The Davis Center at Harvard University
The Kathryn W. and Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University seeks to foster comprehensive understanding and multidisciplinary study of Russia and the countries of Eurasia. Founded in 1948 as the Russian Research Center, the Davis Center sponsors a master's program, seminars and conferences, targeted research, fellowships, undergraduate and graduate student support, and an outreach program. The center's more than 300 affiliates come from Harvard University, the greater Boston area, and around the world.
Episodes
November 19, 2024 • 95 mins
As we approach the third year of the war in Ukraine, the ripples from the conflict go deeper and further into the fabric of international relations. This seminar brings together three scholars from Japan to analyze the war’s impact and meaning outside Eastern Europe. Their expertise includes not only Russia but the Middle East and Northeast Asia. Issues to be addressed include Japan’s policies, historical contexts, borderlands, ene...
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October 24, 2024 • 75 mins
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and U.S. Ambassador to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan George Krol will discuss the development of relations between the United States and the Central Asian states from the inception of diplomatic relations in 1992 to the present time. Drawing on personal experiences and insights gained from his 36 years as a career diplomat, Krol will describe the American and Central Asian politics and persona...
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September 8, 2024 • 64 mins
Dr. Kelly O'Neill recounts the convoluted events of the so-called Watermelon Rebellion, a little-known episode in Russian imperial history full of intrigue, deception, espionage, personal animosities, and… watermelons.
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August 25, 2024 • 34 mins
REECA alumna Jackie Erlon-Baurjan talks with Kelly about water: about how it was conceptualized and managed on the Kazakh steppe in the 19th century, and about how it (or the lack of it) shaped her own family's traditions near the Altai Mountains.
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August 12, 2024 • 29 mins
Graduate student Valerie Browne shares her research into the history of Crimean place names. She explains how Stalin attempted to remake the map after World War II and how Wikipedia allowed her to reconstruct the stories of lost, forgotten, and renamed villages.
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July 17, 2024 • 22 mins
Lily and Kelly discuss an enterprising official of the East India Company and how he turned a dusty old Russian military map into a game-changing weapon for the British Army.
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July 17, 2024 • 26 mins
Lily and Kelly dig into what it was like to live in Crimea as a subject of the Russian Empire. They explore power-relations, the survival of local practices, imperial ideology, and yes, the art of map-listening.
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July 17, 2024 • 23 mins
In our first episode, Dr. O'Neill goes to the Harvard Map Collection with high-school student Lily Grodzins to investigate a map of Crimea produced in 1855 and dedicated to Queen Victoria. What they find is a map bigger than most kitchen tables, riddled with misinformation, and full of everything from mountains to mud volcanos. Who made the map? And where do the British fit in? Join us to find out!
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November 2, 2021 • 20 mins
The signatories of the Belavezha agreement believe it should serve as a consensus model for the world—an example of diplomacy, civil discourse, and nonviolent means of conflict resolution. The events at Belavezha are among the most momentous in modern history. But, unlike the fall of the Berlin Wall, most people have never heard of them. In the conclusion of How to Kill a Superpower, Dr. Yelena Biberman and Zachary Troyanovsky cons...
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November 2, 2021 • 20 mins
Boris Yeltsin’s trip to a supermarket in Clear Lake, Texas, planted a seed of the USSR’s destruction. The United States won the Cold War with free-market capitalism—and Jell-O pudding pops. Still, astoundingly, the collapse of the USSR was not what the U.S. government wanted. In this episode, Dr. Yelena Biberman and Zachary Troyanovsky evaluate the Cold War confrontational narrative and offer a new perspective on how the USSR disso...
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November 2, 2021 • 20 mins
Dr. Yelena Biberman and Zachary Troyanovsky explore the role of spontaneity at Belavezha, narrowing in on the exact moment of dissolution: a dinner party. The seating arrangement, a late arrival, and the sequence of phone calls all influenced the outcome. Did vodka? For a transcript of this episode and more, visit https://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/insights/how-to-kill-a-superpower
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November 2, 2021 • 30 mins
How much agency did the signatories of the Belavezha Accords have? Factors outside of their control shaped their behavior in ways that even they could not have predicted. In this episode, Dr. Yelena Biberman and Zachary Troyanovsky seek wisdom from Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy to understand the dissolution of the USSR, as well as their own unusual life stories. For a transcript of this episode and more, visit https://daviscent...
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November 2, 2021 • 26 mins
The Soviet Union drew its last breath on Sunday, December 8, 1991, in a hunting lodge inside the primeval Belavezha forest. The life of a global superpower—offering the last ideological alternative to liberalism—ended over a boisterous weekend. Many believe that it was doomed because of flawed ideals, but few know the story of the Belavezha Accords. In this premiere episode of How to Kill a Superpower, Dr. Yelena Biberman and Zacha...
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May 24, 2018 • 21 mins
Episode 20: The Collapse of the USSR by The Davis Center
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April 5, 2018 • 26 mins
Anna Veduta of the independent media outlet Meduza discusses the challenges of journalism in Russia and the media landscape surrounding the recent Russian presidential election.
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December 6, 2017 • 19 mins
In this episode, we talk with Anne Applebaum about her new book, Red Famine. Applebaum argues that the 1932–1933 famine in the Soviet Union was part of a deliberate operation by Stalin to rid the USSR of Ukrainians who resisted the Bolsheviks and their policy of agricultural collectivization.
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November 1, 2017 • 24 mins
Mikhail Gorbachev, revered by many in the West for his commitment to “openness” and democratizing reforms, has a more mixed reputation in Russia, where he is associated with the fall of an empire. In this episode, Bill Taubman discusses his new biography of Gorbachev, emphasizing how the leader's personal history and character were reflected in his leadership, and how the policies of Vladimir Putin can be read as a response to Gorb...
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September 15, 2017 • 21 mins
Politics increasingly pervades our everyday lives, including our entertainment and pop culture. The Eurovision Song Contest was created in 1956 as an opportunity to bring nations and people together in an expressly non-political fashion—through song. Now, 60 years later, Eurovision is often used as a specific political tool. James Evans and Yuval Weber discuss the history of the song contest and how it has been used as a political ...
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July 14, 2017 • 26 mins
Two decades after immigrating from Kiev to Chicago, Julia Alekseyeva found her great-grandmother’s hidden memoirs of a life spanning the Soviet 20th century. With input from comics scholar Hillary Chute, she turned a lifetime of secrets into a work of art.
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June 23, 2017 • 16 mins
The vast majority of Russian-speaking Jews today live outside the former Soviet Union. We spoke with Zvi Gitelman about this population, their remarkable impact on the societies that send and receive them, and how traditional notions of "diaspora" and "homeland" have blurred in our globalized world.
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