Sean's Russia Blog

Like many Americans, Teddy judged the USSR through a consumer lens. What could Soviets buy? How much? And what was up with those long lines and shortages? Teddy wasn’t very impressed. Yet, the “standard of living race” was a front in the Cold War like any other. And Soviet communism was losing. But things were never so simple. By the late 1960s, Soviet people were consuming more than ever. They were becoming consumers just like in the West. So, what was it like to shop in the USSR? And was buying stuff part of the Soviet dream? The post Ep 3 Teddy Goes Shopping appeared first on SRB Podcast.

Teddy assumed the KGB would monitor his travels around the Soviet Union. In Kiev, Teddy discovers that someone went through his luggage. And half-century later he learns his suspicions were correct. The KGB wrote a report on him, complete with excerpts from his diary. What was in this report? What did the KGB hope to learn from Teddy? And what was this vast network for keeping tabs on tourists anyway? The post Ep 2 Teddy Meets The KGB appeared first on SRB Podcast.

Teddy Roe took an extraordinary trip to the USSR in 1968. For three months, he travelled from one end of the USSR to the other. Most Americans at the time believed the USSR was their greatest enemy. Teddy was among tens of thousands who toured the Soviet Union. Why did Americans want to travel there? Why did the Soviets want them to come? What just what was the tourist experience like? The post Ep 1: Teddy Greets the USSR appeared first on SRB Podcast.

Guests: Drs. Carmen Andreescu and Alex Dombrovski on their work on mental health in Ukraine though the Global Initiative on Psychiatry - USA. The post Mental Health in Wartime Ukraine appeared first on SRB Podcast.

Guest: Christian Raffensperger on the place of Kyivan Rus' in the wider European medieval world. The post Kyivan Rus’ appeared first on SRB Podcast.

Guest: Sean Griffin on his prize winning article “Revolution, Raskol, and Rock ‘n’ Roll: The 1,020th Anniversary of the Day of the Baptism of Rus” published in the Russian Review. The post The Day of the Baptism of Rus appeared first on SRB Podcast.

Guests: Victoria Smolkina and Georgyi Kasianov on the complexities of memory, history, and politics in narrating Ukrainian history. The post Between Memory and History in Ukraine appeared first on SRB Podcast.

Guest: Artemy Troitsky reflecting on his life in the Soviet and Russian rock scenes. The post The Soviet Rock Scene appeared first on SRB Podcast.

Guests: Polly Jones and Zuzanna Bogumil on memory, politics, and trauma of Stalinism. The post Working Through Stalinism appeared first on SRB Podcast.

REEES faculty profile on Zoltan Zelemen about his research on neo-medievalism in international relations, law, and democracy. The post REEES Faculty Spotlight: Zoltan Kelemen appeared first on SRB Podcast.

Guests: Ben Aris and Ilya Matveev on the Russian economy during wartime. The post The Economic War appeared first on SRB Podcast.

Guest: Adrienne Edgar on Intermarriage and the Friendship of Peoples:  Ethnic Mixing in Soviet Central Asia published by Cornell University Press. The post Mixed Marriages in the USSR appeared first on SRB Podcast.

 Rebroadcast of my 2016 interview with the recently departed Anne Garrels, author of Putin’s Country: A Journey into the Real Russia. The post Remembering Anne Garrels appeared first on SRB Podcast.

Guests: Alessandro Iandolo and Natalia Telepneva on Soviet engagement with West Africa during the Cold War. The post Soviet Aid to West Africa appeared first on SRB Podcast.

Guest: Jonathan Brunstedt on The Soviet Myth of World War II: Patriotic Memory and the Russian Question in the USSR published by Cambridge University Press. The post Soviet WWII Mythologies appeared first on SRB Podcast.

Guest: Olga Petri on Places of Tenderness and Heat: The Queer Milieu of Fin-de-Siècle St. Petersburg published by Cornell University Press. The post Queer Spaces in Imperial St. Petersburg appeared first on SRB Podcast.

Guest: Timothy Blauvelt on Clientelism and Nationality in an Early Soviet Fiefdom: The Trials of Nestor Lakoba published by Routledge. The post Clientelism in Soviet Abkhazia appeared first on SRB Podcast.

Guest: Fabrizio Fenghi on It Will Be Fun and Terrifying: Nationalism and Protest in Post-Soviet Russia published by University of Wisconsin Press. The post Limonov and the National Bolsheviks appeared first on SRB Podcast.

Guest: Sarah Riccardi-Swartz on Between Heaven and Russia: Religious Conversion and Political Apostasy in Appalachia published by Fordham University Press. The post Russian Orthodox Converts in Appalachia appeared first on SRB Podcast.

Teddy had few “official” meetings in the USSR. A factory here. A collective farm there. Maybe a school or two. And there was one question Teddy’s hosts always asked: “Why are you still lynching Blacks?” American racism was a global issue during the Cold War. And pointing to it was a strike at America’s Achilles heel. Soviet media devoted a lot of time to the Civil Rights Movement. And Teddy arrived in the USSR just when Martin Luther King was assassinated. So, just what was this Soviet concern for American Blacks? Was it merely a whataboutism, a way to deflect American criticism of Soviet life? Or was there something more to it? The post Ep 4: Teddy Talks about Race appeared first on SRB Podcast.