CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

The Russian Supreme Court recently declared the Jehovah’s Witnesses to be an “extremist” organization. The April 2017 decision has placed the Jehovah’s Witnesses on the same legal footing as terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda. Witness publications can no longer be imported or printed domestically, and the organization’s administrative center outside of St. Petersburg has been shut down and its assets liquidated. The court ruling has also had immediate implications for the more than 170,000 members of this Christian minority community in Russia. With their faith now officially classified as extremist, individual Witnesses have faced increasing harassment as they continue to conduct evangelism among their neighbors. The international organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, has appealed the decision to the European Court of Human Rights. In the meantime, the fate of Witnesses in Russia remains uncertain. This talk reconstructs the history of Jehovah’s Witnesses on Russian soil and what led to this court decision. In doing so, Baran considers the implications of the Witnesses’ ban for the state of religious freedom in Russia today. From the lecture titled "How Jehovah's Witnesses Became "Extremists": The Strange State of Religious Freedom in Russia."

World War I ended on the western front on November 11, 1918. That same day in Warsaw Joseph Pilsudski proclaimed Poland’s independence. This talk focuses on the short and long term significance of these two intertwined events. In addition, Pienkos discusses the roles of President Wilson and a Polish national army raised from immigrants to the United States--the first and only of its kind since.

Natalia Sats (1903-1993) is the mother of professional theatre for children and youth, that is, theatre by adults for young people. Starting as a 15-year-old in charge of the Children’s Theatre in Moscow shortly after the 1917 Revolution, Sats founded several theatres for young people and remained a major force in the field until her death in 1993. In many ways the life of Sats mirrors Soviet life, through the trials and tribulations of the Revolution, Stalin’s purges, the Thaw, Glasnost and Perestroika, and on through the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. This talk focuses on the circumstances of Natalia Sats’s arrest and exile and her artistic endeavors in camps and in exile in Almaty, painting a picture of a female artist in men’s world who may very well have been the only female artist to live through the entire Soviet period.

When the Russian Constitution was adopted in 1993, many observers were critical of what they saw to be its super-presidential nature. This was a misreading of the actual document, and it also failed to take into account the potential difference between what the document says and how particular individuals interact with it. Some are highly constrained by it and others less so, but this is often less a function of the document itself than of the personality of the person involved and other contingent factors. This is clearly reflected in the different presidencies of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. Yeltsin was a weak president whose sparse political resources meant that the Constitution acted as a restraint upon how he could act and contributed to a performance that disappointed many. In contrast, Putin’s greater store of political resources (and luck!) enabled him to be a much more active and effective president. Nevertheless he clearly faces current challenges, some of which are reminiscent of his predecessor. This paper will survey the performance of both presidents and project how Putin might seek to meet those challenges over the coming five years.

One of the most important developments in the study of Russian history in the last decade or so is the “religious turn,” which, among other things, has pushed the study of Russian Orthodoxy beyond the conventions of church, theology, and doctrine toward the study of lived religion. Yet, many of the same scholars who study Orthodoxy as everyday practice have unknowingly become entangled in the very categories they seek to move beyond—that is, church, theology, and doctrine. This talk by Patrick Michelson explores these entanglements and their implications for the ways in which we understand this complex, contingent, and multivalent thing called Russian Orthodoxy. From the talk "Orthodox Impossible: Russian History and the Limits of Studying Religion."

Commercial entities operating across international borders face a number of legal and cultural hurdles. American companies negotiating with partners in Russia or Ukraine not only need to navigate the laws of those countries, but they are also obliged to follow US commercial law, including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Major on-the-ground differences in accepted business practices and commercial transactions represent potential pitfalls for clients working under a dual legal framework. Likewise, businesses in East Europe seek out commercial litigators familiar with US law to protect their interests here. In this talk, Chester discusses the complexities of representing US clients abroad and foreign clients in the US, the practicalities of protecting clients’ legitimate interests amid systemic corruption, and how the FCPA is being enforced in the current political environment. From the talk "Beyond Policy: The Practical Realities of Russia-Ukraine-US Commercial Transactions and Litigation."

Ideal modern nation states have clearly defined borders and a sedentary population. People without a defined domicile who regularly cross national borders easily put such an order into jeopardy. This talk explores the problem of transhumance in the Soviet South Caucasus in the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s. Relying on documents of the Transcaucasian state and party institutions, it provides insights into Soviet policies attempting to assert control over this “fluid” part of the population, placing it into the frame of the national state and on track towards a new, socialist economy. From the lecture, "When Nationalism Meets Soviet Modernization: The 'Liquidation' of the Nomads in the South Caucasus, 1921-1936."

The object of study here is Ukraine, a highly corrupted former Soviet republic. Specifically, Osipian researches the market of writing and defending doctoral dissertations, also known as the dissertations market. He identifies providers of the service, as well as types of services they offer and the prices they charge. Such “dissertations for order” services are accompanied by other services that provide the necessary requirements for a doctorate. University faculty play three distinct roles in this business, including that of customers, ghost-writers, and gatekeepers. Osipian's analysis suggests that fighting the corrupt practice of ghost-writing dissertations with legal means is unlikely to bring any drastic changes, for as long as there is demand for such services, there will be supply. From the lecture, "Let Me Write a Dissertation for You: Faculty Misconduct, Corruption, and Doctoral Degree Fraud in Ukraine."

When you enter the field to collect data for your dissertation or thesis, what are some basic safety precautions you need to consider? What does it mean to receive informed consent from individuals in a Tajikistani village? This short talk will delve into these and other related topics for graduate students to consider as they prepare to enter the field.

The criminal justice system in Kazakhstan is full of contradictions: Soviet-era accusatorial bias in pre-trial detention and sentencing goes hand in hand with the pro-defendant bias in closing criminal cases. This paradoxical co-existence of seemingly contradictory biases fits well within the informal power map of the criminal justice system. The major reform—reducing prison population to decrease recidivism and minimize international shaming (coupled with more recent drives for closing cases on the basis of reconciliation, the total registration of crimes, and a zero tolerance approach to combating crime)—has been achieved only through changes in the incentive structure of the criminal justice system. The post-Soviet innovation of closing criminal cases of public prosecution based on reconciliation with the victim has proliferated in Kazakhstan because this matched both the incentives of the criminal justice system key actors and the demands of private actors who are involved in criminal proceedings. In contrast, other types of public participation, such as jury trials which implement the right to a fair trial, give teeth to adversarial proceedings, and cultivate judicial independence—requirements of the Constitution of Kazakhstan—have rarely been used because they disrupt existing power relationships within the law-enforcement system.