Americans occupied a small but significant space in the Socialist Realist imagination of the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Soviet artists eagerly demonstrated the purported racial tolerance of socialism, in accordance with the doctrines of internationalism and anti-colonialism, by producing critical visual representations of the plight of African-Americans.  The painter Aleksandr Deineka visited the US in 1935 and exhibited his paintings of African-Americans on his return to Moscow to great acclaim: critics focused approvingly, and predictably, on how his paintings evoked...

A group of researchers from the European University at St. Petersburg conducted in 2011-2013 perhaps the first major cross-cultural study in Russia in the last 25 years, comparing patterns of technological entrepreneurship in Tomsk, Novosibirsk, Kazan and St. Petersburg, on the one hand, and those in Korea, Taiwan and Finland, on the other. Fieldwork undertaken in all 4 countries has shown that Russian high tech entrepreneurs distinguish themselves from their peers in Asia and Europe by putting a marked emphasis on the value of creativity and inspiration, which frequently blocks the way...

The presentation summarizes preliminary findings of my research project on Allied policy towards resistance groups during World War II and its impact on post-war political and ideological divisions.

The research is linked with a multiplicity of historical problems: the western Allies’ balance of political and military considerations during World War II; the Anglo-American cooperation and competition in the field of intelligence; the use of special operations as an instrument of foreign policy, especially in regard to countries where the development of resistance movements had...

Fourth Edition of the Romanian Film Festival and Discussion Forum will take place April 26- 29, themed:

TRANSITIONS: SPIRITUALITY AND CONTEMPORARY LIFE IN ROMANIA

The Romanian Film Festival at Stanford, UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University, 2014 edition centers on the theme “TRANSITIONS: Spirituality and Contemporary Life in Romania” with a selection of films featuring award-winning filmmakers while also introducing new artists.  The audience will have the opportunity to view and experience the complex aspects of Romanian cinema...

Please note Dr. Herscher's talk has been changed from "Missing Persons, Political Subjects, and Public Spaces of Disappearance"

 “Post-conflict reconstruction” has emerged after the Cold War as a global form of humanitarian and development assistance.  While this reconstruction is almost always described and analysed as an objective response to the destruction of the post-conflict environment, I explore it as a means of constituting that environment as an object of knowledge and action in the first place. In this project, I focus on the...

The tale of the development of modern Scandinavian and Baltic identities is most frequently told against the background of differences of political inclination and ideological bent.  Identity formation, however, has been closely intertwined with technical advances, the formation of aesthetic schemes, and the materiality of media, image sound, time and space. How has the encounter with new types of materiality reinforced the conviction that identity, if not migrated to new platforms, is an endangered species?

Dr. Janis Kreslins is the Senior Academic Librarian...

José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, will be at Stanford on May 1st to deliver his talk, "Global Europe, from the Atlantic to the Pacific."  President Barroso's political career began in 1980 when he joined the Social Democratic Party (PSD). He was named President of the party in 1999 and re-elected three times. During the same period, he served as Vice President of the European People's Party. As State Secretary for Foreign Affairs and...

Despite being distant in time and space, the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan has often served as a backdrop against which the war in Chechnya has been interpreted. This is the point of departure for an investigation into the visual representations of these two conflicts. More specifically, my research is concerned with the question how Soviet and Russian newspapers visually represented the wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya at the time they took place. Do pictures of war give a clue about the telos and ethos of the conflict? What identities have been visually produced, particularly with...

Synopsis: Franek and Jozek Kalina, sons of a poor farmer, are brothers from a small village in central Poland. Franek immigrated to the United States in the 80’s, and cut all ties with his family.  Only when Jozek’s wife arrives in the US, without explanation, does Franek finally return to his homeland. Franek discovers that Jozek has been ostracized from the community, and constantly receives various threats. As Franek and Jozek struggle to rebuild their relationship, they are drawn into a gothic tale of intrigue. The two brothers eventually...

“Descent and Space in Tchaikovsky’s Liturgy”
Brigid Connor

“The School of Courage: Memoirs, Diaries, and Reports of the Soviet War in Afghanistan”
Jacob Parsley

“Nuclear Canary: The Soviet Union’s Early Warning Network”
Charles Powell

“Dancing Propaganda: Soviet Folk Dance Ensembles and Western Audiences”
Caroline Schottenhamel

“Geopolitics, Identity, and Ethnography in the Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic...

A talk by Arnold Suppan, author of Hitler - Beneš - Tito: Conflict, War and Genocide in East Central and South East Europe.The monograph explores the development of the political, legal, economic, social, cultural and military “communities of conflict” within Austria-Hungary (especially in the Bohemian and South Slav lands); the convulsion of World War I and the Czech, Slovak and South Slav break with the Habsburg Monarchy; the difficult formation of successor states and the strong discussions at Paris 1919/20; the domestic and foreign policies of...

Russian expansion into Central Asia in the 19th century is usually seen either as the product of lobbying by big capitalist interests in Moscow, or as a wholly unplanned process driven by ‘men on the spot’ who slipped beyond St Petersburg’s control. This paper is a micro-study of one of the campaigns which immediately preceded the fall of Tashkent in 1865, during which Russian forces under General M. G. Cherniaev united the Orenburg and Siberian ‘lines’ of fortification to create what was meant to be a permanent new frontier on the steppe. It demonstrates that...

Ukraine: What is the fighting all about?

It has been a year since Ukrainian activists took to the streets of Kyiv to protest the decision of then-president Viktor Yanukovich not to sign an Association Agreement with the European Union. This Maidan 2 revolution was struggling for fair governance, human rights, against corruption and cynicism of power brokers, and for the chance to pursue a better, European future. Then the revolution was brutally suppressed by police squads, the protests radicalized, and Yanukovich fled the country.

However, a European Ukraine...

The lecture, based on the life of Tsola Dragoitcheva (1898-1993), a Bulgarian political functionary during state socialism, presents (her) biography as a useful historical tool which allows scholars to find a balance between treating women from patriarchal contexts as agents of change or as individuals constrained by historical structures. As such, it contributes to the ongoing debate regarding the condition of women and gender relations in the East European socialist countries during the Cold War period.

Krassimira Daskalova is a CREEES visiting scholar and...

Participants:

Miroslav Lajcak, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of the Slovak Republic
Michael McFaul, Professor, Political Science; Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution and Freeman Spogli Institute
Norman Naimark, The Sakurako and William Fisher Family Director of the Stanford Global Studies Division and Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor in East European Studies
Kathryn Stoner, Faculty Director, Susan Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies and Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute

Co-sponsored by The Europe Center

...

Open to Stanford affiliates. RSVP requested.

Friday, October 17, 9:50 PM
Annenberg Auditorium, Cummings Art Building (435 Lasuen Mall) Stanford University

Director: Dan Krauss
Producers: Linda Davis, Dan Krauss

Description:
The film goes behind closed doors to tell the riveting story of Specialist Adam Winfield, a twenty-one-year-old infantryman in Afghanistan who attempted with the help of his father to alert the military to heinous war crimes his platoon was committing. Tragically, his father's pleas...

Yeşim Arat  is an Aron Rodrigue International Visitor at Stanford and professor of Political Science and International Relations at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey. She is the author of The Patriarchal Paradox: Women Politicians in Turkey (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1989), Rethinking Islam and Liberal Democracy: Islamist Women in Turkish Politics (SUNY Press, 2005),Violence Against Women in Turkey (with Ayse Gul Altinay-Punto, 2009-Turkish version, 2008 Pen Duygu Asena Award) and numerous articles on women as well as Turkish politics. Arat was...

Book talk and discussion by author, Zilka Spahić-Šiljak.

Commentators:
Katherine Jolluck, History Department, Stanford University
Laura Stokes, History Department, Stanford University

Dr. Zilka Spahić-Šiljak is currently is a CREEES visiting scholar. She is a research scholar and public intellectual addressing issues involving human rights, politics, religion, education and peace-building. She has worked for the past two decades as human rights activist in non-governmental organizations on the promotion of...

Ana Arabia film screening followed by conversation with filmmaker Amos Gitai and Q&A with the audience.

Free and open to the public.

Co-sponsored with Taube Center for Jewish Studies.

This special one-night-only event transports the audience back to July 1945, when, to break the ice of negotiating the postwar fate of the world, Truman, Churchill and Stalin paused to listen to a 19-year-old American rifleman play his violin.

• Citizen Film’s documentary short The Rifleman’s Violin, directed by Sam Ball and produced by Abraham D. Sofaer, tells the remarkable story of Private Stuart Canin, who set out to fight in WWII and wound up performing for the world’s most powerful men, on the verge of the Cold War.

• Spirited onstage...

Understanding the causes and consequences of intergroup conflict has been the major objective of social sciences in general and social psychology in particular. To this end, a large body of socio-psychological research has contributed to the understanding of intergroup conflict and how to reduce it. However, what has been less researched is the question of post-conflict intergroup reconciliation. In addition, investigation of interventions which could facilitate restoration of intergroup relations is scarce. We know more about psychological and other barriers impeding...

This essay draws on Brezhnev’s unpublished diaries to argue that, despite the role that speech and ghost writers played in crafting Brezhnev’s public addresses and ‘autobiographical’ accounts, he believed unconditionally in peace and saw himself as its architect.  In short, Leonid Ilich nurtured the propaganda image of him as man of peace because, at heart, he was.   His diaries, I contend, make that clear.

A native of Chicago, Donald J. Raleigh graduated from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, and completed his M.A. and...

Writing the Russian Empire, 1450-1801. – Professor Kollmann will discuss her recently completed manuscript entitled, “The Russian Empire, 1450-1801,” presenting the key themes around which she shaped the narrative. Construing the Russian empire as a typical Eurasian or “politics of difference” empire, she examines how the early modern Russian empire tolerated difference – ethnic, religious, linguistic – in its subject peoples and how it selectively chose when to assert empire-wide coercive force. In that light, one of Kollmann’s goals is to...

The Crimean crisis and developments in Ukraine has once again brought the shores of the Black Sea and debates about a resurgent Russia's flexing its muscle into the limelight. In this extremely volatile political context, this lecture aims to focus on the changing dynamics of Turkish-Russian relations, as well as the energy politics of Eurasia.  The current global political economy is characterized by the growing economic interaction of BRICS and near BRICS economies, with emerging powers increasingly exercising greater influence in their neighboring regions. The growing ties...

The Collapse after a Quarter Century: What Have We Learned About Communism and Democracy?

Conference schedule:

Nina Bunjevac will talk about the history of the Yugoslav comics scene dating to the 1930s, focusing on how it was transformed by the wars of the 1990s, as well as the continued cultural exchange between cartoonists and publishers throughout this period of conflict. Drawing on her professional experience in graphic storytelling, in particular her recently published book, Fatherland, as well as on the work of other graphic artists, Bunjevac will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the medium of comics in depicting historical and political themes.

...

Serhiy Kvit, Rector of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and outspoken blogger on higher education reform, became Ukraine’s Minister of Education and Science in March 2014.  He worked quickly with the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s Parliament) to enact the Law on Higher Education, to give much greater autonomy to the country’s universities and bring Ukrainian universities into compliance with the Bologna Agreement.  The military conflict in Ukraine’s Donbas has since caused internal displacement of university scholars and students and scientific...

An international conference organized by the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at Stanford University.

Free and open to the public. RSVP requested.

The successive occupations of Lithuania by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin were accompanied by mass murder, deportations and the elimination of its large Jewish community in the Holocaust, giving the horrors of World War II a particular intensity. Moreover, the fighting continued after 1945 with the anti-Soviet insurrection, crushed through more massive deportations and forced collectivization in 1948-1951. Postwar population exchanges depleted the cities of their long established Polish communities. As the postwar reconstruction gained pace, ethnic Lithuanians from the...

A talk by Thomas de Waal about his book The Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks under the Shadow of Genocide.

Thomas de Waal is a senior associate in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington D.C. He is a writer and analyst on the Caucasus, Russia and the Black Sea region and the author, most recently, of Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide (2015). He is also the author of The Caucasus: An Introduction (2010) and of Black Garden: Armenia and...

In his latest book, and this lecture, Professor Suny explores the question “why genocide” and explains the elements that led the Young Turks to carry out the systematic deportation and massacre of hundreds of thousands of their Armenian and Assyrian subjects.  Why did the Turkish government opt for the most drastic solution to their perceived threat from these religious minorities? Why did ordinary Turks and Kurds participate in the extermination of their neighbors?  Suny treats the Armenians, not simply as...

The traditional function of collecting intelligence was never considered to be enough for its secret service by Soviet leaders – the services had to actively take part in influencing the outcome of current political affairs.

Based on literature, memoirs of Soviet defectors and now available KGB documents the scope and machinery of Soviet influence activities abroad can be mapped. These varied from ‘active measures’, i.e. influence operations carried out by the KGB (State Security Committee) to white propaganda having in-between a wide range of other non-kinetic...

This landmark series brings to light a critically important, yet little-known, realm of cinema: the wave of avant-garde films that emerged in the countries of former Yugoslavia. We've invited the Slovenian Cinematheque, the Croatian Film Association, and the Academic Film Center, Belgrade, to curate programs showcasing films from their collections. Discover an experimental film movement of extraordinary richness, inventiveness, and uncompromising political engagement.

Wednesday, March 11
7:30 PM Slovenian 8mm Experiments: Karpo Godina and Davorin Marc...

Karen Dawisha is the author of Putin’s Kleptocracy. Who Owns Russia? and the Walter E. Havighurst Professor of Political Science and Director of the Havighurst Center at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Free and open to the public. RSVP requested.

Co-sponsored by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and The Europe Center.

Since the Dayton Agreement (1995) all the countries belonging to the “Western Balkan’s basket” have been subjugated to the unified Western  political and economic “tool-kit” advancing the prospects of democracy, market-economy and multiculturalism. Lumping together the regional societies, it has facilitated an EU policy-making and a regional research agenda that mutes the cultural, historical, political and economic traits of the local societies and current state institutions. In an attempt to amend the conceptual silence and...

At the NATO Summit in Wales in September 2014, NATO leaders were clear about the security challenges on the Alliance’s borders. In the East, Russia’s actions threaten our vision of a Europe that is whole, free and at peace.  On the Alliance’s southeastern border, ISIL’s campaign of terror poses a threat to the stability of the Middle East and beyond.  To the south, across the Mediterranean, Libya is becoming increasingly unstable. As the Alliance continues to confront theses current and emerging threats, one thing is clear as we prepare for the 2016 Summit...

What does 20 years mean when we are dealing with traumas of war? How do people symbolize the war, what kind of imaginary do they create when they try to make sense of what happened to them and their country, and how do they come to terms with their losses?

In the last years, I have visited both Srebrenica and St. Louis in Missouri, home of the largest community of Bosnian refugees in the US. The way these two communities deal with trauma is radically different. However, they strangely find similar dilemmas when they search for the remains of their loved ones with the help of...

A panel discussion with:

Sona Sulukian, BA '16, Classics and Chemistry
Sabrina Papazian, PhD Candidate, Dept. of Anthropology
Herant Khatchadourian, Professor of Biology Emeritus
Stephanie Kalfayan, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs
Seepan Parseghian, Associate Attorney, Snell & Wilmer
Norman Naimark, Robert & Florence McDonnell Professor of E. European Studies and Fisher Family Director of Stanford Global Studies (moderator). 

Free and open to the public.

...

Dejan Sretenović, Ph.D. is curator and writer based in Belgrade. Since 2014, he has served as curator of the Center for Visual Culture at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) in Belgrade. Previously, he worked as director of the Soros Center for Contemporary Art in Belgrade. He is lecturer of art theory and contemporary art at the School for History and Theory of Image and BK Art Academy in Belgrade.

His field of research covers Yugoslav and international avant-garde and neo-avant-garde, conceptual art, experimental film, contemporary art and visual culture....

Intercommunal, socio-economic, and political relations in the North Caucasus have historically revolved around access to this mountain region’s prized pasturage and scare farmland. Given the centrality of the land question in the North Caucasus, it is unsurprising that historiography on land relations in the region has been highly politicized. This presentation examines how indigenous writing on the history of land relations in the central Caucasus—a region inhabited by today’s Kabardians, Balkars, Ossetians, Ingush, and Karachai, and...

George (Gia) Baghashvili, PhD, is a well-known Georgian folklorist, ethnomusicologist and cultural activist. He is General Director of the Artistic Union “Lomisi,” a Georgian creative association. In 2000, he was awarded the Georgian State Prize for the creation of the Mengrelian songs potpourri. Dr. Baghashvili also has led several folkloric television and radio programs. He is the author of numerous scholarly publications and participant of the regular Tbilisi International Symposia on Traditional Polyphony.

Dr. Baghashvili will give a presentation and will perform...

"Between the Megaproject and the Entrepreneur: Evaluating the Development of Post-Soviet Russia's Entrepreneurial Ecosystem"
Alyssa Haerle

"Offshoring and Transnational Organized Crime: The Sochi Olympics and December 17th Scandal in Comparison"
Luke Rodeheffer

Open to all Stanford faculty, researchers, students and staff. Please RSVP by May 27.

During the seven days in late August 1968, when Czechoslovakia was occupied by troops from five countries of the Warsaw Pact, ten-, perhaps hundreds of thousands of photographs were taken. Many of the images have been published and exhibited, by they have never been analysed in any systematic way so far. They are, however, definitely worth to be examinated carefully - as images that mirror not only pain and terror, but also the ways how Czech and Slovak photographers claimed a position in the global humanitarian discourse.

Martina Winkler, professor of history at...

Despite some superficial similarities, relations between Russia and the U.S. today are sufficiently different from the past that they cannot accurately be described as a conflict in the same category as the Cold War. U.S.-Russia relations have been severely strained over the crisis in Ukraine, but management of the crisis alone will not be enough to restore productive relations between Washington and Moscow or to repair the damage to European security.

The best hope may be a return to the principles of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act through an inclusive region-wide dialogue, similar...

The lecture considers the evolution of Russian, European, and North American tax systems in the context of the formation of a modern polity. It argues that all states moved toward a system of revenue that was at once respectful of certain immunities and rights, and more intrusive and inquisitive about the individual citizen and enterprise. Tax systems embody the duality of modern citizenship: the person has the right to be left alone, and the person is more transparent and vulnerable than ever before.

Yanni Kotsonis is professor of history at...

The Russian System of personalized power has been demonstrating an amazing capacity for survival even in the midst of decay. It has defied many predictions and ruined many analytical narratives. Today the Russian authoritarian rule is trying to prolong its life by turning to repressions at home and by containing the West. Russia, kicking over the global chess board with the war in Ukraine, returns to the international scene as a revisionist and revanchist power. The Russian Matrix demise will be painful, and it already has brought about  Russia’s confrontation with the West....

Beginning 2000, successive Russian cabinets pushed to implements wide-ranging reforms in education and science. From the introduction of SAT-like testing in high schools and the focus on measurable performance indicators at universities to the 2013 reform of the Academy of Sciences, these policies were explicitly inspired by the "neoliberal" paradigm and international best practices. Surprisingly, these reforms have not been rolled back even after the overall change of policy direction in 2013-2014. This raises the broader question of the role played by the "...

The fate of a soldier serving in the Russian army in the First World War largely depended on luck and circumstances. But even though his own means of influencing his fate were limited, there were available certain active choices – such as shirking and desertion – that could turn his life around in both positive and negative ways. For Russian civil and military authorities, of course, desertion was a nuisance that was fought against by all available means. Sometimes, such as with physical punishment, these means only succeeded in lowering the already low morale and...

BALTIC FILM SERIES AT STANFORD features the following films:

The 5th Romanian Film Festival, themed "Travelling Shots: Families Beyond Boundaries," will be held at Stanford University, UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University starting on Nov. 5th  and ending on Nov. 13th. 

Thursday, November 5, 2015
East Asia Library, Room 224, Lathrop Library building, 518 Memorial Way, Stanford Univ. (map)

• 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm ALIYAH DADA by Oana Giurgiu, documentary, Romania, 2015...

The so-called Parks of Culture and Leisure were one of the foundations of Soviet civilization. They functioned not only as public urban spaces but also as specific educative gardens. After the post-Revolutionary migration process the big Soviet towns were populated in part by newcomers from provincial regions, peasants included. The Parks of Culture and Leisure provided the new population with the educative practices necessary for life in a megapolis, enlarged their cultural background and even instructed them ideologically. Despite the Soviet nature of the Park of Culture and Leisure...

This event is free and open to the public.

Co-sponsored with the Slavic Department at Stanford University.

We regret to inform you that due to inclement weather, Professor Neringa Klumbyte’s trip to Stanford this week has had to be cancelled.  This event will not be held this week.

In 1956 the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist Party resurrected The Broom, the Soviet Lithuanian humor and satire journal. Like other Soviet humor journals it was to be a platform of building communism and fighting its enemies. But soon it became a cradle of a new covert national culture defined by modernist aesthetics and political opposition. The talk will explore how this...

WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT DUE TO INCLEMENT WEATHER, PROFESSOR NERINGA KLUMBYTE’S TRIP TO STANFORD THIS WEEK HAS HAD TO BE CANCELLED.  THIS EVENT WILL NOT BE HELD THIS WEEK.

In this seminar, Professor Klumbytė will present her recent article Suffering, Sovereignty, and Soviet Terror in Lithuania (under review by Cultural Anthropology), in which she draws on theories on sovereignty and violence and argue that suffering like violence can be a foundation of sovereignty. Far beyond a Hobbesian state in which a sovereign emerges as an...

Prompted by the current migration crisis in Europe, the theme of this year’s conference is “Dislocation.” Papers presented by Stanford and Berkeley scholars working in various disciplines, time periods, and geographical spaces, will examine the dynamics of dislocation in its various modalities, whether pertaining to individuals, groups, or entire populations.  

Click here for the Conference Program.

Pan-Asian Music Festival

Celebration of Asia Concert

February 19, 7:30pm - 9:30pm

Join us for a "Celebration of Asia" as we take a tour across the continent with local masters of music from Iran, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Japan. They are joined by the Forbidden City Chamber Orchestra from China for an incredible collaborative finale.

Sounds of Music from Asia: A Family Concert

February 20, 2:30pm - 3:30pm

Kids of all ages are welcome at this family concert, featuring...

Free and open to the public

RSVP requested.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Art and Art History, Film and Media Studies, and Documentary Film

Open to Stanford affiliates

RSVP requested.