Russia Archives - Public Seminar

Activism

A Year After Cuts to USAID, an Urgent Reminder from the Ukraine-Poland Border

Documentary photographer Nancy Richards Farese captures the effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine and the US’s shutdown of foreign aid

March 9, 2026 • by Nancy Richards Farese

In Przemyśl, a small city on the Ukrainian–Polish border, the train station has become something of a moral center. Late one November evening, fluorescent lights glare against steel rails as the night train from Kyiv pulls in late—again. The delay is familiar now. Russian forces bombed the rail line earlier ...

A Year After Cuts to USAID, an Urgent Reminder from the Ukraine-Poland Border

Activism

Should Universities Just Leave?

How can institutions fostering open inquiry survive authoritarian assaults?

October 23, 2025 • by Anastasija Mladenovska

Over the past year, I have tracked the journeys of five universities caught in the crosshairs of authoritarian pressure: Central European University (CEU) in Hungary; the Higher School of Economics (HSE) and the European University at St. Petersburg (EUSP) in Russia; Nazarbayev University (NU) in Kazakhstan; and the American University ...

Education

Intellectual Violence

The militarization of education in Russia

October 22, 2025 • by Andrei Kolesnikov

In the age of mature Putinism, violence and control, accompanied by a new morality based on so-called “traditional values,” have become crucial instruments for managing Russian society. The use of the education system and cultural institutions to indoctrinate the population—above all young people—is a form of violence, only intellectual rather ...

Activism

Leo Tolstoy Salutes the Student Movement in Russia

When Russian students decided to stop studying at the institutions where they get educated by the whip

May 15, 2025 • by Inessa Medzhibovskaya and Leo Tolstoy

Some lines written very long ago seem to have been written for the current moment. At the University of St. Petersburg in the spring of 1899, students protested the government’s policies and their pressure on university administration. Upon learning about student unrest and being urged by student delegates who were ...

Leo Tolstoy Salutes the Student Movement in Russia

Europe & Central Asia

Vladimir Putin, Man of Yesterday

While the global community dreams of the future, the Kremlin fixates on a retrotopia

February 19, 2025 • by Alex Rossen

In September 2024, the United Nations convened for the Summit of the Future. In it, diverse global communities came together to dream of the utopia tomorrow might offer. Yet as the Russian state declares its desire to restore the territorial holdings of the old Russian empire, these same global communities ...

Europe & Central Asia

To Cancel or Not to Cancel? Questioning the Russian Idea

October 1, 2024 • by George Pattison

Nine months after the invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin delivered a speech in which he argued that although Western leaders always claim to be the champions of freedom, Western liberalism was now engaged in the complete suppression of anything that contradicted its view of what was socially and culturally desirable. ...

To Cancel or Not to Cancel? Questioning the Russian Idea

Education

Academic Dialogue Against the Background of War

There are currently no conversation partners for Western academics within the Russian academy

October 1, 2024 • by Nataliia Viatkina

A recent issue of Aeon featured an article entitled “The Missing Conversation,” with the subtitle “To the detriment of the public, scientists and historians don’t engage with one another. They must begin a new dialogue.” The article amounts to a conversation between the famous scientists and historians of science, professors Lorraine Daston and ...

Academic Dialogue Against the Background of War

Europe & Central Asia

Thinking in Dark Times: Life, Death, and Social Solidarity

Living through war can transform how we engage with philosophy

September 30, 2024 • by Aaron James Wendland and Volodymyr Yermolenko

This lecture was delivered as part of a benefit conference for the Ukrainian academy that Aaron James Wendland organized in March 2023 at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. The benefit conference was designed to provide financial support for academic and civic ...

Thinking in Dark Times: Life, Death, and Social Solidarity

Education

Ukrainian Studies Struggle Against Imperial Heritage

Preserving identity

September 26, 2024 • by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed

In the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the international community rallied behind Ukrainians’ determination to defend their country. Vital financial aid was accompanied by efforts to better understand a nation that did not surrender in the face of the Russian military forces that overwhelmingly surpassed the ...

Ukrainian Studies Struggle Against Imperial Heritage

Europe & Central Asia

Putin and Patriarch Kirill’s Promise of Universal Liberation

Why some young men in America are converting to Orthodox Christianity

April 10, 2024 • by Katherine Kelaidis

Vladimir Putin is on track to be the longest reigning Russian leader since Catherine the Great. The two resilient despots have more in common than one might imagine. ...

Putin and Patriarch Kirill’s Promise of Universal Liberation

Democracy

The Man Who Was Too Strong

Alexei Navalny will forever remain a symbol of hope for change in Russia

February 20, 2024 • by Anastasia Shteinert

One of the first rallies I covered as a journalist was the "voters' strike" in January 2018 in Saint Petersburg. Navalny declared the strike when he was barred from participating in the presidential elections due to his criminal record. Navalny's work and his courage often inspired me to continue my ...

Politics

Diaries of War

Voices of witness from Ukraine and Russia

November 20, 2023 • by Nora Krug

As the events of this war unfolded, I reached out to K., a Russia-born Ukrainian journalist in Kyiv, and D., an artist from St. Petersburg. I asked K. and D. if I could interview them to create a visual, weekly diary that would juxtapose their contrasting voices, and that would ...