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Through our activities we promote knowledge and discussion of Russia in the broader academic community and with the public at large.
Every year, as part of the Russian Studies Seminar Series, SSEES presents a number of mini-series and one-off events (including the 'Modern Russian History Series' and 'Культура и общество современной России') which provide a forum for profiling cultural, historical, linguistic, literary and social sciences research into Russia, past and present.
SSEES is the largest centre for Russian studies in the UK, with over 20 full-time Russian specialists covering language, literature, culture, history, economics and political science. The SSEES Library collection on Russia and the former Soviet Union is one of the major resources in the UK. The Post-Soviet Press Group and Russian Cinema Research Group further contribute to our un-rivalled expertise in Russian Studies.
Please see the schedule below for details on our forthcoming events.
Upcoming Events
Spring Term 2018 Program
7 February 2018, 6:45pm-9pm, Darwin B40 Lecture Theatre, UCL | McMafia: The Reality |
| 16-17 February 2018, 9am-5pm, Room 347, UCL SSEES | Workshop: 'Russia's Global Legal Trajectories: International Law in Eurasia Past and Present' |
16 February 2018, 6:30pm-8pm, Pushkin House | Public forum (with Pushkin House): 'Russia as Maker and Breaker of International Law' |
| 21 February 2018, 4:00pm-6:00 pm, Room 347, UCL SSEES | The paradoxes of Eduard Limonov: a Poet of Avant-guard and Leader of National-Bolshevik Party |
| 30 April 2018, 6pm-8pm, Room 433, UCL SSEES | Socialist Internationalism and New Histories of International Political Economy: A Roundtable |
| 14 May 2018, 6:00pm-8:00 pm, Room 433, UCL SSEES | Pop Music from Stagnation to Perestroika: How Economic Reform Broke East European Cultural Networks |
| 21 May 2018, 6:00pm-8:00 pm, Room 433, UCL SSEES | Claire Shaw book talk on 'Deaf in the USSR' |
Past Events
View past events including titles, summaries, speakers and podcasts.
- Autumn Term 2017
- Spring Term 2017
9 January 2017
6-8pm,
Room 433, UCL SSEESElizabeth White (University of the West of England):"Russian Refugee Children and Humanitarianism in Inter-War Europe"
8 February 2017
4.15-6pm
Room 432, UCL SSEESAleksandar Levashov: ’In memory of Josef Brodsky’ 'Культура и общество современной России' mini-series 22 February 2017
4pm-6pm
Room 347, UCL SSEES'Post-Soviet Rock Music: Politics and Aesthetics' ('Пост-советская рок-музыка: политика и эстетика')
'Культура и общество современной России' mini-series
6 March 2017
6-8pm,
Room 433, UCL SSEESAndy Willimott (Reading): Book Talk 'Living the Revolution: Urban Communes and Soviet Socialism, 1917-1932'
Oxford University Press, 201724 April 2017 6-8pm,
Drayton House B06, UCL, 30 Gordon Street, London, WC1H 0AXGeoffrey Hosking (UCL SSEES). 'The Communist who undermined Communism: Alexander Tvardovskii in post-Stalinist Russia.’ 8 May 2017
6-8pm,
Room TBC, UCL SSEESAnatoly Pinsky (EUSPb): 'A Soviet Union: The Personal Correspondence of Stalin-Era Graduate Students in Love, 1945-1953' - Autumn Term 2016
2016-2017 Autumn Programme
7-8 October 2016
7 Oct: 1-5pm Common Ground, UCL IAS, Wilkins Building South Wing
8 Oct: 10-5pm Room 433, UCL SSEESBorders of Bio-politics: Gender, Population and Power in Modern Russia
'Modern Russian History' mini-series24 October 2016
6-8pm
Room 433, UCL SSEESContemporary Russian writers: A conversation with Aleksandr Snegirev, Elena Chizhova and Igor Shaitanov.
'Культура и общество современной России' mini-series
28 October 2016
5-7pm
Room 432, UCL SSEESDr. William E. Pomeranz: 'The Provisional Government’s Legal Experiment in 1917'
31 October 2016
6-8pm
Room 433, UCL SSEESSarah Badcock (University of Nottingham)- 'Experiencing Siberian exile in late Imperial Russia’
'Modern Russian History' mini-series1 November 2016
6-8pm
Room 347, UCL SSEES“Decommunisation" and the Reshaping of National Memory in Ukraine and Beyond
Panel Discussion co-organized by the Ukrainian Institute, London and UCL SSEES
Special Colloquium mini-series14 November 2016
6-8pm
Room 433, UCL SSEESAnna Gorsuch (University of British Columbia)- Sex, Race, and Revolution: Cuba in Soviet Imagination and Memory
'Modern Russian History' mini-series30 November 2016
4-6pm UCL Gordon Street (25) Maths 500Dr Svetlana Stephenson 'Gangs of Russia, From the Streets to the Corridors of Power'
'Культура и общество современной России' mini-series5 December 2016
6.30-8PM
Room 433, UCL SSEESEgle Rindzeviciute (Kingston). Book talk- 'The Power of Systems: How Policy Sciences Opened Up the Cold War World'
'Modern Russian History' mini-series- Spring Term 2016
2015-16 Spring Programme
CO-HOSTED WITH RUSSIAN CINEMA RESEARCH GROUP
Anna Toropova (Cambridge)
Probing the Heart and Mind of the Viewer: Scientific Studies of Film and Theatre Audiences in the Soviet Union, 1917-1938
11 January Room 432CO-HOSTED WITH RUSSIAN CINEMA RESEARCH GROUP
Catriona Kelly (Oxford)
‘His Majesty the Working Class’: Iurii Klepikov and Vitalii Mel’nikov’s Mother’s Got Married, Lenfil’m, and the Aesthetics of ‘Contemporary Life’ in the Soviet Cinema, 1961-1970
25 January Room 432Gabriel Gorodetsky (Quondam Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford)
The Maisky Diaries: Revelations of Stalin’s emissary to London
Thursday 4 February G21 Ramsay Lecture Theatre, Christopher Ingold building, 20 Gordon StreetNick Baron (Nottingham)
Cartography and Cultural Revolution: Maps, Modernity and the New Soviet Man
8 February Room 433Julia Leikin (UCL SSEES)
Between Istanbul and Sevastopol: A Tale of Plunder, Bureaucracy, and Betrayal, 1806-1856
22 February Room 433Juliane Fürst (Bristol)
Life and Love of the Gerla: In Search of the Female Soviet Hippie
7 March Room 433Tatiana Shcherbina
Self-censorship in modern Russia: Special lecture and poetry reading with Russian poet and critic Tatiana Shcherbina
Thursday 10 March Room 432 & the Masaryk SCRMaria Mileeva (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
From Censorship to Self-criticism: Debating Socialist Realism at the Moscow Union of Artists (MOSKh) in the 1930's
21 March Room 433David Christian (Macquarie University Australia)
Inner Eurasia from Khan Mongke to Putin
Tuesday 3 May Masaryk SCR- Autumn Term 2015
2015-16 Autumn Programme
Modern Russian History Seminars: This is an advanced seminar series supported by the UCL SSEES Centre for Russian Studies and the London School of Economics
Sheila Fitzpatrick (University of Sydney and University of Chicago)
'Stalin’s Team in the Great Purges: Perpetrators and Potential Victims' and launch of her book, On Stalin’s Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics
Wednesday 8 October 2015 6pm - 8pmKristy Ironside (University of Manchester)
Socialism’s Low-Price Guarantee: Late Stalinism and the Retail Economy, 1945-1954
Monday 19 October 2015 6:30pm - 8pmKiril Tomoff (University of California, Riverside)
Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition during the Early Cold War, 1945-1958
Monday 26 October 2015 6pm - 8pmDavid Moon (University of York)
The Amerikan Steppe: Influences from Russia and Ukraine on the Great Plains, 1870s-1930's
Monday 2 November 2015 6pm - 8pmAlfred Rieber (CEU)
Stalin and the Struggle for Supremacy in Eurasia
Monday 16 November 2015 6pm - 8pmJennifer Keating (Institute for Historical Research, London)
Roses in the desert: Environmental change and the image-world of late imperial Central Asia
Monday 30 November 2015 6pm - 8pmYanni Kotsonis (NYU)
Taxes and Happiness: How Fiscal Reform Made Taxes Less Burdensome but More Creepy in Russia, Europe, and North America since the Eighteenth Century
Wednesday 16 December 2015 6pm - 8pm- Spring Term 2015
2014-15 Spring Programme
Modern Russian History Seminars: This is an advanced seminar series supported by the UCL SSEES Centre for Russian Studies and the London School of Economics
‘Woe to the Vanquished!’ Siberian Exile as Revolutionary Battleground, 1880-1905 - Daniel Beer (Royal Holloway)
2 February 2015, 6pm, UCL SSEES Room 433
The Florida and California of the Soviet Union’: Sochi and the Invention of the Soviet Subtropics - Johanna Conterio (Birkbeck)
23 February 2015, 6pm, UCL SSEES Room 433
Russia’s Wounded During The First World War: Medicine and Politics - Peter Waldron (University of East Anglia)
2 March 2015, 6pm, UCL SSEES Room 347
There Is Indifference and No Little Apathy’: The Culture and Practices of the Soviet Censorship Agency - Samantha Sherry (University of Oxford)
23 March 2015, 6pm, UCL SSEES Room 433
Yanni Kotsonis (New York University)
8 May 2015, 6pm, UCL SSEES Room 433
- Autumn term 2014
Prof Vsevolod Bagno, Director of Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House), Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg
6 October 2014
Room 431, SSEES
will speak IN RUSSIAN on "Англия и русско-английские литературные и культурные связи в собраниях Пушкинского Дома" ('England and Russo-English Literary and Cultural Links in the Collections of Pushkin House'). The presentation will be accompanied by brief notes in English.
Modern Russian History Seminar
This advanced seminar series provides a forum for leading scholars to present their most recent research on late tsarist and Soviet history. This term the focus is on social and cultural history, with papers on Imperial Russia's radical right, trafficking victims, Bolshevik images of power, as well as the development of Soviet radio culture and the genre of biography writing during late socialism.
Conservatives or Radicals? Right-wing factions in the final years of the Russian Empire
George Gilbert (Oxford)
6 October 2014 6pm
Room 433, SSEES
This paper will examine the radical right in the Russian Empire between 1900 and 1914.
In particular, it will consider whether the groups that emerged can be more usefully considered to be radicals or conservatives, and what the appearance of these groups tell us about the instability of the Tsarist regime and the wider crisis in Russian conservatism in the years immediately preceding the First World War.
Miraculous Icons and Bolshevik Power
Steve Smith (Oxford)
20 October 2014 6pm
Room 433, SSEES
In 1932 an activist in the League of Militant Godless declared that the ‘icon is the centre of the counter-revolutionary movement’, a hyperbolic claim to be sure, but one that testifies to the symbolic potency of the icon in Russian religious culture.
The talk will ask why there was an unprecedented discovery of thousands of ‘self-renewing’ icons in the 1920s and will explore the meaning of this for believers. It will look also at the attempts by the Soviet authorities to curb this wave of miracles through a mix of science and coercion and, during the years of collectivization, a brief resort to iconoclasm.
Reinventing Revolutionary Lives: Writing and Reading biography in late socialism
Polly Jones (Oxford)
10 November 2014 6pm
Room 433, SSEES
There was a biography boom in the post-Stalinist Soviet Union. Alongside the long-standing 'Lives of Remarkable People' series, which continued to attract an avid fan-base and to produce biographies of a startling variety of figures, many other Soviet publishers in the decades after Stalin's death also embarked on large-scale biographical projects that attracted large audiences and profitable sales, played an important role in Soviet propaganda and contributed to the 'historical turn' in the Brezhnev era. One of the most successful and prolific of these enterprises was the 'Fiery Revolutionaries' series (1968-1990), of over 150 biographies featuring an array of post-Stalinist writers (Vasilii Aksenov, Vladimir Voinovich, Iurii Trifonov, Anatolii Gladilin and many others), which became a major forum for the rethinking of the revolutionary past and socialist subjectivity from the late 1960s to the Soviet collapse. Based on extensive archival and oral history research, my paper explores the series as a crucible of experimentation with new forms of Soviet propaganda, historical writing and biographical form, and theorises it as a 'grey zone' between conformity and dissidence that can illuminate the broader political and cultural dilemmas of late socialism.
Listening Out: Cold War Radio and the Soviet Audience
Kristin Roth-Ey (SSEES)
24 November 2014 5:15pm
Room 433, SSEES
Clandestine Emigration and the Trafficked Subject in Late Imperial Russia
Philippa Hetherington (Sydney)
1 December 2014, room 433, SSEES
Between 1880 and 1917, over two million Russian subjects emigrated across the empire's western borders, most clandestinely as a result of the Tsarist state's de jure criminalization of emigration. This talk will examine how the imperial state confronted the reality of ‘illegal’ emigration in part through engagement with the emerging international language of trafficking, in particular trafficking in women for the purposes of prostitution (torgovliia zhenshchinami). Focusing on the Black Sea region, which was frequently conceptualised as a space of porous borders and nefarious traffickers, I will ldiscuss the ways in which fears of an apparent trade in women between Russian and Ottoman empires were mobilised to support the greater securitisation and surveillance of the border, and of the empire’s mobile subjects, more generally.
- Spring Term 2014
Playing the ‘Great Game’ in the 1920s: Soviet-Indian Cultural Interactions
Professor Katerina Clark (Yale)
14 May 2014
Revisiting Ivan Fedorov's Legacy in Early Modern Europe - An International Conference
The 450th Anniversary of Ivan Fedorov's Acts and Epistles (Apostol) and the 440th Anniversary of His Primer (Azbuka)
On 9 May 2014, the CRS commemorated the sixteenth-century origins of printing in Russia and Ukraine with a conference at the British Library organized by Sergei Bogatyrev (UCL SSEES) and Katia Rogatchevskaia (British Library).
Focusing on the activities of Ivan Fedorov in their international context, 'Revisiting Ivan Fedorov's legacy in early-modern Europe' was supported by SSEES, CEELBAS, UCL European Institute and UCL Centre for Early Modern Exchange.
> Watch highlights from the conference on the SSEES YouTube channel
> Download the conference programme
> Download the conference flyer
9 May 2014
Clemency in the boudoir: Theatre and the making of imperial myths in eighteenth-century Russia
Alexei Evstratov (Oxford)
24 March 2014
The Limitations of Autocratic Power: Nicholas I and the Old Believers
Tom Marsden (UCL SSEES)
3 February 2014
Living the Revolution: the urban communes of early Soviet Russia
Andy Willimott (UCL SSEES)
27 January 2014
- Spring Term 2013
Spring Term 2013
The Cinematic Spaces of the Soviet Thaw: From Panoramic Vistas to Gendered Screens
Russian Cinema Research Group
Lida Oukaderova (Rice University, Houston)
11 March 2013
The Orthodox Church in the New Russia: A Force for Political Democratization?
Joint seminar with Centre for European Politics, Security and Integration (CEPSI)
Professor John Burgess (Pittsburgh Theological Seminary)
4 March 2013
The Role of Intertitles in Soviet Silent Film: the case of Aleksandr Granovskii's Evreiskoe schast´e (1925)
Russian Cinema Research Group
Rosie Bainbridge (Cambridge University)
4 March 2013
Moving House: Representing Interior Spaces in Early Russian Cinema (Bauer, Barnet, Room)
Russian Cinema Research Group
Maria Pasholok (Oxford University)
18 February 2013
Gogol and the Gauchos
Film screening of 'Cossacks in Argentina' (2010) and conversation with director,
Federico Windhausen.(A collaboration of the UCL Centre for Transnational History and the Russian Cinema Research Group)
4 February 2013
First Films of the Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and the Genocide of the Jews, 1938-1946, Pittsburgh University Press
Followed by discussion
Russian Cinema Research Group
Dr Jeremy Hicks (Queen Mary, University of London)
28 January 2013
The Resurrected Tsar: New research on Ivan the Terrible's son Dmitrii
Professor Chester Dunning (Texas A&M University)
14 January 2013
- Autumn Term 2012
Autumn Term 2012
The Fabrication of the Zerentui Conspiracy of 1828 and the Half-Life of the Decembrist Movement
Dr Daniel Beer (Royal Holloway, University of London)
10 December 2012
Robert Flaherty and Soviet Documentary
Russian Cinema Research Group
Raisa Sidenova (Yale University)
3 December 2012
An Inexpiable Debt: Stalinist Cinema and the Discourse of Happiness
Russian Cinema Research Group
Dr Anna Toropova (UCL SSEES)
26 November 2012
The Kolyma Notebooks: Shalamov's Response, in Verse, to the Russian Poetic Tradition
Robert Chandler (London)
Monday 19 November 2012
Launch of Dr Richters' new book, The Post-Soviet Russian Orthodox Church: Politics, Culture and Greater Russia (Routledge, 2012)
12 November 2012
"Everybody Dies But Me": Female authorship, youth culture and marginality in the New Russian Cinema
Russian Cinema Research Group
Dr Julia Vassilieva (Monash University, Melbourne)
12 November 2012
The Search for Early Russian and Old Believer manuscripts in Modern Russia
Professor Alexander Bobrov (Institute of Russian Literature, St. Petersburg)
Monday 29 October 2012
Working on Target - A foreigner's take on Zel´dovich and Sorokin
The renowned British actress talks about her starring role in Aleksandr Zel´dovich's film Mishen´ (2011)
Russian Cinema Research Group
Justine Waddell
22 October 2012
The Tarkovskii scholar José Manuel Mouriño presents his film The Bright Days.
Notes about the Filming of Nostalghia, by Andrei Tarkovsky (60 minutes)
Followed by discussion.
Russian Cinema Research Group
8 October 2012
- Spring Term 2012
Spring Term 2012
Where Russia Was "Ahead" of Europe: Russian Empire in Comparative Perspective
Dr Michael Khodorkovsky (Loyola University Chicago)
15 May 2012
Between a Rugged Bear and a Polished Gentleman: The Life and Opinions of Alexis Eustaphieve, the Russian Consul and a "British Agent"
Dr Ilya Vinitsky (University of Pennsylvania)
14 May 2012
Serebrianyj vek kak subkul´tura [The Silver Age as Subculture]
Professor Nikolai Bogomolov (Head of Department of Literary and Artistic Criticism, Moscow State University)
30 April 2012
Young Women's Writing from Russia
Natasha Perova (Publisher, Glas) and Winner of the Debut Prize for Russian Fiction
19 April 2012
Mitingi and Putingi: 21st-Century Russian
Michele Berdy (Author of 'The Russian Word's Worth: A Humorous and Informative Guide to Russian Language, Culture and Translation')
18 April 2012
Bloomsbury's Little-Known Russian Jew and His Not-So-Little Influence on the Woolfs, D.H. Lawrence, and Katherine Mansfield
Centre for Russian Studies
Professor Galya Diment (University of Washington, Seattle)
21 March 2012
New Women's Writing in Russia, Central and Eastern Europe
Centre for Russian Studies
Professor Rosalind Marsh (University of Bath)
19 March 2012
Attack of the Soviet Bs: Corman, Cosmos, and the American Mainstream
Russian Cinema Research Group
Dr Alastair Renfrew (University of Durham)
12 March 2012
Soviet Science Fiction and Russian film, 2: The Strugatskii Brothers' 'Khromaia sud´ba' and Arkadii Sirenko's 'Iskushenie B'
Russian Cinema Research Group
Dr Andrei Rogatchevski (University of Glasgow)
5 March 2012
A History of the Soviet: The Lingua Franca of Soviet Modernity
Centre for Russian Studies
Dr Anna Krylova (Duke University)
27 February 2012
Francophonie in Pre-Revolutionary Russia
Centre for Russian Studies
Professor Derek Offord (University of Bristol)
20 February 2012
Soviet Science Fiction and Russian film, 1: Konstantin Lopushanskii directs the Strugatskiis: 'The Ugly Swans and Letters of a Dead Man'
Centre for Russian Studies
Dr Muireann Maguire (Wadham College Oxford)
6 February 2012
Breaking the Iron Curtain: Theological and Economic Discourse in the St Petersburg Religious-Philosophical Meetings
Centre for Russian Studies
Dr Adam Ure (London)
23 January 2012
Genres in the Russian Blogosphere: from Futuristic Fiction to Fairy Tales
Centre for Russian Studies
Dr Natalia Rulyova (University of Birmingham)
16 January 2012
Autumn Term 2011
Electric Speech: Dziga Vertov, Esfir´ Shub and the Technologies of Sound
Russian Cinema Research Group
Professor Lilya Kaganovsky (University of Illinois)
12 December 2011
Leninburg: Remembering a City's Past
Centre for Russian Studies
Professor Catriona Kelly (New College, Oxford)
5 December 2011
Symposium: The Cinema of Aleksandr Sokurov
Presented in association with the BFI and I.B. Tauris
Russian Cinema Research Group
3 December 2011
On the Usefulness of Beloved Tyrants: History, Social Discipline and Trauma in Russia
Dr Kevin M.F. Platt (University of Pennsylvania)
2 November 2011
A Flame with Protruding Fibres: Eisenstein on Synaesthesia
Russian Cinema Research Group
Dr Robert Robertson (independent researcher, the author of Eisenstein on the Audiovisual: The Montage of Music, Image and Sound in Cinema, 2010)
31 October 2011
Landscape and Lyric in the Songs of Rimsky-Korsakov
Centre for Russian Studies
Dr Philip Bullock (Wadham College, Oxford)
17 October 2011
History of Today: Esfir´ Shub's Segodnia (1929-1930)
Russian Cinema Research Group
Dr Anke Hennig (Free University of Berlin)
10 October 2011
- Autumn Term 2011
Autumn Term 2011
Electric Speech: Dziga Vertov, Esfir´ Shub and the Technologies of Sound
Russian Cinema Research Group
Professor Lilya Kaganovsky (University of Illinois)
12 December 2011
Leninburg: Remembering a City's Past
Centre for Russian Studies
Professor Catriona Kelly (New College, Oxford)
5 December 2011
Symposium: The Cinema of Aleksandr Sokurov
Presented in association with the BFI and I.B. Tauris
Russian Cinema Research Group
3 December 2011
On the Usefulness of Beloved Tyrants: History, Social Discipline and Trauma in Russia
Dr Kevin M.F. Platt (University of Pennsylvania)
2 November 2011
A Flame with Protruding Fibres: Eisenstein on Synaesthesia
Russian Cinema Research Group
Dr Robert Robertson (independent researcher, the author of Eisenstein on the Audiovisual: The Montage of Music, Image and Sound in Cinema, 2010)
31 October 2011
Landscape and Lyric in the Songs of Rimsky-Korsakov
Centre for Russian Studies
Dr Philip Bullock (Wadham College, Oxford)
17 October 2011
History of Today: Esfir´ Shub's Segodnia (1929-1930)
Russian Cinema Research Group
Dr Anke Hennig (Free University of Berlin)
10 October 2011
- Spring Term 2011
Spring Term 2011
Centre for Russian Studies
Convenor: Maria Rubins
In the 2010-2011 academic year, we will feature presentations from international experts on a range of topics dealing with Russian culture, history, thought and politics.
Russian Cinema Research Group: "Cinema of the Soviet Period"
Convenors: Philip Cavendish and Julian Graffy (UCL SSEES)
The Russian Cinema Research Group was founded at SSEES in 2002. This term its seminars will all take a comparative approach to the study of the cinema of the Soviet period. The first will compare the representation of visual space in the films about World War Two of the Stalinist and Thaw periods. The second will look at the career of Mikhail Kalatozov, most famous for his Thaw masterpiece The Cranes are Flying, from the vantage point of his beginnings in the 1920s. The third will examine a Thaw period film by Iuliia Solntseva in the context of the imagery and attitudes of the 1930s.
The Warped Woof: The Guard Dog Archetype in Soviet Cinema
Russian Cinema Research Group
Muireann Maguire (Wadham College Oxford)
May 9 2011
The Unpublished Scripts and the Unfinished Projects of Kira Muratova: Reconstructing the Coherence of an Oeuvre
Russian Cinema Research Group
Eugenie Zvonkine (Université de Paris, 8)
March 14 2011
Tourism, Vacations, and Socialist Consumption in the Post-Stalin USSR
Centre for Russian Studies
Diane Koenker (University of Illinois)
February 28 2011
Propaganda State in Crisis: Stalinism during the 1930s
Centre for Russian Studies
David Brandenberger (Richmond University, USA)
15 February 2011
Darwin and Solov´ev
Centre for Russian Studies
David Bethea (Oxford University/University of Wisconsin)
January 31 2011
Remembering (in) the Dovzhenko Studio Films of the 1960s: The Case of 'Bilyi khmary' ('Belye tuchi'), Rolan Serhiienko, 1968
Russian Cinema Research Group
JJ Gurga (UCL SSEES)
January 24 2011
Celebrity Monks in Late Imperial Russia
Centre for Russian Studies
Simon Dixon (UCL SSEES)
January 17 2011
UCL SSEES Guest Lecture: Ideas against Ideocracy: The Platonic Drama of Russian Thought
Mikhail Epstein (Emory University)
January 10 2011
- Autumn Term 2010
Autumn Term 2010
Russian Volterianism in the 18th Century
Centre for Russian Studies
Victoria Frede (University of California, Berkeley)
December 13 2010
More Than Merely Molecules of Enthusiasm: Iuliia Solntseva's 'Poema o more' (Poem of the Sea, 1958) in the Context of 1930s Construction Films
Russian Cinema Research Group
Milena Michalski (King's College, London)
December 6 2010
Rebels, Rumours, and Role Models: Mikhail Artsybashev's 'Sanin' (1907) and the Search for New Sincerity in Late Imperial Russia
Centre for Russian Studies
Otto Boele (Leiden University)
November 29 2010
Kalatozov. The Beginnings
Russian Cinema Research Group
Sergei Kapterev (Nauchno-issledovatel´skii institut kinoiskusstva, Moscow)
November 8 2010
Family Despotism and the Rights of the Person: The Politics of the Personal in Late Imperial Russia
Centre for Russian Studies
Barbara Engel (University of Colorado)
October 27 2010
Twenty-First Century History and Politics in Russia in the Context of Eastern and Central Europe
Centre for Russian Studies
Alexei Miller (Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Manchester University; Central European University; Russian Academy of Sciences)
October 25 2010
Suturing Zoya's Wounds: Visual Space in Stalinist and Thaw WWII Cinema
Russian Cinema Research Group
Andrei Shcherbenok (Royal Society Newton International Fellow, Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies, University of Sheffield)
October 18 2010
- Spring Term 2010
Spring Term 2010
UCL SSEES Guest Lecture: Dynasty and Law in the Representation of Russian Monarchy
Professor Richard Wortman (Columbia University)
5 May 2010
The Ruins as Authentic Alterity: Joseph and Alexander Brodsky's Meditations on the Necessity of Decay
Professor Andreas Schönle (QMUL)
Monday 8 March 2010
The Moscow Kremlin, or How Do Buildings Remember?
Catherine Merridale (QMUL)
Monday 22 February 2010
How Football Explains Soviet Life: The Case of Spartak, Moscow
Robert Edelman (University of California, San Diego)
Monday 25 January 2010
- Spring Term 2009
Spring Term 2009
Centre for Russian Studies: Russian Perceptions of the World
Convenor: Sergei Bogatyrev
This series seeks to examine how Russia views the surrounding world. We will explore the ambiguity of the perception of the world by Russians who see it a source of danger and as a source of new knowledge and practices. To what extent have Russian culture and politics affected the Russian perception of the world in a historical perspective? How do the Russian views of East and West contribute to Russian identity? Specialists in Russian history, literature and culture will address these issues in this series. Their talks will cover the whole period of Russian history from Old Rus' to post-Soviet Russia.
Russian Cinema Research Group: 100 Years of Russian Film
Convenors: Philip Cavendish (UCL SSEES), Julian Graffy (UCL SSEES), Vlad Strukov (University of Leeds), Emma Widdis (Cambridge University).
The centenary of feature film production in Russia is celebrated on 15 October 2008, which marks one hundred years since the release of Vladimir Romashkov's film Sten'ka Razin (Free Men of the Lower Volga). The Russian Cinema Research Group, which was founded at SSEES in 2002, is marking the centenary with a series of 10 seminars by Group members, one devoted to each decade. The seminars will run during all three terms of the academic year 2008-2009. They will all be based around films held in the UCL SSEES film collection.
A Full-Frontal History of the Romanov Dynasty
Ernest Zitser (Duke University)
24 March 2009
Physical Comfort vs Eternal Salvation: Foreign Physicians and the Conflict over the Utility of Nature in Muscovy
Russian Cinema Research Group
Clare Griffin (UCL SSEES)
23 March 2009
The Eighth Decade: Films about Young People. Sergei Solov´ev - ASSA, 1987
Russian Cinema Research Group
Birgit Beumers (University of Bristol)
16 March 2009
Perceptions of the West in Post-Soviet Culture
Russian Perceptions of the World
Rosalind Marsh (University of Bath)
9 March 2009
The Seventh Decade: Soviet Cinema in the TV Age: Tat´iana Lioznova - Semnadtsat´ mgnovenii vesny (Seventeen Moments of Spring), 1973
Russian Cinema Research Group
Stephen Lovell (King's College London)
2 March 2009
UCL SSEES Guest Lecture: Metaphor and Metonymy (in Relation to the Reforms of Peter the Great)
Professor Boris Uspenskii (Università degli Studi di Napoli 'L'Orientale')
9 February 2009
Europe as Metaphor and Metonymy (in Relation to the Reforms of Peter the Great)
Boris Uspenskii (Università degli Studi di Napoli 'L'Orientale')
9 February 2009
The Subversion of Stereotypes: Perceptions of East and West among Russian Orientalists at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Russian Perceptions of the World
Vera Tolz (University of Manchester)
2 February 2009
The Sixth Decade: New Waves and New Realisms in Soviet Film. Marlen Khutsiev - Iul´skii dozhd´ (July Rain), 1966
Russian Cinema Research Group
Susan Larsen (University of Chicago)
26 January 2009
The Fifth Decade: Metatextuality, Ekranizatsiia and Post-Stalinism. Aleksandr Alov and Vladimir Naumov - Pavel Korchagin, 1956
Russian Cinema Research Group
Stephen Hutchings (University of Manchester)
12 January 2009
- Autumn Term 2008
Autumn Term 2008
Russian Cinema, the Fourth Decade: Soviet Representations of Nazi Atrocity. Mark Donskoi - Raduga (The Rainbow), 1944
Russian Cinema Research Group
Jeremy Hicks (Queen Mary, University of London)
24 November 2008
Perceptions: Western Divinatory and Occult Literature and Practices in Russia after Perestroika
Faith Wigzell (UCL SSEES)
17 November 2008
Russian Cinema, the Third Decade: Borderline Obsessive. A Soviet Cinematic Preoccupation of the 1930s. Vasilii Zhuravlev - Granitsa na zamke (The Border is Locked), 1937
Russian Cinema Research Group
Julian Graffy (UCL SSEES)
10 November 2008
Perceptions: Old Russian Views of the World
William Ryan (Warburg Institute)
27 October 2008
Russian Cinema, the Second Decade: From 'Lost' to 'Found': the 'Rediscovery' of Sergei Eizenshtein's Dnevnik Glumova (Glumov's Diary), 1923
Russian Cinema Research Group
Philip Cavendish (UCL SSEES)
20 October 2008
Russian Film at 100: Art-House Identity and the State's Autobiography
Joint seminar of the Centre for Russian Studies and Russian Cinema Research Group
Nancy Condee (University of Pittsburgh)
13 October 2008
Russian Cinema, the First Decade: The First Steps towards the Creation of a New Art. Vladimir Romashkov - Sten'ka Razin, 1908
Russian Cinema Research Group
Rachel Morley (UCL SSEES)
29 September 2008
- Spring Term 2008
Spring Term 2008
After the Thaw, Before Glasnost': artists and the Soviet state during late socialism
Convenor: Dr Polly Jones
This series explores the cultural politics of the Brezhnev era, a period that has recently attracted renewed scholarly interest from social and cultural historians, who have started to challenge the conventional image of the period as one of stagnation, repression and disillusionment. Instead, they suggest that the era was characterised by complex and constantly changing relationships between the Soviet state and its people, between the individual citizen and Soviet ideology, and between 'official' and 'unofficial' culture. These new perspectives on the period between the 'thaw' and glasnost' suggest the need for a new periodisation of late socialism, and a new understanding of its contribution both to the endurance of Soviet power, and also its eventual collapse. The papers in this series present new research on these questions as they developed in literature, art, film, music and everyday life of the period.
Andrei Tarkovskii: Seer or Director - The Making of 'Stalker'
Evgenii Tsymbal
28 April 2008
The Peoples of Russia as Seen in Popular Imagery
Professor Jeffrey Brooks (The Johns Hopkins University)
4 March 2008
Movies, Masters, and Markets: Defining Cinematic Success in the Brezhnev Era
Kristin Roth-Ey (UCL SSEES)
3 March 2008
Textile walls: Film and the Dressing of the Soviet Home
Emma Widdis (Cambridge University)
25 February 2008
The Satirical Author-Performer in the Soviet 1970s
Seth Graham (UCL SSEES)
18 February 2008
Soviet Non-Conformist Art in Paris
Ann Komaromi (University of Toronto)
4 February 2008
Rock music in the 1970s
Polly McMichael (Nottingham University)
28 January 2008
If Lenin was alive he would know what to do: bare life of the leader
Alexei Yurchak (Berkeley)
21 January 2008
Mark Donskoi's 'Nepokorennye' (1945): How we forgot the first film reconstruction of the Holocaust
Jeremy Hicks (Queen Mary and Westfield)
14 January 2008
Poetry, Politics and Publishing in the Late Soviet Period
Emily Lygo (Exeter University)
7 January 2008
