In this episode, Matt is joined by Dr. Kathryn Stoner of Stanford University to talk about her new book, Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order. The book pushes back at some misconceptions about Russia’s place in the international system while offering a new perspective on how the West should approach Russia. Matt and Dr. Stoner discuss how the book informs ongoing policy challenges related to recent news c...

Once again, Dr. Mark Galeotti joins Matt to discuss yesterday's sentencing of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and what it means for Russia's short and long term future. Is this the end of the first installment of Navalny’s battle with the Kremlin, which peaked with his poisoning at the hands of the FSB in August 2020? Mark lays out Navalny’s possible next steps, and how the ongoing standoff in neighboring Belarus ...

From St. Petersburg, Angelina Davydova, Environmental journalist and head of the German Russian Office of Environmental Information, graciously joins us to give us the surprising facts on environmental activism, protests, and reforms in Russia. She talks about the very real effects of climate change in that part of the world, including the fires in Siberia, the record high temperatures, and the meteorological phenomena in Vladivost...

Samantha chats with Dr. Dimitar Bechev on the geopolitics of the Balkans and the stratagems of Russia in the region. Dr. Bechev also discusses Russia's relationship with Turkey and Turkey's ties with the US and how these affect the countries nested in the Balkans which have fallen out of US foreign policy priority since the George W. Bush administration. ABOUT THE GUEST https://www.fpri.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/2283-...

Амар мэндээ or hello and Happy New Year! Dr. Kathryn Graber of Indiana University Bloomington joins the show to talk about her research on the Buryat language and minority-language media in Russia’s Buryat territories, a multilingual region of eastern Siberia on the Mongolian border. Her fifteen years of research in this area is the foundation of her new book, Mixed Messages: Mediating Native Belonging in Asian Russia. Enjoy! Ехэ б...

In this episode, Matt and Tom talked to Nina Jankowicz of the Wilson Center about her new book, How to Lose the Information War, and how it serves as a useful primer for understanding the disinformation challenges facing the US today, particularly in the aftermath of the 2020 election. To read some of Nina's work, click the links below and do be sure to follow her on Twitter @wiczipedia . Thank you for listening! https://ww...

On this special episode, Zack speaks with English journalist Matthew Luxmoore. Matthew is the Moscow Correspondent for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Policy, Politico, and elsewhere. Zach and Matthew discuss a wide-range of issues, from the Russian Far East to the current state of the Russian opposition movement, to environmental concerns and other current affairs of the da...

In this episode, Matt talks with Dr. Sarah Young of University College London about her upcoming book "Writing Resistance: Revolutionary Memoirs of Shlissel’burg Prison, 1884-1906" and the genre of carceral literature. Where do Russian literary titans like Dostoevsky and Shalamov fit in and how are they perceived in the Russian imagination? Dr. Young also speaks about the uses and importance of spatially mapping historic an...

On this fun episode, Dr. Eliot Borenstein from NYU joins us to talk about his research on memes and meme culture in Russia as well as his freshly-released book on Pussy Riot (available from Bloomsbury). This was a great time all around, and even if you don't consume memes or like them very much, this is still an enjoyable discussion. Thanks for joining us! ABOUT THE GUEST: https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/66822682916202905...

From the Foreign Policy Research Institute comes a fantastic, dispassionate resource on Russia's intervention into Syria. Here to speak with us about the book and the process of compiling this insightful tome written by both American and Russian experts is Associate professor of Eurasian Studies at the US Army War College Robert E. Hamilton. Enjoy! Please do check out and download the book here: https://www.fpri.org/research...

On this whirlwind episode, Tom visits with London-based journalist and risk research analyst Alex Kokcharov on an impressive array of events and current conflicts across the CIS region. This is hardly a boring episode and we don't sit on one topic for too long, so if you're looking for a quick, but in-depth Eurasia fix (while we in the US patiently, calmly wait on those election results), look no further! And as always, tha...

Dr. Jasmin Mujanović, a political scientist focused on democratization and social movements in the Western Balkans and a host of the podcast "Sarajevo Calling", joins Samantha and Cullan for an in-depth discussion on the state of democracy in the region in 2020. This is a great walkthrough of the elite maneuvering and politics in the Western Balkans and which nuclear powers hold sway and influence in the region. We hope you...

The New Yorker's Moscow correspondent, Joshua Yaffa, joins us from Moscow in fact to talk about the conditions in Russia during the pandemic, his latest book Between Two Fires, and the oft-debated Russian interference in US elections. Additionally, Yuri Levada's work and coining of the term "Wily Man" figures prominently into this discussion having played a role in Yaffa's attempt to understand the characters he...

On this episode, we discuss the ongoing political crisis in Kyrgyzstan, resulting from the disputed October 4th elections, with Nazgul Kulova, a resident of Bishkek (the capital of Kyrgyzstan) and a policy analyst in the mining sector. As a former government official at the State Agency for Mineral Resources, she has worked with various international organizations and is thus a valuable inside resource. Nazgul talks with Matt about...

We're back to Belarus with this episode, but this time we take an in-depth look at the still-thrumming situation from the dictator's perspective with one of the foremost experts on the region, Dr. David Marples. Dr. Marples talks about the potential end of the dictator while rounding out the context for the current revolution, allowing us to see just how and why Alexander Lukashenko came into power. Follow Dr. Marples on T...

Dr. Susan Crate returns to the show to share her 1990 journey to Tuva, the geographic center of Asia. At this time, Tuva had only recently opened up to foreign travelers and the oblast (region) experienced heavy upheaval across the domains of the former Soviet Union. This moment also proved to be a turning point for the revitalization of lost or hidden cultural traditions, and many Tuvans openly displayed their heritage, wearing th...

Admittedly, this is not a very Slavic episode, but we would like to balance the scales a little bit and discuss the existential crisis America is facing as well as we approach the 2020 presidential election. A New York Times article a few days ago said that though the United States makes up only 4% of the world's population, our Covid deaths account for 20% of the global totals. We're no math geniuses, but it looks like the...

On this episode, former BBC journalist Leonid Ragozin joins Tom from Latvia to discuss the perception of Russia in the West, the origins of Western xenophobia towards Russia, his view of Vladimir Putin in 2000, and his experience working as an independent journalist on the investigations of high profile figures murdered in Ukraine. We hope you enjoy! ABOUT THE GUEST Leonid is a Russian journalist who worked for 12 years with the B...

In this episode, Matt discussed with Dr. Maria Snegovaya the leading issues of the day in the Slavic region. Namely, the aftermath of Russia's recent regional elections, the Kremlin's response to Alexei Navalny's poisoning, and the ongoing spectre of Russian intervention in Belarus's post-election crisis. Connect with Dr. Snegovaya on Twitter: @MSnegovaya UPDATE (9-30-2020) View Dr. Snegovaya's research wi...