Slovo Journal - Issue Launch

The intensification of the Russo-Ukrainian War over three months ago saw the Russian Federation’s full-scale invasion of its neighbouring country. Russia is single-handedly responsible for the recrudescence of war in Europe for the first time in over two decades. The last few months have seen the entire world’s eyes fixed on Ukraine, as well as our own at Slovo. Of the four research articles which we are delighted to publish as part of the Spring 2022 issue of Slovo, Damir Sedrayev’s (Universidad Carlos III and Universidad Rey Juan Carlos) “The Evolution of Military and Non-Military Means in Russian Strategic Thinking (1991-2022),” offers an insightful contribution as to the causes of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We are equally delighted to publish Ioannis Lainas’ (University College London) “Terror or Errors?: From the Socialist Narrative to the Post-Cold War Era” and Lara Olszowska’s (University College London) “From Hollywood Mobster to Russian Gangster: Representations of Mafia in Coppola’s Godfather Trilogy and Balabanov’s Brother Films.” Two of our film reviews return to the issue’s key subject matter of the Russo-Ukrainian war: Andrii Smytsniuk’s (University of Cambridge) treatment of Kornii Hrytsiuk’s documentary, Train: Kyiv – War (2020) and Anna Kotichenko’s (University of Warsaw) treatment of Zaza Urushadze’s A Friendship That Survived the Wrath of War (2019). Our three book reviews, Mathias Fuelling’s (Temple University) treatment of Jonathan Dimbleby’s Operation Barbarossa: The History of a Cataclysm (2021), Elizabeth Gabriele’s (Shanghai Jiao Tong University) evaluation of the panoramic collection Memories of Terror: Essays on Recent Histories (2021) and Alejandro Perna’s (Higher School of Economics) treatment of Jorge Saborido’s 1917: La Revolución Rusa Cien Años Después (2017), altogether cover a wide array of subject matter.

We welcome you to join us at our virtual launch event for the Spring 2022 issue, at which several of the issue’s contributing authors will be present to discuss their research.