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All posts tagged Putin

Historical memory of the Gulag (3): Contested memory

The failure to establish a central memorial to the victims of the Gulag mentioned in my previous post is part of a problem of contested memory that has been apparent since the demise of the Soviet Union but has escalated in the last decade or so. As Arseny Roginsky’s eloquent essay The Embrace of Stalinism shows, […]

Four short links (and more): the art of protest

I don’t do politics on this blog, but political art is allowed, and there have been some particularly good examples of creative protest and subversive art in Russia recently. So, while I’m stuck at home with pneumonia, a little round-up to pass the time, because I haven’t got the energy to do anything more taxing. […]

Soviet jokes

The book I’ve been reading for fun over the last few days could, for once, actually be described as fun: Ben Lewis, Hammer and Tickle: A History of Communism Told Through Communist Jokes (2008). Actually, it isn’t that funny, partly because analyses of humour never are (the worst research seminar I’ve ever been to was […]