As part of EUSP’s history podcasts, a new cycle dedicated to Alexander II has begun. The previous cycle was devoted to the topic of fornication in Russia. Those podcasts can be found here.

The third and final episode of our series investigating fornication cases in 18th century Russia with Amiran Urushadze and Pavel Romanov.

We continue the conversation about fornication in Russia in the 18th century with historians Amiran Urushadze and Pavel Romanov in the podcast "History is just beginning".

The European University launches a popular science series, "History is just beginning", where we talk to scholars who are discovering the past by studying what is left of it. The focus of the first episode is Christian marital morality, church interrogation methods and punishment for extramarital sex in pre-Petrine Russia. Investigations into fornication cases in Russia in the 18th century are discussed by Associate Professor of the Faculty of History Amiran Urushadze and a graduate student of the same faculty, Pavel Romanov.

In 2022, the History Department of the European University at Saint Petersburg will call the 16th Annual Conference “Constructing the ‘Soviet’?” for young scholars. This year our point of departure will be a category of the “global socialist ecumene”, which we apply to the Soviet and other socialist projects history.

European University at Saint-Petersburg, November 1–2, 2021*.

The EUSP intern (Department of History, 2005–2006) Brandon M. Schechter, now a fellow at New York University in Shanghai and the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, received the Paul Birdsall Prize for his book "Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects."

On November 27 at 6 p.m. Nari Shelekpayev, an assistant professor of history at th

Russia's regions and republics with Muslim majorities (e.g. Tatarstan/Volga region; Daghestan/North Caucasus),  have traditionally been studied in isolation from each other, with the result that also the particular practices and concepts of Islam have been understood as "national". In recent years scholars and activists have established overarching cupola constructions like "Russian Islam", "Traditionalism" or "Islamic Eurasianism".

Professor Jay Winter (Yale University, USA) will give two lectures in the EUSP in September. The first one: «The Degeneration of War, 1917-1923»Place: EUSP, room 430Time: 6:30 PM, September 10. The second one: «Silence as a language of memory»Place: EUSP, room 430Time: 6:30 PM, September 12.  

The history of the procuracy illustrates that Stalinist justice was more than orchestrating show trials. Ordinary state prosecutors very rarely dealt with political enemies. Their main task was to investigate and prosecute millions of non-political offenses, such as theft, murder, or rape. At the same time, they bore responsibility to enforce legal norms within the state apparatus. All branches of government, including police work, were subject to prosecutors’ supervision. The procuracy not only was a crucial instrument for controlling the Soviet populace.

Confronted in the second half on the eighteenth century with unemployment and food crises and with the multiplication of vagrants and beggars, the government turned to civil society to find solutions.

In 1912, Russia held empire-wide elections to the Fourth State Duma, a parliamentary body established in 1905. In Odessa, the election campaign revealed that Russians fought not only about which candidate to elect, but also about underlying concepts of politics and democracy. When two rival newspapers, Odesskaia pochta and Iuzhnaia mysl, endorsed different "progressive" candidates, they started a debate over competing meanings of democratic representation: the politics of compromise and coalition-building versus the politics of class identity.

Comparative History Days – 2019 Special Focus: Transnational History A Program Draft Thursday, March 21 9:30 Registration 10: 00 – 10:15 Mikhail Krom (EUSP), Opening Remarks 10:15 – 11:00 Introductory Talk:

Through the lens of the Cold War, jazz in the Soviet Union appears as a struggle between conservative party bosses and a rebellious youth striving for freedom and democracy. Michel Abesser’s talk addresses Soviet jazz culture and debates after 1953 and argues for a more complex understanding of its protagonists, discourses and practices. Such a focus can expand our ideas of youth, social stratification after Stalin’s death, and the hybridity between professional and amateur culture.

Congratulations to EUSP Department of History graduate Konstantin Godunov on the successful defense of his dissertation for the degree of candidate of sciences in history. The defense took place on January 29, 2019 at the St. Petersburg Institute of History, Russian Academy of Sciences. The dissertation is titled: “Prazdnik 7 Noiabria v politicheskoi zhizni Sovetskoi Rossii epokhi Grazhdanskoi voiny (1918–1920 gg.) [ The November 7 Holiday in the Political Life of Soviet Russia during the Civil War (1918–1920)]”.

EUSP Department of History alumna Daria Svirina has received the award of the German Historical Institute Moscow for the best graduation thesis. The work was titled "Germanness" in the Memoirs of Russian Germans Deported to the Krasnoyarsk Krai." Congratulations to Daria on her achievement!

EUSP History Department graduate Evgenii Grishin defended his PhD dissertation at University of Kansas on July 14, 2017. The dissertation written under Professor Eve Levin’s academic supervision was titled “The Concepts of the “Schism” and “Schismatic” in the Church and State Discourses of Seventeenth and Eighteenth-century Russia”. We congratulate Evgenii on his successful defense and PhD in History degree.

EUSP History Department graduate Kseniia Barabanova defended her dissertation “Epidemiia kholery v Sankt-Peterburge v 1831 g.: vlast' i gorozhane v usloviiakh chrezvychainoi situatsii [Cholera Epidemic in Saint Petersburg in 1831: Power and Citizens in a State of Emergency]” at the Saint Petersburg Institute of History of Russian Academy of Sciences on October 3, 2017.

EUSP History Department alumna Elena Kochetkova (2013) successfully defended her PhD dissertation at University of Helsinki on May 27, 2017. The dissertation was titled “The Soviet Forestry Industry in the 1950s and 1960s : A Project of Modernization and Technology Transfer from Finland”. We congratulate Elena and EUSP History Department on their success!