Category: academics

Telepathy and the Russian Internet

On September 5, 1982, a music festival in San Bernardino, California, organized by Apple’s Steve Wozniak, bore witness to the first-ever public television link between the United States and the Soviet Union. Two large screens on either side of the stage broadcast performances by singer-songwriter Alla Pugacheva and rock band Voskreseniye, while Soviet citizens gathered at a Moscow radio station rocked out to the American lineup—that is, until Grateful Dead promoter Bill Graham, “convinced the whole thing was a KGB trick,” as Jeffrey Kripal wrote in his 2007 book Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion, “literally pulled the plug halfway through the concert.”

This so-called US-Soviet Space Bridge (the first of several, including one co-hosted by television host Phil Donahue) often features in books about the cultural history of the Cold War. But what many of these books don’t tell you is that a large number of the people who organized these events also hoped to lift the Iron Curtain through another method: telepathy. In her new book Hacking the Iron Curtain: A Media Archaeology of the Russian Internet, journalist and “media archeologist” Natalia Konradova reveals how the story of the early Soviet internet—and the role it played during the collapse of the USSR in 1991—can be traced back to early- and mid-twentieth-century dreams of instantaneous and unmediated mass communication.

Telepathy was, for much of the twentieth century, considered a real possibility—one whose secrets modern science could and would eventually discover.

Though recognized today as a pseudoscientific fantasy, telepathy was, for much of the twentieth century, considered a real possibility—one whose secrets modern science could and would eventually discover. In the Soviet Union, scientific interest in telepathy stemmed not only from a sense of general techno-optimism shared by many countries both before and after the two world wars, but also from beliefs and aspirations particular to communist society. Like cosmism (a philosophical movement that aimed at nothing less than the colonization of space, the attainment of immortality, and the resurrection of every person who ever lived), research into “parapsychology” was expected to help usher in a utopian future.

Of course, what this future looked like depended on who you asked. Some scientists and science fiction authors envisioned a world in which doctors could diagnose patients remotely and one person could beam their skills and talents directly into the bodies of others. The CIA worried that Soviet officials would be able to steal sensitive government information and control “machines on the moon or in the ocean” with their thoughts, according to a 1973 report. Meanwhile, Iosif Goldin—a parapsychology enthusiast and principal organizer of the Soviet side of the first Space Bridge—imagined mass communication as a cure for geopolitical conflict. He once wrote that if “one realizes the observation of the sunrise simultaneously on all continents of the Earth and does it regularly, turning it into a form of bringing people together, there may be no nuclear catastrophe.”

Although the internet itself did not directly contribute to the USSR’s demise, it should come as no surprise that the appearance of one closely coincided with the disappearance of the other. Described by Konradova as a “perfected version of samizdat,” or self-published dissident literature, the rise of the internet and online communities made censorship and the suppression of information virtually impossible—at least for a time. Hacking the Iron Curtain concludes with a brief though warranted reflection on how, amid digital restrictions under Vladimir Putin, the Russian internet ecosystem—Runet—has become increasingly cut off from the rest of the World Wide Web, aiding the country’s return to autocracy.

How did you become interested in parapsychology?

I have worked on many different subjects as an anthropologist and media theorist. But I have always been particularly interested in phenomena or systems that are either created by users or shaped through their efforts and self-organization. It does not really matter whether I’m studying war memorials in small villages, which were one of the subjects I researched in the early 2000s, or internet literature—a phenomenon of the early Russian internet, when users had for the first time the opportunity to publish their literary works without them having to pass through any editorial process.

That was how my research into the Russian-speaking internet began. In the mid-2000s, colleagues in Germany invited me to join their project, where I studied internet forums. At that point, though, neither cybernetics nor parapsychology was anywhere on my research horizon. They emerged only during the research process.

What did you feel was missing from existing treatments of this subject (like Alaina Lemon’s book) that you wanted to explore with Hacking the Iron Curtain?

Because my research is interdisciplinary, I read literature from a wide range of research fields: the history of the internet and digital culture, Cold War studies, studies of utopias and technological imaginaries, “parascience,” and so on. These fields have been studied for a long time, and each has produced fascinating work. What I felt was missing was precisely the connection between them.

Alaina Lemon’s book was an important discovery for me, not only because it was the only work I encountered that placed Soviet parapsychology within the context of the Cold War, but also because she shows just how powerful the mutual desire for communication was among people in both the USSR and the US. That said, Lemon’s approach was grounded more in theatrical practices, and she was not interested in the history of technology. When Soviet parapsychology is discussed elsewhere, it is typically situated within the history of supernatural beliefs and esoteric practices, as in The New Age of Russia: Occult and Esoteric Dimensions, a substantial volume edited by Birgit Menzel.

What interested me was a phenomenon identified in the 1960s by Lynn Schroeder and Sheila Ostrander, authors of the classic Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain: for a considerable period in the USSR, parapsychology was treated as a science. Researchers used scientific methods in their experiments and attempted to identify patterns in telepathy, telekinesis, and other phenomena. Yes, this no longer fits within our contemporary scientific understanding of the world, but I am talking about events that took place sixty years ago, when faith in the power of science was virtually limitless. As far as I know, before my work, no one had considered research into telepathy as one scientific field among others—regarded today as a dead end, but one that at the time could be seen as almost equivalent in status to computer science.

At what stage in your research did it become clear to you that there was a connection between parapsychology—telepathy in particular—and the early Russian internet?

I originally set out to study the history of the Russian internet. I interviewed figures from the Runet of the 1990s and worked with online archives. In those archives, I discovered that one of Russia’s first internet providers had actually been founded in the 1980s. This simply did not fit with my understanding that the internet could only have appeared after the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

Once I delved into the history of the first network connections from Soviet territory, I found myself dealing with an entirely new set of questions and, for me, an entirely new research field. Media archaeology is exactly the kind of (proto) discipline that is interested in dead ends, unrealized projects, and strange coincidences. It is still not particularly well known in the US, but I live in Germany, the birthplace of media archaeology.

To what extent was parapsychology research responsible for the rise of the Russian internet?

I distinguish between several levels of this connection. One is relatively simple and straightforward. The first contact between American and Soviet users on Usenet became possible thanks to American entrepreneur Joel Schatz, who came to the USSR in the mid-1980s. He did so because of his connections to the Esalen Institute in California, a well-known center of “alternative research,” now better known as a popular retreat destination for California tech people.

Esalen, in turn, had those connections because people associated with the institute had begun traveling to the USSR in the early 1970s hoping to establish contacts with Soviet parapsychologists (and they did). Later, they established a Soviet-American exchange program and joined the citizen-diplomacy movement, but initially it was the parapsychologists—with their desire for grassroots communication and their refusal to accept conventional boundaries of what was possible—who proved capable of connecting people from two countries on opposing sides of the Cold War.

How the archetype of the quirky, brilliant tech entrepreneur whose ideas could change the world migrated from high-tech hacker culture to Wall Street.

While studying this phenomenon, I also arrived at another, conceptual level of connection. In a sense, the internet is telepathy, except that a digital signal plays the role of the brain waves that science has never succeeded in discovering. In the 1960s, an era of techno-optimism and great hopes that human reason would triumph over war, disease, and death, computer science and the development of computer networks advanced alongside research into other possible forms of communication—forms that do not exist in nature but that, theoretically, could exist.

You mention on multiple occasions that telepathy was researched more extensively in the USSR than elsewhere. Why was this?

I think the USSR, as a project intended to realize a socialist utopia—and I am not discussing here how successful that project ultimately proved to be—had much stronger investments in radical scientific discoveries expected to fundamentally transform human life. Some of these ambitions were realized, such as spaceflight. Scientists today are still working on others, such as immortality. Others, such as telepathy, have disappeared from the scientific agenda.

One could probably add that the USSR had an obvious overproduction of specialists in the natural sciences, which was connected to the military-industrial complex. At some point, the Soviet Ministry of Defense also began investing in this new field because it seemed potentially useful for defense purposes. As a result, Soviet laboratories could often find room for experiments involving new and uncertain phenomena.

Still, I think all of this was more a consequence of the first factor: an exceptionally strong belief in scientific progress. Both American and Soviet societies were modern societies, if by modernity we mean above all a reliance on rational knowledge and technology. But in the USSR, this modernity was particularly radical and allowed virtually no alternative: it lay at the very foundation of the state as the only possible form of its existence.

You mention that Soviet scientists like Vladimir Bekhterev continued to research telepathy even after failing to find proof of its existence. Why did this interest persist, including among the CIA and US politicians?

In general, I have the impression that, from the 1920s through the end of the 1980s, scientists around the world were reluctant to abandon the subject completely. I do not know enough about Bekhterev’s activities to speculate confidently about his motives, but I do know that he was aware of the research his former student Vasiliev was conducting at his institute. I interpret this as an attempt not to burn any bridges—simply to keep the possibility open, “just in case.” What if the experiments ultimately did produce results, and you found yourself among those accused of suppressing something new and progressive? But of course, that is only my theory.

As for the CIA and politicians, that belongs to a different period. Judging from documents in the declassified CIA archives, they were deeply impressed by reports of Soviet achievements in this field and wrote alarmed assessments suggesting that the USSR might soon learn to guide missiles with the power of thought, kill people with a glance, and so on. Their primary objective, therefore, was to ensure the United States did not fall behind in this area.

Beyond parapsychology, to what extent did the Soviet internet become possible thanks to perestroika, and to what extent did perestroika become possible thanks to the Soviet internet?

I do not think I would subscribe to either proposition, because for me the causal relationship lies outside both perestroika and the Soviet internet. Rather, a second modernity—or postmodernity—arrived: a period in which users gained real possibilities to influence events. In the USSR, perestroika began, and contacts with the US intensified. In the United States, the internet became available to a critical mass of users. The mythology of the Cold War was ceasing to work on both sides: people understood that official authorities were lying and wanted to escape their control. All of this was happening simultaneously.

Of course, before perestroika, it would have been impossible for an American to walk into a closed Soviet scientific institute and ask to be connected to a classified network—which is exactly what happened when the internet provider SovAm Teleport was founded in the mid-1980s. But perestroika itself would not have happened if a significant portion of Soviet society had not already been ready for it.

You note that, at various points in twentieth-century Soviet history, techno-utopian dreams often gave way to practical and commercial applications. Between the two, which ultimately plays a larger role in this story?

Once connecting to the internet from the USSR became technically possible, there was much less room for fantasy. Why take risks and invest in uncertainty—which any grand vision requires—when a concrete technical solution already exists, and all you need is the money to implement it? More broadly, the USSR was shifting from overregulated socialism to unregulated capitalism, which would reveal itself in full force in the 1990s.

Nevertheless, pragmatism and commerce alone did not define the character of the early Russian internet. Because early users saw the network primarily as a hobby, they enthusiastically invested their time and energy in games, poetry, and all kinds of impractical inventions. Until the end of the 1990s, when the first major commercial projects emerged, the network was primarily a space for entertainment and free communication.

Can you talk about the role Russian Usenet played during and after the unsuccessful 1991 coup attempt to prevent the USSR from collapsing? Could events have played out differently if Russians had not had this window to the outside world?

This was an important moment. Information about the Moscow coup of 1991 reached American media and politicians largely through Usenet users at the Kurchatov Institute, in Moscow. They, in turn, collected information through their internal network, translated it into English, and posted it to newsgroups.

I would say the absence of the internet probably would not have changed the fundamental course of events, because the victory of the democratic forces during the coup depended much more on resistance on the ground than on support from other countries. The absence of access to Usenet might, however, have affected more specific aspects of what happened: how quickly information circulated, how much pressure came from outside the Soviet Union, and so on.

Some people think that if the Soviet internet had developed sooner, it could have ensured the survival of the USSR. Do you share this belief?

The idea that the development of the internet might have saved the USSR comes from the author of an alternate-history novel in which technologies are transported into the Soviet Union from the future. I don’t believe in this idea, because creating the internet required not only high-quality materials, which were in short supply, but also international cooperation, from which the USSR was cut off after World War II. It also required the internet itself—if, by the internet, we mean a system of communication and community formation.

I think this last factor matters most. Soviet society, and even more so the Soviet leadership, had absolutely no need for people to communicate freely with one another beyond institutional control. At the same time, Soviet engineers were already connecting computers into networks before work on ARPANET had even begun. In other words, the technical possibility existed, but neither the social demand nor the political will did. Even telephone services remained unavailable in many Soviet cities until the 1990s. To stay in touch, people exchanged letters, postcards, and telegrams.

Cybernetics, however, did produce a powerful vision that extended far beyond computers and even beyond communication itself. But because cybernetics was a product of Soviet culture as a whole, that vision faded when Soviet culture entered into crisis. The desire to imagine radically different futures was replaced by a desire to “live like people in the West,” particularly in terms of everyday life and living standards.

In the conclusion, you draw parallels between the futurism of Silicon Valley (specifically the quest for immortality) and the techno-utopianism of Soviet cyberneticians. Could you also speak to any meaningful differences between these visions?

To be honest, there are surprisingly few substantial differences, and that amazes me. Eternal life is hardly a new idea, of course, but one might still expect to see signs that these people lived in different periods and in very different cultures.

One possible distinction is that the American version of this techno-utopia is somewhat less closely tied to the public good and more oriented toward individual benefit, whereas Soviet cyberneticians had in mind, first and foremost, a new society, and only then a new human being as a member of that society. But we also have to remember that Soviet cyberneticians wrote articles and gave interviews under conditions of censorship. With that in mind, this difference may be less substantial than it initially appears.

In your conclusion, you write that the “historical connection between the attempts to rebuild the power lost during the collapse of the USSR and the current reality cannot be ignored.” To what extent did the Russian internet contribute to Russian world ideology and its consequences, including the war in Ukraine?

The figures of the early Russian internet did not make the decision to launch a military attack on Ukraine, and they should not be held responsible for it. The concept of the “Russian World” emerged from the political technologies of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Although political technologists participated in the development of the Russian internet, they were not the ones who made the decision to launch Russia’s most recent military aggression.

Nevertheless, I do see—and describe in the book—a conceptual connection between the expansive space of Russian-language verbal culture, which became the first meaningful content of the Russian-speaking internet, and the “Russian World.” The fact that this connection is conceptual is important.

Until very recently, the expression “Russian internet” was something of an oxymoron, because the internet is, by definition, a global network. Yes, you can write in any language you like, but technically you are still writing on a common, international internet that does not recognize state borders. This is no longer entirely the case. In Russia, a “sovereign Runet” whose borders increasingly coincide with the state’s borders has, by now, almost become a reality.

In other words, Russians first entered the American internet; then they developed the concept of the “Runet,” which technically remained part of the global network but was culturally understood as a unique and independent phenomenon; and decades later, they physically carved out a segment of the global network in which international conventions no longer operate in the same way and where an antiwar post can result in a prison sentence. I am not sure I would call this a “Sonderweg,” but it is a remarkable development. One can only hope that the rest of the world will not follow the same path, although there are reasons for concern.

Resources

Soviet Power Plus the Digitalization of the Entire Country
By: Natalia Konradova
Hacking the Iron Curtain: A Media Archaeology of the Russian Internet, pp. 11-36
University of Wisconsin Press
 
Natalia Konradova
By: Hacking the Iron Curtain: A Media Archaeology of the Russian Internet
Hacking the Iron Curtain: A Media Archaeology of the Russian Internet, pp. 37-57
University of Wisconsin Press
 
Reviewed Work: ESALEN: America and the Religion of No Religion by Jeffrey J. Kripal
By: Sara M. Patterson
Southern California Quarterly, Vol. 89, No. 4 (Winter 2007-2008), pp. 430-432
Historical Society of Southern California
 
Review: The New Age of Russia: Occult and Esoteric Dimensions
By: Alexander Agadjanian
Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Feb., 2014), pp. 136-138
University of Pennsylvania Press

SOURCE: Tim Brinkhof, “How Telepathy Helped Build the Russian Internet,” JSTOR Daily, 28 October 2026. Image courtesy of University of Wisconsin Press

Path to Open Books on JSTOR

Hacking the Iron Curtain: A Media Archaeology of the Russian Internet is part of JSTOR’s Path to Open initiative, which helps nonprofit university presses meet the challenges of open access publishing. Books in the program become open access three years after publication. JSTOR Daily is making the first and second chapters available for free now to drive awareness of the program.

Saint Petersburg Live (The Case of Igor Zaitsev and Other Navalny Donors)

Security forces raid university lecturer’s home over donations

Petersburg police released a video of a search carried out at the home of 58-year-old Igor Zaitsev, a philosophy Ph.D. and lecturer at the European University. He has been charged with “financing extremist activities.”

The grounds for this action were donations totaling 3,500 roubles [approx. 36 euros] to [the late Alexei Navalny’s] Anti-Corruption Foundation. [The foundation, often known by its Russian acronym, FBK] was declared an “extremist organization” and banned by the Russian Federation in 2021. It is now classified as a “terrorist organization.” Zaitsev has been detained pending a remand hearing.

In a video published online, a female investigator, a security officer with his face concealed who handcuffs the lecturer, and at least three men in plain clothes who rummage through his belongings (including an impressive bookshelf) turn up at the Petersburg resident’s flat on Nevsky Prospekt at seven in the morning. Zaitsev admits that he personally supported Navalny. However, Petersburg police edited out the lecturer’s remark that he “considered [Navalny’s] anti-corruption efforts to be a good thing.” This statement appears in another video [see the next item below], which was leaked by the security forces to Baza, a Telegram channel with close ties to the police.

Source: Saint Petersburg Live — The One and Only (Facebook), 12 August 2026. Thanks to DK for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader

Igor Zaitsev, lecturer at European University, detained in Petersburg over donations to Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK)

⚪ The details. Zaitsev has been charged with “financing terrorism,” according to the Telegram channel Baza. According to the channel, the lecturer is accused of having donated money to the Anti-Corruption Foundation on at least seven occasions between 2021 and 2022. Baza has published a video of Zaitsev’s interrogation. In the recording, Zaitsev states that he donated money to Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption projects.

Neither the security services nor the university has publicly acknowledged Zaitsev’s arrest.

⚪ Who is he? Igor Zaitsev is a Ph.D. in philosophy and an associate professor at the European University in St. Petersburg. He is fifty-eight years old. He specializes in the history of philosophy, the philosophy of religion, and theology.

⚪ Cases against university faculty. Baza reports that in July, the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case concerning [the dissemination] of “fake” war reports against Mikhail Turchenko, a former associate professor at the European University’s political science department. According to Life.ru, the case was prompted by Turchenko’s post about a Russian missile strike that resulted in the deaths of Ukrainians. Turchenko had fled Russia in 2022. Last August, a complaint was filed against Vladimir Gel’man, a former faculty member at the European University, alleging that he had “discredited” the army.

Source: Novaya Gazeta Europe (Facebook), 12 August 2026. Translated by the Russian Reader

Finland has denied asylum to a Russian man who donated to the late opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), with migration authorities ruling that his political activity was not public or extensive enough to have drawn the attention of the Russian authorities.

Valentin Sergienko and his parents were ordered to report to police on 14 August after the Finnish Immigration Service rejected their asylum applications, former St. Petersburg municipal deputy Svetlana Utkina told TV Rain. If the family does not leave the country voluntarily, they could face forced deportation.

The Sergienkos fled Russia in September 2022 after Vladimir Putin’s announcement of mobilisation and initially sought international protection in Germany. Their case was transferred to Finland, where they filed asylum applications in July 2023. The Finnish Immigration Service denied their claims, and an administrative court subsequently rejected their appeal.

Authorities did not dispute that Sergienko had donated to FBK, the human rights group OVD-Info, and other organisations banned in Russia, or that he had taken part in protests. But officials concluded his political activity had not been large-scale or visible enough to put him at risk of persecution by the Russian government.

While the case was pending, Sergienko graduated with honours from Helsinki Business College, completed an internship, and received a job offer, which he was unable to accept as the asylum denial stripped him of his right to work in Finland. His mother is currently undergoing cancer treatment.

According to the independent outlet Mediazona, Russian authorities have opened at least 225 criminal cases over donations to FBK as of April 2026. Courts have handed down 167 convictions, with 24 people sentenced to prison time.

More than 2,300 Russians have applied for asylum in Finland since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but only 604 have received the status, according to politician and former political prisoner Andrey Pivovarov. Even so, the Finnish migration service has acknowledged that convictions in politically motivated cases have tripled in Russia.

Source: “Finland denies asylum to Russian Navalny donor, saying his political activity was not public enough,” Novaya Gazeta Europe, 13 August 2026. The emphasis is mine. ||||| trr

You Could Be in Pictures (Russia’s Elite Universities and the War)

A screen shot of VGIK’s website

The cinematography department of the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) posted an ad on its VKontakte page about “a special group” being recruited for director [and cinematographer] Mikhail Agranovich’s class. Prospective students are offered free tuition starting in the 2027 academic year, provided they sign a one-year contract with the [Russian] Defense Ministry for service in UAV (drone) units.

The students are also promised free dormitory accommodation, combat veteran status (along with associated benefits), and “expanded technical and financial resources for student film projects.” Contract service will be equated to conscription service, the ad states.

“If you dream of studying at the world’s first film school, the renowned VGIK, now’s your chance. Places in the group are limited,” the ad reads.

Previously, the Higher School of Economics announced free tuition for students serving in unmanned systems units and the BARS (“Leopard”) reservist detachments in Moscow.

Russian universities and colleges have launched a widespread pressure and propaganda campaign aimed at steering students toward the war in Ukraine. Valery Falkov, minister of science and higher education, demanded that two percent of students be sent to the army. Students are promised “guaranteed discharge” upon the expiration of their contracts.

However, Artyom Klyga, head of the legal department at the Movement of Conscientious Objectors (DSO), found that this was a ruse. In reality, students recruited for military service are deployed wherever the command decides and discharged only when the command deems appropriate.

Source: “VGIK recruiting students to fight in war against Ukraine,” Ekho, 29 July 2026. Translated by Brokenhearted Alien Bio-Robot from the Future. The emphasis is mine. |||||| trr

A screenshot of an in-house article on HSE’s website touting its rankings.

Higher School of Economics confirms it is offering students a standard military contract instead of regular one-year conscription, says human rights activist

Vladimir Krotov, head of the department at the Higher School of Economics (HSE) responsible for student military registration, stated in response to an inquiry that those who voluntarily enlisted in the army would be subject to the Defense Ministry’s standard terms. This was reported by Artyom Klyga, a lawyer with the Movement of Conscientious Objectors (DSO).

Earlier, the publication T-Invariant released a letter sent to university staff. The document stated that students facing expulsion were being offered an alternative: a one-year contract with the Defense Ministry. The terms cited included guaranteed discharge after one year and service in unmanned systems units. However, Krotov’s response indicates that those who agreed to enlist would be deployed wherever the command decided and discharged whenever the command deemed appropriate. Only the provision regarding financial compensation is accurate, Klyga notes.

The HSE regularly appears on lists of Russia’s most prestigious universities. The letter to staff noted that they are now required to submit weekly reports on the number of military service notifications sent to students.

Source: Ekho/Novosti (Telegram), 23 January 2026. Translated by Brokenhearted Alien Bio-Robot from the Future

The Communist Menace

6 July 2017, St. Petersburg, Russia. Photo by the Russian Reader

[…]

And so, on Friday night, the eve of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Trump flew to South Dakota to deliver a speech at Mt. Rushmore in which he claimed he and his supporters are at war against an enemy here at home: communists.

Before his trip to the state, Trump posted a video showing his own likeness on a golden sculpture of Mt. Rushmore, alongside the images of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, with the voiceover saying: “I will be the greatest president for many, many years to come.” The video opens with the text “Art of the vision” spelled out over an American flag, an encapsulation—although perhaps an unintentional one—of how Trump has maintained political power by selling a false image to his followers.

Trump began his speech with a series of feel-good platitudes: “These are very, very special times. And this is a very special place. You live in a very special place. Congratulations, everybody…. We are a nation of dreamers and believers, warriors and explorers, doers and fighters…. There has never been anything like us anywhere on earth.” And then he tied together MAGA’s white nationalism with the claim that Trump’s political opponents want to destroy the economy.

Trump clearly thinks there is political gain in convincing his followers that his political opponents are communists, although this is a lie made up out of whole cloth after the victory of Democratic Socialists in Democratic primaries and the popularity of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani. Communists call for the end of private ownership of the means of production, giving the state control of private enterprises. In today’s America, it is actually Trump, himself, who is taking government stakes in private enterprises.

Democratic Socialists are not communists or socialists, who want to see the end of private property. Democratic Socialists call for a robust system of private enterprise, alongside government control of the aspects of society required for people to participate in the economy on a level playing field. While Democratic Socialists embrace a wide range of policies, they generally don’t think schools, or medical care, or roads, should be profit-making industries.

In that, they echo Americans from the 1860s, when the Republicans established public colleges, or the 1900s, when Theodore Roosevelt called for public health insurance. Indeed, what today’s Democratic Socialists call for is much more limited than what the Republicans under President Dwight D. Eisenhower wanted in 1956, when the top income tax bracket in the United States was 91%.

Nonetheless, on Friday Trump tried to convince Americans that “there is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success.” “These are not mere political disagreements like differences over taxes or regulations,” he said. “Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or even 9/11.”

He went on to say: “They don’t want good. They don’t love God and they don’t want God. They don’t love religion and they don’t want religion and they won’t have it.… They have no respect for law, justice, principle, tradition, or your God-given rights. It’s an ideology of mass theft, mass control, mass lies, and mass murder…. You can be a communist or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both.”

His false vision of the U.S. is aimed at the midterm elections. “America will never be a communist country,” he said. “We can only lose the midterms if we allow ourselves to lose the midterms, if we are foolish, stupid, and unwise.” He went on to demand that the Senate end the filibuster and Congress pass the voter-suppression SAVE America Act. If they do, he said, “we will not lose an election for a hundred years.”

On July 4, hundreds of masked white supremacists in khakis and blue shirts, carrying Confederate flags and flags with the logo of the neofascist white supremacist group Patriot Front, marched in Washington, D.C., chanting “Reclaim America.” The White House did not respond to a query from Gloria Oladipo of The Guardian about whether Trump condemns the march.

Trump continued his attacks on “communists” in a late-night speech on the National Mall after thunderstorms temporarily shut down his planned rally. “[A]ll these talks from the communists, they haven’t got a chance,” he told the drenched audience members, “not even a chance. We don’t want communists in our country.”

Trump’s drop into an anticommunism that exaggerates even the excesses of the McCarthy era seems to indicate panic rather than confidence. Today, July 5, he began posting on social media at 1:21 AM and over the course of the day posted more than 100 times, attacking Democrats and boasting extravagantly of what he says are his own successes while demanding Congress pass the SAVE Act or lose the presidency forever.

Trump’s people appear to be trying to push Trump’s vision, but it doesn’t seem to be sticking.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows today, insisting that the problems with the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool were the work of vandals who have gashed its surface in multiple cuts that equal the 350 feet Trump claims and that there is video evidence, although the administration, which is famous for spinning everything to its own advantage, is choosing not to show it.

When CNN’s Dana Bash asked whether they actually had photographs of people cutting a gash in the liner, Burgum danced away from the question after commenting, “I’m not sure why you and others in the media think that you want to keep trying to question whether or not…”

And so the 251st year of American democracy begins with reality reasserting itself.

Source: Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, 5 July 2026

Russia has prepared a new edition of its official history textbook for 11th graders. The Russian business news outlet RBC reviewed the new version and found that the section dealing with the United States had been significantly revised. Among the changes: the textbook now credits the Trump administration with playing a “positive role” in settling the war in Ukraine. Meduza summarizes what else has changed.

Russia’s unified history textbook for 11th graders has been updated and published on the “Moya Shkola” (“My School”) digital platform. The textbook, co-authored by Vladimir Medinsky — an aide to the Russian president and chairman of the Russian Military Historical Society — and Anatoly Torkunov, rector of Moscow State Institute of International Relations, has now reached its third edition.

The Russian business news outlet RBC compared the new edition with last year’s and found that the most heavily rewritten section is the one titled “Russia Today. Special Military Operation (SVO)).”

The passages dealing with the United States were substantially altered. The subsection formerly titled “U.S. Pressure on Russia” has been renamed simply “Pressure on Russia.”

The previous edition stated that Europe’s energy independence “did not suit the United States” — in the new version, the authors replaced “the United States” with “the collective West.” Also cut is the claim that “in the name of their corporations’ profits, the United States constantly resorted to military and terrorist methods — as it did in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, and in many other parts of the world.” Similar edits were made to the section on the war in South Ossetia.

The new edition also drops a line about the United States’ determination to “fight to the last Ukrainian.” In its place, the textbook now credits President Donald Trump’s administration with playing a “positive role” in peace negotiations, and notes that Trump has repeatedly stated the conflict between Russia and Ukraine would not have happened had he been president in 2022. A reference to the meeting between the U.S. and Russian presidents in Anchorage in August 2025 has also been added.

The section on the war in Syria has been revised as well. The previous edition stated that the Western coalition had tried to “overthrow the legitimate government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.” The new version says the United States and NATO, using opposition forces and Islamic State terrorists, launched military operations against the government of Bashar al-Assad. The line “hundreds of thousands of civilians fell victim to the Islamists, and millions of refugees fled Syria” has been removed.

Assad’s government was toppled in December 2024, and Islamists led by Ahmed al-Sharaa came to power in Syria. Assad and many of his associates fled to Russia.

Other additions include a mention of the Defenders of the Fatherland Foundation, headed by Anna Tsivileva, Putin’s cousin’s daughter, and information about a personnel program for combat veterans called “Time of Heroes.”

The new edition also references the terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall concert venue and “the breakthrough of elite Ukrainian Armed Forces units toward the Kursk nuclear power plant.” Added as well are accounts of the killing of Alexander Dugin’s daughter Darya Dugina and the “war correspondent” Vladlen Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, and the assassination attempt on writer Zakhar Prilepin.

RBC also noted that Apti Alaudinov, commander of the Akhmat battalion, has been dropped from the textbook’s list of “heroes of the SVO,” along with the line “fighters of the celebrated Chechen special unit ‘Akhmat’ strike terror into the Nazis.”

Vladislav Kononov, a staff member of the presidential administration’s department for state policy in the humanitarian sphere, described the new edition as “routine editing during a reprint — so-called topical revision,” in which the text is updated to reflect events that occurred after the previous edition was released. “There are no hidden meanings here,” he said.

The history textbook for 11th graders by Medinsky and Torkunov was first presented in 2023. In 2026, its third edition was released.

Source: “Russia rewrites its history textbook again — this time adding Trump’s ‘positive role’ in peace talks and a reference to Anchorage,” Meduza, 3 July 2026. Thanks to News from Ukraine Bulletin for the heads-up.

In recent years, “ideological diversity” has become one of the principal demands made upon American academia, not only by the yahoo right but also by many moderate conservatives and centrists. The former rarely manages to rise above crude insults of the “all professors are communists” variety, as it applauds the Trump administration’s brutal assaults on academic institutions. Unfortunately, while the latter are much more thoughtful, they often make a very misguided case. There is an argument to be made for ideological diversity—a surprisingly simple, and also limited one. But it involves giving more credence to the academic left than most critics are prepared to do.

A classic example of the case wrongly made is the report recently released by the chancellors of Vanderbilt and Washington Universities and written by a distinguished group of academics (including two Princeton colleagues). It is nuanced and careful, takes a mostly moderate tone, and certainly doesn’t deserve the label “diabolical” that some have attached to it. But it also falls into some predictable traps.

Its basic arguments are as follows. Positions in the humanities and the humanistic social sciences today are held overwhelmingly by academics on the left. These academics, especially those who define themselves as “scholar activists,” too often let political goals drive their work, thereby betraying the core mission of academia, which is disinterested inquiry. They discriminate against people who do not share these political goals. And this politicization is both inspired and justified by “relativist” post-structuralist theories that deny the very idea of objective truth.

Let’s take these points one by one. First, yes, the report is obviously correct to state that academics lean very strongly to the left. But this fact by itself says nothing about how left-leaning scholars actually function in the academy or the work they produce.

The second point is much more complicated. What does it mean for scholarship itself to be “political,” or “politicized”? You don’t have to be a dyed-in-the-wool Foucauldian to acknowledge that the production of knowledge is always, in some senses, implicitly political. Scholars, like everyone, exist within structures of power whose operations influence their conduct in ways seen and unseen. Feminist scholars did more than simply expand the scope of scholarly inquiry by bringing new attention to women, gender and sexuality. They showed how earlier generations of scholars, by not treating these subjects as even worthy of attention, participated in largely unspoken practices of exclusion. This point should not be terribly controversial. Nor should it be controversial that many past schools of scholarship that presented themselves as disinterested and objective were clearly driven by strong political motives. Just think of the “Dunning School” of American history that celebrated the southern “Lost Cause” and sought to discredit Reconstruction.

Acknowledging these points in no way means erasing the distinction between scholarship and propaganda—and contrary to widespread views on the right, this erasure has not taken place. One can accept that scholarship is implicitly political while also insisting that its production properly requires adhering to rules of evidence, and to making logical and well-supported arguments. I have been a professor for thirty-five years and have taken part in a very (!) large number of hiring decisions, promotion and tenure decisions, editorial decisions for journals and presses, personnel decisions for scholarly societies, and the like. I have occasionally seen these decisions made badly, because of personal animus, or incompetence. For what it is worth, I have never seen them made on an explicitly political basis, and very rarely even on an implicitly political one. In almost all cases, the principal criteria invoked have been classic scholarly ones: the strength of evidence, the strength of argument, the innovative and engaging qualities of the work as a whole.

Do academic fields discriminate against conservatives? It is certainly true that conservatives will not feel welcome in many fields of the humanities and social sciences. This is particularly the case for fields born out of the liberation movements of the 1960’s, such as Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, or African-American Studies, where many scholars still define themselves in relation to the goals of these movements and proudly call themselves “scholar activists.” An opponent of abortion or affirmative action will not find these fields congenial places. But in my experience, at least, the absence of conservatives in them is almost entirely the result of self-selection, not discrimination. That element of self-selection may itself be problematic, but it does not call for the same sort of response that active discrimination would.

And it is simply a mistake to attribute the “politicization” to poststructuralist philosophy and relativism. To the extent that the alleged politicization began in the 1960’s, it began well before the heyday of poststructuralism in American humanities departments, and it has continued long afterwards. Whole generations of literary scholars have now gone through the PhD to jobs and tenure without ever reading Jacques Derrida, let alone becoming his adepts (for that matter, Derrida’s work can in no way be described as a simple denial of the idea of truth). The overwhelming majority of works derided as “woke”—at least the ones I have read—do not say that one group’s claims on truth is as good as another’s. To the contrary, they say that the claims made by a “subaltern” group are stronger and more convincing than ones generated from within an oppressive structure of power. That argument might be wrong, but it is not relativist. Jonathan Kramnick made some of these points at length in an excellent rebuttal to the Vanderbilt Report in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

In sum, whatever the massive overrepresentation of the left in academia, and despite some undoubted excesses, this overrepresentation has not resulted in an illegitimate distortion of the academic enterprise, the suppression of free inquiry, or large-scale violations of academic freedom. It would be a violation of academic freedom, on the other hand, to censor or dismiss academics for such alleged infractions. The Vanderbilt report does not call for any such disciplinary actions, although one could imagine unscrupulous university overseers citing it as justification for them.

But there is one set of academic decisions where politics does often dictate the outcome in a much more straightforward sense than in the cases just discussed: decisions on which fields to hire in. Professors do not normally make these decisions. Deans and other high-level administrators do. They do so in consultation with professors and normally take into consideration academic judgments as to which fields of inquiry look strongest and most promising. But, of necessity, they also take into consideration finances, student interest, the likely availability of expertise—and politics. To take the most prominent recent example, after the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent protests in 2020, more than half of the jobs advertised in North American history the next year were specifically for specialists in African-American history and related fields such as the history of slavery. A very high proportion of jobs advertised in French were for specialists in “Francophone” literature—i.e. literature produced outside of France, mostly in colonies and former colonies. These decisions were justifiable on academic grounds, for the fields in question are vibrant ones. But they were obviously made for political reasons, above all to address concerns about the underrepresentation of people of color in university faculties. Were these concerns themselves valid? Absolutely. It can also be argued that addressing this underrepresentation brings previously neglected points of view into academic conversations. But this doesn’t change the fact that the decisions were political ones—a response to an immediate political crisis, and to political pressure.

Again, to be clear: there was nothing illegitimate about university administrators bringing political considerations to bear. Decisions on what fields to hire in are central to a university’s identity, to the sort of community it is. Politics is inescapably part of this picture.

But if there was an argument for using hiring decisions to address racial inequalities, there is an argument for using them to address ideological imbalance as well. Even if there is nothing illegitimate about the strong leftward tilt of the humanities and humanistic social sciences, it does create a large gulf between the professors and much of the American population whom they are serving. Even if there is nothing illegitimate about certain fields being dominated by self-proclaimed “scholar activists,” it discourages students who don’t share the activists’ agendas from studying those fields. A heavy concentration of academic resources in certain areas of research leaves other areas neglected, including ones that university leaders may see as central to undergraduate education. And the heavier the emphasis on shared political goals, the easier it is to generate groupthink and stifle the sort of originality universities should be placing a premium on.

Actual hiring decisions should always be made by the specialists themselves. They are the ones with the requisite expertise. Dictating whom to hire would be a violation of their academic freedom. But that freedom does not extend to faculty themselves dictating which areas to hire in.

It would not be such a bad idea if humanities and social science departments themselves took more initiatives in this direction. In recent years, much of the hiring done for reasons of ideological diversity has taken place in new academic units such as Florida’s Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education. Attempts to create positions within existing departments, going back to the Bass Family’s attempt to endow a “Western Civilization” program at Yale in the 1990s, have sometimes ended in messy failure. But placing the new faculty in separate units leaves the original fields dangerously exposed to damaging cuts, either for brute ideological reasons, or because they do not have enough of a constituency to protest when the budget axe swings for financial ones. It should be obvious to anyone who knows anything about the “Western tradition” that neither the thinkers in question, nor current specialists on them, are anything like homogenously conservative—hiring in the field does not mean hiring the next Harvey Mansfield. But would it be such a bad thing to hire a few more scholars who dissent from the prevailing politics of their fields? Robust political debate is generally preferable to groupthink, after all.

Source: David A. Bell, “On ‘Ideological Diversity,'” French Reflections, 6 July 2026

Russian Colonizers and Indigenous Siberian Women

Two Yukaghir girls, Siberia, 1894-1909, American Museum of Natural History

GLC@Lunch: “Trade in Women, Concubinage, and Marriage: Relations Between Russian Colonizers and Indigenous Women in 17th-Century Eastern Siberia”

Rosenkranz Hall • 115 Prospect Street, New Haven CT, 06511 • Room 241

Register for this event

Wednesday, April 29, 2026, 12:30—1:45pm | Hybrid

In person at Yale University, Rosenkranz Hall, Room 241, 115 Prospect Street, New Haven

Online via Zoom

Note: In-person seating is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Angelina Kalashnikova (GLC Visiting Fellow; Kiel Training for Excellence Fellow, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel)

This presentation introduces a book project on the first decades of Russian colonization in Eastern Siberia, present-day Yakutia. Rather than framing colonization solely as a process of conquest and political alliance-building, the project foregrounds intimate and gendered entanglements between Russian newcomers and Indigenous communities. Russian fur traders, trappers, and military servitors typically arrived in the region without families and encountered Yakut, Tungus, Yukaghir, and Even populations. The resulting gender imbalance among settlers quickly made the trade in Indigenous women a profitable enterprise. At the same time, commercial transactions sometimes culminated in Orthodox marriages, blurring the boundaries between coercion, commerce, and social integration. By examining these practices, the study explores how racial, cultural, and religious boundaries were negotiated in everyday interactions between Russian colonizers and Indigenous societies in seventeenth-century Eastern Siberia.

Source: Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University

How did Russians obtain local women?

There were three ways to acquire women in Eastern Siberia. The first was as the outcome of military expeditions, sometimes referred to as ‘pogroms’ in the documents. When Russian troops attacked local settlements or nomadic camps and emerged victorious, they would seize women, children, and cattle as spoils of war. Enslavement of women during times of conflict had deep roots in Siberian history. Historical documents provide numerous accounts of inter-ethnic military clashes that resulted in the plundering of the defeated, particularly involving the capture of women, children, and cattle.

A petition from 1642 for the baptism of a Yakut woman named Katok includes Katok’s explanation of why she desired to convert to Orthodoxy where she shares her life story. She recounts that she could not recall her father’s name as she was taken by Russians during a ‘pogrom’ when she was only a child. She further explained that she had previously lived ‘among Russians,’ but that she now has nothing to eat or drink and was starving to death. In short, Katok was forcibly captured from her community as a child, likely being one of those taken as trophies from the defeated local community.

Another form of enslavement in Siberia involved trafficking, where local people would sell their relatives to Russians. Sometimes the locals would sell their women to combat poverty. Gurvich mentioned that the Yukaghirs of Yana River sold their maidens and children to Russians because of hunger in 1659. However, the women sold to Russians were not always orphans or from poor families. There are documented cases where individuals of higher social status willingly sold their daughters. For instance, local prince Orgui sold his daughter Mychak to a Russian serviceman for a cow.

Russians did not necessarily purchase or capture local women in battle; sometimes they acquired them without any effort or payment. One such case is preserved in historical documents. It tells the story of Ladchka, a Yakut woman who was abandoned by her husband and left with no means of support. She sought refuge in the Russian camp and resided there for two years before eventually being brought to Yakutsk with her child in 1643. During her interrogation, Ladchka revealed that she had been a slave (‘yasyr’) of the fur trader Oderka Martemyanov. She had a child with him and expressed her desire to be baptised. It appears that Martemyanov acquired this woman without any cost, lived with her for a period, and then seemingly cast her aside.

Source: Angelina Kalashnikova, “Trafficking of Women in 17th-Century Siberia,” in Daniel Domingues da Silva, Hans Hägerdal, Angelina Kalashnikova, and Filipa Ribeiro da Silva, eds., Colonial Encounters and Slavery in Early Modern Asia, Leiden University Press, 2025, pp. 32–33

Cars for Ukraine

Vadim Volkov

The European University at St. Petersburg has purchased and dispatched a UAZ vehicle to the war in Ukraine “for transporting the wounded in the combat zone,” the university’s press service has reported.

It notes that the vehicle was sent to Military Unit No. 11076, which was formed from mobilized residents of St. Petersburg, the Leningrad, Murmansk, and Arkhangelsk regions, and the Komi Republic.

The university’s press service posted a commendation to university rector Vadim Volkov from the unit’s commander, who praised Volkov for his “social activism” and support of the military “as it carries out missions in the special military operation zone in Ukraine, the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Luhansk People’s Republic, the Zaporizhzhia region, and the Kherson region.”

“Military Unit No. 11076 expresses gratitude to the autonomous noncommercial higher education organization ‘European University at St. Petersburg’ in the person of Vadim Viktorovich Volkov for social activism and support rendered to the soldiers of our unit as they carry out missions in the special military operation zone in Ukraine, the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Luhansk People’s Republic, Zaporizhzhia Region, and Kherson Region. Victory will be ours! Military Unit No. 11076’s commander, Colonel V. Zyatchin, May 2025.”

The European University is a private university founded in St. Petersburg in 1994. The university was funded by grants from American and European NGOs. In 2016, the university was stripped of its accreditation for a year after an audit undertaken by the Prosecutor’s Office and Rosobrnadzor [the Russian federal education watchdog], after which such audits became routine.

In 2023, the Russian authorities audited the European University “for extremism,” and the university was also fined over books in its library published by “undesirable” organizations. Rector Volkov reported in an interview with RBC on June 24 that the prosecutor’s office had audited ninety-eight programs at the university and twelve master’s theses, after which the university had amended the programs and made changes to its academic advising process based on the recommendations of the authorities.

In March 2024, the European University fired Ivan Kurilla, an Americanist who taught in its political science and sociology departments. Kurilla opposed the Russian invasion of Ukraine and was among the signatories of an open letter against the war by Russian academics and science journalists.

Source: “European University at St. Petersburg sends vehicle to war, garnering thank-you from Russian military,” Meduza, 10 June 2025. Photo courtesy of European University at St. Petersburg. Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Comrade Koganzon for the heads-up.

Jesper Lindholt

Where are you from? And where are you now? Doing what?

I am from Aarhus, Denmark, and have lived in Kyiv for almost 20 years. I own a software company, Livatek, which works with clients in Northern Europe.

As a foreigner working and living in Ukraine for many years, what is the best and the worst thing about Ukraine?

The worst thing about Ukraine is that nothing is possible. The best about Ukraine is that everything in the end is possible.

How has the war changed your life? Has the war changed you personally?

With the start of the war, my brother Morten and I reactivated a Danish initiative called “Biler til Ukraine” – “Cars for Ukraine”—which had already helped a Ukrainian NGO bring SUVs to the front for medical evacuation during the war in Donbas. Within a week of the full-scale invasion in 2022, we were back in Ukraine with the first three cars.

Since then, we have scaled up tremendously and delivered more than 400 vehicles to the Ukrainian military for logistics and tactical purposes, including 75 buses for personnel transports. These days, we are managing more than one car per day. All in all, as a rough estimate, the value of these cars is somewhere close to $2 million. The money comes from absolutely average, normal Danes and private companies. I am often surprised by people’s generosity. They often donate their car and even drive it with us to Ukraine!

Growing a business has become more difficult with the war. With “Cars for Ukraine,” I have found another outlet for my professional energy to defend Ukraine. It has allowed me to work with some unique people in Denmark and Ukraine. Their strength and dedication inspire me.

What has surprised you most about Ukrainians these past couple of years? Good or bad?

I was not surprised to see the tenacity of the Ukrainians as they resisted Russia’s efforts to eradicate their culture. On the negative side—and here I am probably a bit naïve—I can still be disappointed by corruption. I know it is good news that corruption and the people who commit it are discovered and prosecuted, but I would prefer things to be nipped in the bud instead of cracked down afterward.

What are your plans?

I think I am like most Ukrainians in that “the future” does not exist anymore. We have a war to fight and win—after that, there is a future—and it is bright and open.

How do you see the war ending and Ukraine returning to a normal life?

Forces at play now do not point to a happy-end scenario for Ukraine. The dynamics need to change. Specifically, more political leaders of the West must do “a Macron” — to understand that Ukraine is fighting for every country of the liberal, Western world. (French President Emmanuel Macron underwent a radical change in his view on Russia’s war from dovish to hawkish and insisting on Russia’s defeat.) Because, honestly, for Ukraine to have a normal future, Russia not only needs to be beaten back to within its borders. It needs such an educational wacking that it will give up on its aggressive ways – and never again even consider attacking Ukraine or other states.

Tell us one thing people abroad do not know about Ukraine but they really should.

For too many centuries, Russian culture has defined itself as being unique, and outside rules and measures apply only to other countries. The mere existence of an independent Ukraine is a challenge to that myth. And, when Russia is attacking its neighbor, it is fighting its own demons and inferiority complexes.

You can learn more about the work of “Cars for Ukraine” (in Danish “Biler til Ukraine”) here.

Source: “BLITZ INTERVIEW: Jesper Lindholt, a Danish tech executive bringing hundreds of cars to the Ukrainian army,” Two Grumpy Old Men on Ukraine, 20 May 2024

Serial Denouncer Denounced

Ivan Abaturov (social media image via RFE/RL)

Social anthropologist Alexandra Arkhipova conducted an investigation and concluded that Anna Korobkova, renowned for her numerous denunciations of people advocating anti-war stances, is probably a pseudonym of Ivan Abaturov, a journalist from Yekaterinburg. The BBC Russian Service has published the results of Arkhipova’s research.

Arkhipova assembled more than seventy letters, addressed to various institutions and agencies, in which Korobkova accused doctors, teachers, human rights activists, and journalists of “discrediting” the Russian army and called for them to be brought to justice. Among the denouncer’s victims are a doctor at a clinic who made a comment to [banned opposition channel] TV Rain, the mother of an enlisted soldier killed in the war, and Arkhipova herself. In one case, a student was expelled from a university after it received a denunciation alleging that he had been involved in “unauthorized protest rallies.”

In early December 2024, Arkhipova found a page about Korobkova on Wikipedia. With the assistance of linguists, she did a comparative analysis and found that the author of the Wikipedia article was probably the same person who had written the denunciations signed by Korobkova.

Arkhipova and the investigative journalists were able to identify the author of the Wikipedia article. It turned out to be a journalist from Yekaterinburg, Ivan Abaturov.

Abaturov, as the article points out, had already been at the center of a whistleblowing scandal. In the summer of 2022, Sergei Erlich, director of the publishing house Nestor History, said that Abaturov had allegedly detected “false information about the USSR’s actions during the Second World War” in one of his company’s books. Consequently, law enforcement officials visited Nestor History’s offices.

Abaturov himself has never concealed his attitude to denunciations. In 2019, he wrote on social media that “a journalist under Stalin was a walking prosecutor’s office” and that he wanted to be one too.

When asked by a BBC correspondent whether he had been writing denunciations under the name “Korobkova,” Abaturov replied on VKontakte: “Hello. You are mistaken.” Consequently, he stopped replying to messages, and the BBC was unable to reach him by phone.

Since the beginning of their country’s full-scale war with Ukraine, Russians have filed 2,623 complaints with law enforcement agencies about anti-war statements made by their fellow citizens, the investigative journalism website Important Stories (iStories) calculated in June on the basis of open source data. So-called LGBT propaganda (487 complaints) and Russophobia (250 complaints) ranked second and third, respectively, as grounds for denunciations.

According to Important Stories, seventy percent of the complaints were written by subscribers of the anonymous Telegram channel Mrakoborets, which specializes in tracking down anti-war activists. The channel’s daily norm is a minimum of three complaints on its pages on the social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki (“Classmates”). Yekaterina Mizulina, head of the Safe Internet League, had personally written 148 denunciations, while sixty were penned by pro-Kremlin activist Vitaly Borodin.

Source: “The serial denouncer ‘Korobkova’ turns out to be a male journalist from Yekaterinburg,” Radio Svoboda, 26 December 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Darya Apahonchich and Comrade Koganzon for the heads-up.

[…]

In the autumn of 2022, executives at the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) received a letter signed “Anna Vasilievna Korobkova.” It began as follows: “I fully support the special operation of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation on Ukrainian territory. I am against all violations of the law.”

The letter concerned an interview that Alexandra Arkhipova, who had worked for many years as a senior research fellow at RANEPA, had given to the channel TV Rain, which had been designated a “foreign agent” by Russian authorities. (At the time of the interview, the TV channel had not yet been designated an “undesirable organization.”)

In her denunciation, “Korobkova” asked the university to dismiss Arkhipova for “immoral misconduct,” which, in her opinion, consisted in the fact that in the interview with TV Rain she had “disseminated false information discrediting the Special Military Operation [sic] on Ukrainian territory.” Korobkova also suggested that the university send the evidence against Arkhipova to the prosecutor’s office.

“Korobkova” was outraged that Arkhipova did not interrupt TV Rain presenter Anna Nemzer when the latter had called the “special military operation” a “war” (“thus showing she agreed with Nemzer’s false opinion”), mentioned Facebook without mentioning that it had been designated an “extremist organization” in Russia, and uttered the phrase “before the war I would ask.”

“This is a lie, as there is no war,” the letter said.

Upon seeing the text of the denunciation, Arkhipova was surprised by how long and detailed it was. Korobkova’s letter took up two pages, and even the time codes for the points in the interview at which Arkhipova had said certain things that angered Korobkova were noted. As a folklorist and social anthropologist who works extensively with different texts, Arkhipova was struck by the structure of the denunciation and the specific language in which it was written.

“I was reading this denunciation to friends, discussing it as a phenomenon of contemporary political culture, when one of my colleagues looked at me sadly and took a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket. He unfolded it and read aloud a denunciation. It had the same wording, and was also signed ‘Anna Vasilievna Korobkova,'” Arkhipova tells the BBC.

[…]

Source: Amalia Zataria, “‘I want to be a walking prosecutor’s office’: who hides behind the identity of serial denouncer ‘Anna Korobkova’?” BBC Russian Service, 26 December 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

National Unity Day

Monterey, California, 4 November 2024. Photo: The Russian Reader

I’m worried about the left’s demonization of America’s origins and the future of Western civilization, as many conservatives feel that the basic tenets of society as we’ve known it are under attack.

Source: Scott Jennings, “Opinion: Why I’m voting for Donald Trump,” Los Angeles Times, 1 November 2024

Carolina Performing Arts, “Omar the Opera: Behind the Scenes”

Rhiannon Giddens’ opera Omar was presented at Carolina Performing Arts in February 2023. In this video, take a deep dive into the opera’s creation and hear from cast members about their experiences. To learn more, visit: https://southernfuturescpa.org/projects/omar/ Omar was co-commissioned and co-produced by Spoleto Festival USA and Carolina Performing Arts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Additional co-commissioners include LA Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, San Francisco Opera, and Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Source: Carolina Performing Arts (YouTube), 2 October 2023

“Video has come out from Bucks County, Pennsylvania showing a ballot counter destroying ballots for Donald Trump and keeping Kamala Harris’s ballots for counting,” an account called “Dan from Ohio” wrote in the comment section of the far-right website Gateway Pundit. “Why hasn’t this man been arrested?”

But Dan is not from Ohio, and the video he mentioned is fake. He is in fact one of hundreds of inauthentic accounts posting in the unmoderated spaces of right-wing news site comment sections as part of a Russian disinformation campaign. These accounts were discovered by researchers at media watchdog NewsGuard, who shared their findings with WIRED.

“NewsGuard identified 194 users that all target the same articles, push the same pro-Russian talking points and disinformation narratives, while masquerading as disgruntled Western citizens,” the report states. The researchers found these fake accounts posting comments in four pro-Trump US publications: the Gateway Pundit, the New York Post, Breitbart, and Fox News. They were also posting similar comments in the Daily Mail, a UK tabloid, and French website Le Figaro.

“FOX News Digital’s comment sections are monitored continuously in real time by the outside company OpenWeb which services multiple media organizations,” a spokesperson for the company tells WIRED. “Comments made by fake personas and professional trolls are removed as soon as issues are brought to our attention by both OpenWeb and the additional internal oversight mechanisms we have in place.”

Breitbart replied to WIRED’s request for comment in Russian: “Пожалуйста, скажите Newsguard, чтобы они пошли на хуй.” In English, this means “please tell Newsguard to go fuck themselves.”

The Gateway Pundit and the New York Post did not respond to a request for comment from WIRED.

“The actors behind this campaign appear to be exploiting a particularly vulnerable part of the media landscape,” McKenzie Sadeghi, the AI and foreign influence editor at NewsGuard, tells WIRED. “Comment sections designed to foster reader engagement lack robust security measures, allowing bad actors to post freely, change identities, and create the illusion of genuine grassroots campaigns rather than orchestrated propaganda.”

The disinformation narratives being pushed by these accounts are linked to Storm-1516, according to Newsguard. Storm-1516 is a Russian disinformation campaign with a history of posting fake videos to push Kremlin talking points to the West that was also connected to the release of deepfake video falsely claiming to show a whistlelbower making allegations of sexual assault against vice presidential candidate and Minnesota governor Tim Walz. (WIRED first reported that the Walz video was part of a campaign by Storm-1516. A day later, the US government confirmed WIRED’s reporting.)

Links to the video were posted by multiple accounts with names like “Disobedient Truth” and “Private Patriot” in the comment section of outlets like Breitbart and the Gateway Pundit.

“More bad news for the Dems: Breaking: Tim Walz’s former student, Matthew Metro, drops a shocking allegation- claims Walz s*xually assaulted him in 1997 while Walz was his teacher at Mankato West High School,” the comments read.

The links posted in the comments came hours before the video was shared on social media platforms like X, where it racked up millions of views.

After the Bucks County video went viral, researchers quickly traced it back to Storm 1516. US intelligence agencies then confirmed Russia was behind the fake video.

Russian influence operations have, in the past, made use of comment sections to boost their narratives, including during their campaign to disrupt the 2016 elections. This is the first time this tactic has been reported as part of Russia’s efforts to disrupt the 2024 presidential election.

“Replying in threads is a tactic that can have an impact with very little investment,” Darren Linvill, codirector at Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, tells WIRED. “By inserting disinformation into an unrelated conversation it might be seen, even if the account being used has no followers and was just created yesterday. It also doesn’t matter if the account you are using is caught and shut down because you haven’t lost an investment, you can just create another account five minutes later.”

The fake comments, Newsguard found, are also then used in reports from Russian state-backed media outlets to bolster claims about how Western audiences are responding to a particular incident.

After the Trump assassination attempt in July, Tsargrad TV published an article titled “Biden’s Trace in Trump’s Assassination Attempt. Americans Agree with the Kremlin’s Version: ‘Russians Are Right.’” The article outlined how Americans believe that the Biden administration played a part in the shooting, citing “comments to articles in Western media” as evidence.

NewsGuard’s researchers identified 104 articles in Russian state media that cited comments from Western news outlets as evidence to back up their claims between January and August of this year.

“This tactic allows bad actors to reduce the risk of detection and embed propaganda in a subtle, seemingly organic way, blending it into the casual commentary of supposed everyday Western readers,” Sadeghi said. “The repetition of the same claim across multiple formats and contexts can create a sense of familiarity that may lend the narratives an appearance of credibility.”

The network of accounts has also been used to seed other narratives, including one earlier this month where dozens of comments in the New York Post and Breitbart claimed, without evidence, that Ukrainian president Volodmyr Zelensky had used Western military aid to purchase a car that once belonged to Adolf Hitler.

That claim has been spread by the network of inauthentic websites controlled by former Florida cop John Dougan, who now lives in Moscow and runs a network of pro-Kremlin websites. Dougan’s network of websites have previously shared disinformation narratives from Storm-1516.

Source: David Gilbert, “A Russian Disinfo Campaign Is Using Comment Sections to Seed Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theories,” Wired, 1 November 2024. The emphasis is mine. ||| TRR

Carolina Performing Arts, “Omar the Opera: A Scholar’s Perspective”

Learn about Rhiannon Giddens’s opera Omar from the perspective of North Carolina scholars.

Source: Carolina Performing Arts (YouTube), 8 April 2024

This very disturbing story about Russian grassroots lucre in wartime was published on the front page of yesterday’s print edition of the New York Times. I’m quoting it in full here for the benefit of non-subscribers.

On the other hand, as perhaps only I am in a position to know, there is something disturbing about how certain of the sources for this story boldly claim eyewitness-like knowledge of events in the Russians provinces which they couldn’t possibly have witnessed, while also cashing in on the chaos unleashed by Russia’s vicious war against Ukraine, only from the opposite side of the world.

I’m also troubled that PS Lab, which was founded long before the war, is portrayed here as an outgrowth and brainchild of those selfsame academic entrepreneurs at George Washington University. ||| TRR

Expensive new cars and motorcycles crowd the streets. Apartment prices have more than doubled. And once-strapped residents are suddenly seen wearing fur coats and carrying ostentatiously overflowing grocery bags.

That is how one resident of a small, long-impoverished industrial city in Siberia describes her hometown these days. The explanation for the burst in prosperity lies in the isolated cemetery, with rows of Russian flags marking the new graves of soldiers killed in Ukraine, and also downtown, where a billboard lists the scores of local men who went to fight.

“I was stunned by how many,” said the resident, the wife of a middle-aged firefighter who enlisted last summer without telling her beforehand. “Money from the war has clearly affected our city.”

The Kremlin has been showering cash on men who enlist. It wants to avoid an unpopular draft, while also addressing the lack of men with sufficient patriotic zeal to join up. There are large signing bonuses, fat monthly salaries and what Russians call “coffin money,” a substantial payment to the families of the tens of thousands of soldiers killed in battle.

The money is changing the face of countless Russian backwaters like the Siberian city. “The allure of extremely high salaries and other benefits has been a major factor in attracting voluntary recruits, especially from relatively poor regions,” said a report issued this year by the Bank of Finland’s Institute for Emerging Economies.

By improving the standard of living among Russia’s poor, the payments have spurred support for President Vladimir V. Putin and the war, researchers noted, while also changing the perception of fighters from patriots to “soldiers of fortune.”

The names and hometowns of the people living inside Russia who agreed to discuss these war payments are not being published to avoid possible legal problems for speaking publicly about the conflict.

Russia has stopped publishing various economic statistics, leaving only a patchwork of indicators about the effects of the war payments. Some studies have documented the influx, however.

For example, the Bank of Finland researchers found that the number of bank accounts in Russia’s poorer areas surged over the past year. Nationwide data was too uneven to establish a concrete correlation with signing bonuses and enlistment data, the study said, but general estimates of casualties by region coincided with the areas experiencing high growth in bank depositors.

Also, in recent months, recruitment posters across Russia changed noticeably, replacing patriotic themes with financial offers. State TV and advertisements on social media carried the same messages.

“Pride of Russia,” some ads used to say, naming the soldier pictured, or “Homeland Begins with Family,” showing a soldier silhouetted with a mother and child. There were comparisons to heroic feats during The Great Patriotic War, as World War II is known in Russia.

Now, a ruble sign dominates the posters, which display the large sums on offer for signing a military contract. Payments vary by region.

“The people who wanted to join out of patriotic sentiment have mostly already been recruited and died or were wounded,” said Oleg Jouravlev, one of the founders of PS Lab, a group of mainly sociologists organized under the Russia Program at George Washington University to study attitudes toward the war. “There are not many like that left in Russia.”

On July 31, Mr. Putin issued a decree more than doubling the contract signing bonus from the federal government to 400,000 rubles, or more than $4,000, from 195,000 rubles. At least 47 regional governments followed suit after he encouraged them to match the reward, according to a survey by the independent media outlet iStories, with the average signing bonus nationwide quadrupling in the past eight months.

U.S. officials estimate that Russia is recruiting 25,000 to 30,000 new soldiers a month, roughly equal to the number of dead and wounded. As soon as local governments see interest lagging, they jack up the financial incentives, experts say.

This past month, the frontline Belgorod region broke all records with a signing bonus amounting to more than $30,000, well above the previous leader, Moscow, at about $20,000. The lowest bonuses are around $500.

The larger sums constitute a small fortune in many of the less developed towns and villages of Russia — where the average salary is a few hundred dollars per month — especially when combined with a frontline fighter’s monthly salary starting at 210,000 rubles, or about $2,100.

A study of the payments for Re: Russia, an online platform for political and economic analysis, found that the signing bonus equals roughly the average annual per capita income in Russia, and the monthly salary is three times the average wage. Rural wages are significantly lower than those in big cities.

“The money is a social elevator for those who went to war,” said Ayan, a resident of Buryatia, a Siberian region with a considerable proportion of people living below the poverty line and high levels of personal debt.

Coffin money payments amount to almost $150,000 per family, enough to buy an apartment in all but the most expensive Russian cities. While an apartment is often the main goal, recipients say they buy all kinds of things, including new teeth, breast implants and vacations.

The war payments are especially attractive to impoverished, middle-aged men who see them as their last chance to escape a lifetime of debt, said Ivan Grek, the director of the Russian Program at George Washington University. Beyond that, people getting the money are eating in restaurants, and buying cars, electronics, clothes and property.

Government statistics from early 2024 show a 74 percent growth in ordinary Russians across the country purchasing cars compared with the same time period last year, Mr. Grek noted, while those paying off consumer debts jumped to 21 percent, up from about 9 percent before the war.

“There is the spirit of a party out there,” he said, even if the source of the money limits the euphoria. His program recently sent three researchers to live for a month in small Russian communities to gauge perceptions of the war. “Now they have a car, they can drink and eat, it is a whole new life for them,” he said.

Artem, a soldier who fled Russia, estimated that 60 percent of the men in his unit signed up because they had unpaid loans. “Almost all of them had problems with alcohol and debt,” he said.

Some experts question whether the spiraling payouts are sustainable and expect that the draw, like patriotism, will eventually fade. Overall, war payments to Russian soldiers — whether for signing, injury or death — will amount to at least 7.5 percent of federal spending for the year, according to Re: Russia.

The sister of a dead officer from Makhachkala said that while he was alive he kept telling her that the death payment would take care of her, their mother and his daughter: “‘Buy an apartment,’ he said, and I told him, ‘You are a moron! Don’t even say such things.’”

Despite the shattering grief after his death, the sister said, the money makes it feel as if her brother is watching over them posthumously. “He did everything he wanted for us,” she said.

The money often has a trickledown effect. A resident of North Ossetia said that a couple of years ago his local plumber had applied to emigrate due to the lack of work. But recently, he said, the plumber told him, “I’ve never had so much work in my life,” with war widows buying new apartments or refurbishing old ones.

The firefighter from Siberia, aged 46, had gone heavily into debt over failed foreign exchange trades, according to his son. After losing several fingers in an industrial accident, he had burned through a $25,000 settlement and a considerable chunk of his disability pension. The father sold the family car to raise money, but ultimately the man filed for bankruptcy before enlisting.

A few days after the first interview for this article, the firefighter’s wife, who had not heard from him in a month, received a military report saying that he had been shot in the chest and killed on July 30, just four days after he deployed in Ukraine. Two younger soldiers trying to rescue him also died, but no bodies have been recovered.

“You are signing your death warrant,” his son said of his father’s decision to enlist. “It was a foolish decision to abandon my mother and my sister and cause everyone so much pain. Money is irrelevant in this situation.”

Source: Neil MacFarquhar and Milena Mazaeva, “Russia Showers Cash on Men Enlisting in Ukraine War, Bringing Prosperity to Some Towns,” New York Times, 2 November 2024. The emphasis is mine. ||| TRR

News from Ukraine Bulletin no. 120 (4 November 2024)

DOWNLOAD THE BULLETIN AS A PDF HERE

In this week’s bulletin: An Arab-Ukrainian perspective/ A Lithuanian view on Russian aggression/Evidence of Russian war crimes/ persecution of Crimean Tatars/ forced abductions/ miscarriages of justice/ Cultural genocide in Kharkiv/ UN report on torture as a war crime.

News from the territories occupied by Russia:  

Reporters without Borders demand Russia ends torment of Crimean Tatar journalist sentenced to 14 years for defending human rights (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, 1 November)

Russian FSB abduct Ukrainian from her mother’s funeral in occupied Crimea (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, 31 October)

Ukrainian POW sentenced to 18 years as Russia mass produces legally nonsensical ‘terrorism trials’ (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, 30 October)

Horrific sentences where any Ukrainian will do in Russian-occupied Crimea (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, 29 October)

Russia secretly buries the bodies of the Ukrainian teenagers it murdered in occupied Berdiansk (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, 28 October)

The situation at the front:

Russia deploys 7,000 North Korean soldiers to areas bordering Ukraine (Ukrainska Pravda, 2 November)

Russia’s cultural genocide in Kharkiv (Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, 29 October)

News from Ukraine – general: 

Over 1,700 children missing due to war in Ukraine – Interior Ministry (Ukrainska Pravda, 29 October)

ZMINA took part in the presentation of the Shadow Report to the European Commission’s report on Ukraine (Zmina, October 29th)

Humanitarian deminers’ union join independent union confederation (Confederation of Free Trade Unions, 28 October)

Absence of extrajudicial procedure hinders access to Ukrainian documents for TOT residents – Alena Lunova (Zmina, 26 October)

Ukraine: Love+War, a Review (Turning Point, 16 October)

War-related news from Russia:

Verkhneuralsk political prison (Solidarity Zone, 2 November)

“For 72 days I was electrocuted, beaten, not allowed to eat or sleep”: how Russian convicts are driven to “meat-grinder assaults” (The Insider, 31 October)

The story of Roman Nasryev and Alexei Nuriev (Solidarity Zone, 31 October)

Special Demographic Operation: how Russian authorities are restricting women’s reproductive rights (Posle.Media, 30 October)

“Human safaris” and havoc on the “home front”: How Russian soldiers kill Ukrainian civilians, fellow Russians — and even each other (The Insider, 30 October)

Analysis and comment:

Serhii Guz: civil society and labour in Ukraine in the third winter of all-out war (Ukraine Information Group, 3 November)

Hanna Perekhoda: ‘Russian political elites are openly promoting a global project’ (Links, 1 November)

In the Shadow of Empires: From a ‘Hezbollah Stronghold’ to ‘Denazified’ Ukraine, the Experience of an Arab-Ukrainian (Turning Point, 30 October)

New Law Raises Religious Freedom Concerns (Human Rights Watch, 30 October)

Lithuania: ‘for us, the fear of being occupied is more real’ (People & Nature, 29 October)

Research of human rights abuses:

Finland to try Russian neo-Nazi Rusich mercenary for war crimes in Ukraine (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, 1 November)

Torture by Russian authorities amounts to crimes against humanity, says UN Commission of Inquiry (UNHCR, 29 October)

Ukrainian POWs tortured for ‘confessions’ to Russia’s war crimes and for show trials (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, October 28th)

International solidarity:

We have completed fundraisers for €7680 (Solidarity Zone, 2 November)

Fundraiser for scary drones (Solidarity Collectives, 30 October)

Upcoming events:

Thursday, 7 November, 19.00. On Zoom. Emergency Forum on the US presidential election with Tanya Vyhovsky (Vermont State Senator), Bohdan Ferens (SD Platform Ukraine) and Alex Sobel MP. Ukraine Solidarity Campaign.Information and registration here.

Monday, 18 November, 18.00. “Political prisoners in Russia and the Occupied Territories of Ukraine”.  Panel discussion with speakers from Memorial, Kharkhiv Human Rights Protection Group and others. Queen Mary University, London, Centre for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies. This is a hybrid event with in-person and on-line attendance. Register on eventbrite here

This bulletin is put together by labour movement activists in solidarity with Ukrainian resistance. To receive it by email each Monday, email us at 2022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com. To stop the bulletin, reply with the word “STOP” in the subject field. More information at https://ukraine-solidarity.org/. We are also on X, Facebook and Substack, and the bulletin is stored online here.

Source: Ukraine Information Group

John Oliver’s compelling but soberly made case for voting for Kamala Harris was pointed out to me by my fellow exile from fascist Russia, Mark Teeter. ||| TRR


Expo of war materiel captured in SMO opens in Petersburg on National Unity Day; visitors handed volunteer army service recruiting brochures

Visitors to the Russia Is My History Park were shown equipment from the Kharkiv and Sumy fronts, including an American Abrams tank and a Bradley IFV. The city hall media outlet Petersburg Diary reports that the exhibition was organized at the behest of Governor Alexander Beglov.

Beglov himself attended the opening. In his speech, Beglov said that, in the SMO [special military operation], the enemy’s vehicles “burn just like they burned during the Great Patriotic War.”

“Only three of the twenty-two ‘death machines’ [on display] are Ukrainian-made. All the rest were made in America, Canada, Europe and even by our neighbors in Finland, who basically have always lived at our expense,” Fontanka quotes the head of the city as saying.

Fontanka reports that there were so many visitors in the park that it was difficult to get close to the [captured] equipment. Those who came to the expo were handed propaganda booklets about volunteering for the army. Volunteers who are sent to the SMO zone are now promised 2.1 million rubles [approx. 19,500 euros] in a lump sum and 210 thousand rubles [approx. 1,950 euros] monthly.

Source: Rotunda (Telegram), 4 November 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. The emphasis, above, is Rotunda’s.

Popular Creeps

Chris Mars, “Popular Creeps” (1992)

Popular creeps are talking bad about us when our back’s turned….

Russia in Contemporary World History: A Hinge Nation in a Multipolar World?

Putin’s Russia, a successor state to the Soviet Union, is challenging American and Western foreign policy by offering a “Multipolar World Order,” an alternative to Western capitalism, liberal democracy, globalization, and the rules-based liberal order. This ideological vision includes an anti-democratic and populist development model, authoritarian male leadership, reinforcement of the civilizational and religious foundation of the nation-state, and conservative cultural values that privilege an abstract community over individual rights. 
 
Foreign policy experts are aware of Russia’s successful diplomatic outreach in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, many of which are built upon Soviet-era (or even pre-Soviet) relationships and a shared critique of Western colonialism and globalization. This conference, “Contemporary Russia in World History” brings scholars together to offer an in-depth exploration of such historical relationships, to periodize, contextualize, and connect contemporary Russia’s place in the rapidly evolving world order, and to create a coherent ideological response to Russia’s global outreach.
 
Most research in American universities perpetuates a Western and Eurocentric understanding of Russian history. The dominant “Russia and the West” paradigm significantly constrains our academic analyses and foreign policy choices while simplifying the complexity of Russia and the so-called “West” as historical actors. This forum builds on the intellectual bedrock of the “Russia and the West,” paradigm that has sustained the field for over a century but seeks to analyze how various states have found common cause with Russia/the Soviet Union over time while advancing national, economic, energy, and technological, and regional interests. Bringing these cases together, we can cast a new light on Russia’s network of multilateral alliances that span the globe, including significant pockets of support within the West itself. Researching Russia’s global entanglements and considering Russia from multiple outside perspectives will allow us not only to move beyond “Russia and the West,” but also to better understand the geopolitical patterns, rivalries, and coalitions of the twenty-first century.   
 
Russia’s changing position on the global stage, from the vanguard of the proletarian revolution to a proponent of the theory of the “civilizational state,” resonates with cultural imperatives, political developments, and economic policies in various parts of the globe. Conference participants will be asked to consider changes and continuities in Russia’s network of alliances over time, and evaluate how they impact the contemporary world order.

Conference Schedule

DAY ONE 

Friday: November 1 

Building/Room: William C. Powers Hall (WCP) 2.302 


9:30 – 10:00 AM – Coffee and Pastries  
 
Panel 1: OPENING DISCUSSION   10:00 – 11:45 AM  
Conference Co-organizers: 
Mary Neuburger (UT Austin) Moderator and Discussant 
Karen Petrone (University of Kentucky, Lexington) Discussant 
Choi Chatterjee (California State University, Los Angeles) Discussant 
 
Russian Perspectives on the Ukraine War and its Origins 
Anatole [sic] Lieven (Quincy Institute)  
 
Russia’s Long Relations with Western Critics of Liberalism 
Jeremi Suri (UT Austin)  
 
The Russian Economy Under Sanctions 
James Galbraith (UT Austin)  
 
Break for Lunch 11:45 AM – 1:00 PM  
 
Panel 2: AFRICA and LATIN AMERICA   1:00 – 2:30 PM  
(Karen Petrone, Moderator)  
 
Anti-Westernism: The Persistent Factor in Russian Relations with Africa 
Thomas Loyd (University of Augusta) 
 
Ghana and Soviet (Russian) Relations from 1957 to the Present 
Nana Osei-Opare (Rice University) 
 
Homeward Bound: Russia’s Return to Latin American and Caribbean Contemporary History 
Sandra Pujals (University of Puerto Rico) 
 
Break 2:30 – 3:00 PM 
 
Panel 3: THE MIDDLE EAST   3:00 – 4:30 PM  
(Choi Chatterjee, Moderator)  
 
The Legacy of Soviet Rhetoric in Middle Eastern Public Discourse 
Margaret Peacock (University of Alabama) 
 
Russia’s Global Outreach to the Dreamworlds of Socialist Modernity 
Alexey Golubev (University of Houston) 
 

DAY TWO

Saturday: November 2 

Room/Building: Robert L/ Patton Hall (RLP) 1.302 E (Glickman Conference Center) 


Panel 4: ASIA    9:00 – 10:30 AM 
(Degi Uvsh, UT Austin, Moderator) 
 
Russia and China: Ideological Allies in the Quest for an Alternative Global Order? Agreement and Divergence. 
Jeanne Wilson (Wheaton College) 
 
Russia’s Relations with Central Asia: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives 
Sarah Cameron (University of Maryland, College Park) 
 
Russia-India: Geopolitical Habit and the Politics of Goodwill 
Sudha Rajagopalan (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands) 
 
Break 10:30 – 11:00 AM 
 
Panel 5: EUROPE   11:00 AM – 12:30 PM  
(Steven Seegel, UT Austin, Moderator) 
 
From “World Language” to the “Russian World”: Russian in Soviet and Post-Soviet International Relations 
Rachel Applebaum (Tufts University) 
 
“Active Measures”: Subterfuge as Foreign Policy 
Faith Hillis (University of Chicago) 
 
Russia’s Influence in Central and Southeast Europe: Before and After the Full-scale Invasion of Ukraine 
Dimitar Bechev (University of Oxford) 
 
Break for Lunch: 12:30 to 2:00 PM 
 
Panel 6: CONCLUDING THOUGHTS     2:00 – 3:30 PM 
Karen Petrone, Mary Neuburger, and Choi Chatterjee 

Source: College of Liberal Arts, University of Texas

In July 2024, leading Western media published texts with disappointing forecasts for Ukraine several times. Initially, more than 60 American analysts demanded that NATO not invite Ukraine to the Alliance, so as not to provoke an even bigger war and conflict between the USA and Russia. On July 10, eight analysts called on the West to start negotiations on ending the war as soon as possible. Both letters were signed by analysts of the American Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. This Institute is an influential think tank that consistently urges not to provoke Russia, to avoid escalation, and to force Ukraine to a ceasefire. In addition, the Institute disseminates theses beneficial to Russian propaganda, which Russians are happy to quote. Babel correspondent Oleksandr Myasishchev researched dozens of works of the Quincy Institute and the biographies of its members and tells where this American think tank came from and why its analytics should be treated with caution.

The Quincy Institute was founded in 2019. Its official goal is to “advance ideas that make US foreign policy less militaristic.” The institute advocates military restraint and peace. It is symbolic that the Institute was named in honor of US President John Quincy Adams, who was against the active participation of the US in European politics and participation in wars on other continents.

“We are building a world where peace is the norm and war is the exception,” the researchers write.

The Institute receives money for its work from donors and philanthropists, mostly charitable funds. The Institute received the first million from the George Soros Foundation and the billionaire Charles Koch Foundation. According to the publication by Texty media, at least three more analytical centers are associated with Koch brothers, which have an isolationist position regarding the war.

“Kochs were the traditional donors of the Republicans, mainly the part of the party that supports traditional capitalism and a cautious, non-military foreign policy. And Soros was donated to the Democrats. But Soros and Koch were united by a common desire to limit the participation of the United States in “endless wars” and to bet “on energetic diplomacy,” Nataliya Kononenko, political scientist and leading researcher of the Department of Political Institutes and Processes of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, explains.

Over the past six months, Quincy Institute has received at least $500,000 each from venture investor Michael Zack, the Peaceshares Fund organization, Charles Kochʼs libertarian Stand Together Trust, and from the largest US donor, Fidelity Charitable. The institute also received funds from the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation.

The instituteʼs chief analyst on Ukrainian issues is a Briton and professor at the Kingʼs College in London, Anatol Lieven. Lieven has been writing about Russia and its international relations for many years. As a journalist, he covered the wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Subsequently, he wrote books about the Chechen wars, the independence of the Baltic states, and in 1999 — the book “Ukraine and Russia: Fraternal Rivalry”. Until 2022, he regularly wrote for the Russian Valdai club, where Putin regularly speaks, and was an expert of this club. He also regularly contributes to the Russia Matters project and has lectured at Russian universities.

Anatol Lieven

The founder of the Institute is historian and colonel of the US Army Andrew Bacevich, who headed it until March 2024. Bacevich is a veteran of the Vietnam War, and his son was killed during the invasion of Iraq. Andrew Bacevich is an ardent opponent of American militarism.

Since March 2024, the Institute has been headed by Steven Heinz. Prior to that, he managed the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, which holds the assets of the Rockefeller companies and engages in philanthropy, for more than 20 years. Since 2002, the foundation has worked on rapprochement and negotiations between the United States and Iran, and also advocated for the independence of Kosovo. Heinz personally played a big role in this.

“Heinz is focused on cooperation with the centrists of both parties. He is a supporter of realpolitik in foreign policy,” explains Natalia Kononenko from the National Academy of Sciences. It was after Heinzʼs arrival that the Quincy Institute became more influential and began working with Democrats.

The institute has its own online publication Responsible Statecraft, where it publishes its research. Itʼs often quoted by well-known Western media. For example, letters signed by Institute employees were published by The Hill, FT, Politico and The Nation.

Institute representatives regularly distribute typical cliches of Russian propaganda. Lieven doesnʼt call the cause of the conflict in Donbas the Russian invasion, but the “nationalist revolution” and “the violent overthrow of President Yanukovych.” He also called the war in Donbas “a civil one” and said that people there have been seeking autonomy for decades. At the same time, Levin admitted that since 2014, the Russian military has been fighting in Donbas, and the separatists are completely dependent on Russia.

The Institute also repeated the Russian thesis that Ukraine should become a federation — because the differences in language and culture in different parts of Ukraine seem to be too strong.

The first study on Ukraine was published by the Institute in June 2021, against the background of news about Russiaʼs preparations for a new invasion. Then the Institute called on the US and its partners to put pressure on Ukraine and Russia to sign a ceasefire based on the Minsk agreements. The institute proposed to return the occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions under the control of Ukraine, but under the conditions of autonomy. And postpone the issue of Crimea to “future generations.”

The Institute urged not to expand NATO, in particular not to include Ukraine in any case. It stated that there are almost no important countries left in Europe outside of the Alliance, and NATOʼs expansion will do little. In addition, the accession of Ukraine to NATO would harm the national security of the United States and create a risk of war with Russia for the States. All because of Putinʼs “legitimate concerns” that NATO weapons will be near Russiaʼs border.

Instead, the US should seek complete neutrality of Ukraine. The Institute did not see any other option — they said, “a new war between Ukraine and Russia can only end with the military defeat of the Ukrainians.” Therefore, before the invasion, the Institute also opposed the supply of weapons to Ukraine.

“This is an extremely bad idea. Helping partisans to maim and kill Russian soldiers may well cause an irreparable rift between Russia and the West,” they explained.

On February 24, 2022, the Institute condemned the Russian invasion and supported Ukraineʼs right to self-defense. At the same time, there were calls to impose the strictest sanctions on Russia, to punish and isolate it.

“Regardless of the legitimacy of at least some of Russiaʼs images regarding the policies of the West and Ukraine, nothing can justify this flagrant violation of international law. Although Russia had legitimate reasons to protest against Ukrainiansʼ discrimination of the linguistic and cultural rights of Russian-speakers in Ukraine, nothing justifies President Putinʼs lies about the Ukrainian genocide and Nazism,” wrote Anatol Lieven.

At that time, Lieven predicted a partisan war and only two options for the development of events: either Russia would occupy Kyiv and create a puppet government, or the countries would agree on the expanded Minsk agreements.

When, at the end of March 2022, Ukraine resisted and liberated the north, Lieven admitted that Ukraine was capable of defending itself. However, he doubted that the country was capable of a major successful counteroffensive. Therefore, in order to prevent a protracted losing war, Ukraine should make “painful compromises”, he stated.

At the same time, Russia cannot suffer a major defeat in the war, wrote another institute analyst, William Hartung. Like, it would undermine the Russian regime and give the world a nuclear failed state, so it is necessary to return to diplomacy, “no matter how difficult it is.”

When Ukraine conducted the Kharkiv counteroffensive in September 2022, the Institute was skeptical. The offensive there was called the “liberation of the countryside”, the institute claimed that the successes were exaggerated. They also believed that in the future it would be difficult for Ukraine to liberate cities, in particular Kherson. One of the reasons is that the people there are supposedly culturally and ethnically closer to Russia. Two months after this statement, Kherson was liberated by the Armed Forces of Ukraine — the soldiers were greeted there with flowers and flags.

“Further successes of Ukraine will threaten Russian control over Crimea and create the risk of nuclear war. Territories whose population is actually loyal to Russia were returned to Ukraine,” the analysts explained.

Since the beginning of the war, the Institute has criticized the active armament of Ukraine. It considered this an escalation. The institute representatives said the weapon supply increases the risk of nuclear war and a confrontation between the US and Russia. In addition, weapons will only prolong the war, make it more destructive, and eventually end up on the black market. The Institute also believes that only American arms manufacturers profit from the war.

“If Ukraine were a US state, it would be in 11th place in terms of the amount of federal funding it receives. The question is not whether the US should support Ukraine, but how much Washington should support it,” Hartung wrote.

Negotiations and peace are the main topic for the Institute regarding Ukraine. Analysts constantly say that it is time to start negotiations, regardless of how successfully the Ukrainian armed forces are fighting.

For the first time, Anatol Lieven wrote about this back on March 3, 2022, when negotiations between Ukraine and Russia began in Belarus. Then he offered the Russians to withdraw to their positions by February 24, and Ukraine to officially establish its neutrality. As soon as Russia withdraws its troops, all sanctions should be lifted. Instead, according to Lieven, Ukraine should have given up Crimea and possibly Donbas for the sake of peace.

“Here, respect for international law must be tempered by considerations of reality, prevention of future conflicts, and the interests of ordinary people in the region. Ukraine has already lost Crimea and cannot get it back due to an endless war, which it will almost certainly lose. The fate of the territories should be decided in democratic referendums under international supervision. This should also apply to the separatist republics of Donbas,” Lieven said.

For Ukraine, the Institute promotes the model of Finland in the middle of the 20th century. Then the country lost the war with the USSR, ceded territories, and in 1948 signed an agreement on friendship and neutrality with the USSR. In this version of the future, according to analysts, Ukraine should become a bridge country between Russia and the West and have good relations with both sides.

The Instituteʼs rhetoric became tougher after the 2023 counteroffensive. According to the Instituteʼs analysts, Ukraine is simply not capable of winning. They explain: Russia has become better at fighting, Ukraine has lost “hundreds of thousands of soldiers”, the West is running out, and sanctions have not stopped Russia. Since then, Lieven no longer suggests going to the borders on February 24, but advises to stop right at the front line. He proposes to decide the fate of the occupied territories “in the future” at negotiations under the auspices of the UN.

“Ukraine has already won in key aspects. “Putin has no hope of subjugating all of Ukraine as a vassal state in the foreseeable future,” Lieven says.

The Institute denies that the concessions will provoke Russia to even greater aggression. Lieven says that only those who do not understand history and international politics think so.

“By this logic, Pakistanʼs claim to Kashmir is a prelude to Pakistanʼs invasion of Myanmar, and Argentinaʼs invasion of the Falkland Islands was part of a plan to invade Brazil. “For ethnic, historical, strategic and political reasons, Donbas, Crimea and the geographical location of Ukraine are vital issues for Russia,” he believes.

Due to this position of the Institute, two key analysts left it in June 2022. Namely, nuclear weapons specialist Joe Cirincione and retired General Paul Eaton. The latter was engaged in the training of Iraqi troops in 2003, when the country was controlled by a coalition led by the United States.

Cirincione says he worked in Quincy because he believed in a more restrained U.S. foreign policy, one that would focus on diplomacy rather than military intervention.

“However, I was shocked when the Instituteʼs leaders applied these principles to the Russian invasion,” Cirincione explains in a commentary to Babel.

Cirincione said that for many months he tried to change the position of his colleagues regarding Ukraine. He failed, and the Institute continued to justify Russia. The “diplomatic solution” promoted by the Institute means the transfer of occupied territories and people to Russia. However, in reality, such a decision would undermine Ukraineʼs defense capabilities and greatly weaken its independence, Cirincione explains to Babel.

“The Institute ignores the dangers and horrors of the Russian invasion, focuses almost exclusively on criticism of the USA, NATO and Ukraine. They justify Russiaʼs actions because they believe that they were provoked by US policy,” Cirincione said. According to him, now the Institute has little influence on the decisions of the White House. However, his strategy is to win the favor of the far-right MAGA movement and its isolationists.

When in the middle of 2022 accusations of isolationism and a pro-Russian position poured down on the Institute, they decided to explain their attitude to the war. Then the Institute again condemned Russia for crimes, but repeated that negotiations and a peace agreement are the only option.

Despite these statements, many publications of the Institute are cited by Russian propagandists. In particular, TASS, Vesti and Russkaya Gazeta. The Instituteʼs research is cited there as proof that the Americans are tired of the war, and that Ukraine is incapable of winning and must agree to Russiaʼs demands.

“Everything I see from them is very friendly to the Kremlin. They either deny Russiaʼs imperial ambitions, which led to the invasion, or actively try to promote Putinʼs appeasement,” Peter Dickinson, a researcher at the Atlantic Council, told Babel.

Translated from Ukrainian by Anton Semyzhenko

List of sources:

“Valdai”. Anatol Liven.

Quincy Institute/ Twitter.

Quincy Institute. Overcoming the threat of war in Ukraine: resolving the conflict in Donbas and the Crimean dispute through negotiations.

Quincy Institute. The position of the Quincy Institute on Russia-Ukraine.

Mother Jones. The main anti-war think tank of the USA is cracking down on Ukraine.

Quincy Institute. Avoiding the danger of protracted conflict in Ukraine.

Responsible Statecraft. Ukraine: What Russia wants, what the West can do.

Responsible Statecraft. Why arming Ukrainian “resistance fighters” would be a bad idea.

Responsible Statecraft. Catastrophe in Ukraine.

Responsible Statecraft. Ukraine should adopt the experience of Finlandʼs struggle against Stalin.

Responsible Statecraft. Bidenʼs role in peace in Ukraine is now clear.

Responsible Statecraft. The West must have an end goal in this new economic war against Moscow.

Responsible Statecraft. How to reach peace in Ukraine.

Responsible Statecraft. The war in urban development, which is incited by the West, will most likely destroy the cities of Ukraine.

Responsible Statecraft. Any aid package for Ukraine should focus on humanitarian aid.

Responsible Statecraft. New aid to Ukraine is on the way — and itʼs more than most states receive in a year.

Responsible Statecraft. What Biden must do immediately to start 2023 off right.

Responsible Statecraft. Review of Ukrainian military successes in a cold, hard perspective.

Russia Matters. What the Trump administration would mean for the war in Ukraine.

The Guardian. Itʼs time to ask: what would a Ukrainian-Russian peace agreement look like?

The Nation. The growth and role of Ukrainian ethnic nationalism.

The Nation. Anatol Lieven on how the Ukrainian war can end.

The Hill. Russia is faltering in Ukraine, but it is unlikely to give up the attack.

Source: Oleksandr Myasishchev and Dmytro Rayevskyi, “The American Quincy Institute calls to hand over the occupied Donbas and Crimea to Russia and stop actively arming Ukraine. Why a well-known think tank justifies aggression?” Babel, 18 July 2024

COLA logo

Professors

Fredric Jameson

In 2006, [Fredric] Jameson spoke at a conference in Moscow and then visited Petersburg for a few days. [Elena] Petrovskaya asked me to show him around the city. Jameson stayed at the apartment of Artemy Magun, who was out of town but left the key. The program was the most predictably capitalist, with opera-schmopera, Malevich-schmalevich, the fountains of Peterhof and other logic of cultural consumption. On the third day I got tired of it and invited Jameson to a birthday party for little Tasya Zaslavskaya in [the painter Anatoly Zaslavsky’s] studio, which was chockablock with preschoolers, cakes, Fanta and balloons. There was also Foma [Thomas] Campbell and dancing. I should re-read Brecht and Method. RIP.

Source: Alexander Skidan (Facebook), 23 September 2024. Translated by Thomas “Foma” Campbell. Photo, above, courtesy of Duke Today.

[Arlie Russell] Hochschild gets a lot right. Still, as an investigative journalist who covers the MAGA movement, her portrayal of Trump’s America sometimes felt incomplete to me. She mentions how a pastor was radicalized by the QAnon conspiracy theory on the Telegram app, but such online worlds, which can become realer for their believers than the physical world, aren’t captured here with the same concrete specificity as what’s happening on the dusty back roads of small-town Kentucky. And her portrayals of the wounded masculine pride and white nationalism that she suggests drive some Trump voters can feel chilly, distanced by sociological and psychological analysis; in person, such emotions are palpably volcanic.

I finished “Stolen Pride” nagged by the sense that she wasn’t giving us the full picture — most of all, of her own place in it as a retired professor from the University of California, Berkeley embedding in Pikeville to explain its residents to themselves and the nation. It’s a position that I suspect triggered at least some stereotypes that conservatives have about liberals thinking they know better. And yet her ethnography is frictionless. There is none of the grinding of opposing viewpoints so common during this contentious political time. There is little sense of what they thought of her and her project.

Instead, Hochschild has produced a seamless election-season-ready explanation of conservatism that might be just a little too neat. What, I kept wondering, would her subjects say was her “deep story”? And would including that viewpoint in her book have destabilized its carefully engineered explanations? If America is increasingly divided into two countries, one liberal and one conservative, what would it have meant to compare their two deep stories in one narrative rather than have one side tell the other how it is?

Source: Doug Bock Clark, “What Makes the Far Right Tick?” New York Times, 10 September 2024

We can all agree that Vladimir Putin is a bloodthirsty brute, whose invasion of Ukraine was a shameful act of aggression. Having said that, I personally would wish this horrible war to end as soon as possible, which will almost certainly mean with some degree of compromise. When Snyder writes that, for America to remain “the land of the free” half a century from now, “Ukraine must win its war against Russia,” does he really believe that’s possible? Does “winning” mean a Russian capitulation comparable to the German generals’ unconditional surrender in May 1945? The only way anything of the kind could conceivably happen would be following a coup to overthrow Putin, a most desirable outcome but improbable at present.

And when [Timothy] Snyder writes that if Ukraine’s “allies fail it, tyrants will be encouraged around the world, and other such wars will follow,” some of us are old enough to feel that we’ve seen this movie before. It was called the domino theory, and it was invoked to justify the Vietnam War — fought in the name of freedom, but bringing much unfreedom in its wake.

This may seem a gloomy and unhelpful way to end a review of a stimulating and well-intentioned book. Of course Snyder is right, in the sense that his heart’s in the right place. I share his horror at crimes past and present. I only wish I could share his optimism about the future.

Source: Geoffrey Wheatcroft, “Can Americans Have Democracy, Freedom and Other Nice Things?” New York Times, 19 September 2024

Danila Davydov

I see the beetle’s quiet race
and how the dragon-fly doth hover.
the vileness of late-soviet life
cannot be grasped by those who’re younger.

the star that shines is not for you
and not for you the tomcat's purring.
just utter murk and drudgery
no matter what yurchak might claim.

and nowadays? while nature peers 
into itself, we seek in vain
to comprehend the somersaults
of active and yet vacant things.

Данила Давыдов

я вижу тихий бег жука
и зависание стрекоз.
всю мерзость позднего совка
ты не поймешь, коль позже взрос.

не для тебя горит звезда
и кот не для тебя урчал.
там только мрак и маета,
что б ни рассказывал юрчак.

а ныне что? природа зрит
в саму себя, и мы вотще
постичь пытаемся кульбит
активных, но пустых вещей.

Source: Ainsley Morse (Facebook), 12 October 2024. Danila Davydov (born 1977) is a poet, critic, and editor. His poem and her translation of it are reprinted here with Professor Morse’s kind permission.