Slavic Bazaar

CONFERENCE PROGRAM

8:20 Breakfast

8:40 Conference Opening

8:45 – 9:45 AM    Panel 1: USSR in Focus (60 min)

Starved of National Identity: The Holodomor as a Genocide -- Jack Hutcherson.

Cohabitation Nation: Navigating the Contradictions of De-Facto Marriage in the Drafting of the Soviet Family Code of 1926 -- Rosie Berman

The Totality of Dichotomies, and Particularities: Aleksandr Laktionov’s Into the New Apartment through Greenberg, Kandinsky, and Groys – Weike Li

9:55 – 10:35 AM  Panel 2: Narratives of Cold War History(40 min)

Brushstrokes of Influence: Comparing Soft Power Efficacy During the Cold War -- Madeleine Davis

An Eastern Autopsy: The Collapse of the Soviet Union in Eurasian Memory Politics -- Eytan Goldstein (Harvard University)

10:45 – 11:45 AM   Panel 3: Foreign Policy and Geopolitics (60 min)

An Uncertain Future for EU Enlargement: Russian Hybrid Warfare in Georgia, Moldova and Serbia -- Henry McDaniel

Foreign Policy in Flux: Balkan States Between East and West -- Edward Gibson

Reigniting the “Silk Road Spirit” and the New Age of Central Asian Diplomacy –Alexander Schrier

11:55 AM – 12:35 PMPanel 4: Reading the Iconic Russian Classics through an Interdisciplinary Lens (40 min)

Dostoevsky: Oedipal Death and Resurrection -- Lauren Cho

Unnamed Illnesses and the Semioticization of Ill Bodies in Tolstoy -- Tova Tachau

12:35 – 1:35 PM    Lunch Break (60 min)

1:35 – 2:35 PM    Keynote: Odysseus in Moscow – Timmy Straw. Timmy is a poet and translator. He is currently a graduate student in Comparative Literature. (30–40 min.+ Q&A) 

2:45 – 3:45 PM    Panel 5: Creative Writing Inspired by Russian Literary Classics 1   (60 min)

Холод [Cold, a poem, in Russian with English word-for-word translation available] -- Julia Bochkarev

Love From the First Sight -- Natalia Ilieva

The Young Man Who Took Things Apart -- Will Kelly

3:55–4:50 PM    Panel 6:  Creative Writing Inspired by Russian Literary Classics 2   (55 min)

A The Weight of Bronze – Eli Zahavi

Perfect: The Diary of Anaïs Archambeau – Zoe Mackey

Logic Lost – Miah Margiano

 

5:00 – 5:50 PM    Poetry Reading by Julia Kolchinsky, Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Denison University, from her new book Parallax (2025). 

Moderator: Prof. Kevin Platt (50 min)

 

ABSTRACTS 

PANEL 1

Starved of National Identity: The Holodomor as a Genocide – Jack Hutcherson

This paper examines the Holodomor, the devastating famine that occurred in Ukraine from 1932 to 1933, resulting in approximately 3.9 million excess deaths. The research aims to understand the role of Stalin's policies, particularly collectivization and dekulakization, in the famine and their implications for its classification as a genocide. It explores the interplay between these policies, environmental factors, and their impact on Ukrainian society. The study employs historical analysis, drawing on archival data and scholarly research to assess the effects of Stalin's agricultural policies. It highlights how collectivization led to inefficient farming practices, while dekulakization removed experienced laborers, crippling agricultural productivity. Additionally, the paper examines the role of bad weather and the Soviet government's grain procurement policies, which exacerbated the famine. The findings indicate that while environmental factors played a role, Stalin's policies were the primary cause of the Holodomor.

This research concludes that the Holodomor should be classified as a genocide due to the intentional nature of Soviet policies aimed at destroying the Ukrainian peasantry and national identity. It provides insights into the accountability of Stalin's regime for the famine, contributing to ongoing debates about culpability and nation-building in Ukraine. The research highlights the importance of understanding historical events within the context of genocide studies and their ongoing implications for international relations and national identity

 

Cohabitation Nation: Navigating the Contradictions of De-Facto Marriage in the Drafting of the Soviet Family Code of 1926 – Rosie Berman

The drafting of the 1926 Soviet Code on Marriage, the Family, and Guardianship exposed deep ideological and practical tensions within early Soviet legal thought. As jurists in the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) debated whether to grant legal recognition to de-facto unions – unregistered cohabitations treated as legally valid – they confronted a paradox: could a revolutionary legal system both dismantle traditional marriage and continue to regulate personal relationships? Through an analysis of legal debates in the VTsIK, contemporary scholarship, and judicial interpretations, this paper explores how Soviet legal theorists attempted to reconcile these competing commitments. Three core principles of Communist law shaped these debates: the idea that law should reflect material conditions in society, the long-term goal of law’s "withering away," and the desire to minimize state interference in private life. Radical voices like Nikolai Krylenko and Yakov Brandenburgsky championed de-facto marriages, arguing that law should adapt to social realities and protect women regardless of bureaucratic formalities. Others, like Aleksandr Beloborodov, pushed back, insisting that marriage required state oversight to maintain social stability. Their refusal to clearly define marriage only deepened the uncertainty. This study reveals that while the 1926 Code ultimately legitimized de-facto unions, it was only with so many stipulations, as to make them equivalent to civil marriages that had been registered. Ultimately, the Soviet state's attempt to hasten the “withering away” of the family was constrained by economic hardship and administrative limitations, highlighting the gap between ideological ambition and social reality.

 

The Totality of Dichotomies, and Particularities: Aleksandr Laktionov’s Into the New Apartment Through Greenberg, Kandinsky, and Groys – Weike Li

Stalinist socialist realism of the 1930s is commonly understood as a regression, away from the formal experimentation of the 1920s Russian avant-garde, into the more traditional, mimetic naturalism. To better capture the effectiveness of Stalin’s Gesamtkunstwerk, his “total work of art,” Boris Groys challenges the binary and alternatively theorizes that it is precisely the avant-garde that allows Stalin’s regime to conceptualize political synthesis aesthetically.

 

Through looking at Aleksandr Laktionov’s socialist realist painting Into the New Apartment, this paper attempts to better comprehend Groys’s argument. While we often “apply” theory into art object, I aim to reverse the process and carry out a performative attempt to practice Groys, until the point that his argument cannot fully account for certain particularitiesof the painting.

 

Engaging with Groys’s interlocutors, I argue through Laktionov’s painting that socialist realism effectively disempowers its audience through maximizing the “internal aesthetic contradiction” and unifying dichotomies to the elimination of all particularities. I also turn to archival research by Svetlana Boym and Oliver Johnson, to better understand how and where does socialist realism, despite its effectiveness, particularly fail. I argue that the avant-garde movement, despite providing the artistic tool for Stalin’s Gesamtkunstwerk, has also opened up various possibilities for critical engagement with art that eventually renders Stalin’s totalizing enterprise difficult, if not impossible. Hence, I ultimately hope to imagine critical potential in engaging with socialist realist arts that strive to flatten, as a step forward from Groys’s argument.

 

PANEL 2

Brushstrokes of Influence: Comparing Soft Power Efficacy During the Cold War – Madelaine Davis

Soft power, insofar as encapsulating cultural influence, distills a state's values in two ways: soft power projects values, and highlights what the state feels is its best example of those values. The artillery of cultural influence, art, shapes collective perception. It is a conduit

through which societal values and ideologies are communicated and internalized. Existing literature studies individual soft power projection from the Soviet Union and the United States, but fails to compare the efficacy between the two superpowers’ campaigns to capture hearts and minds. This project uses qualitative content analysis and archival research to answer the question, does art from a market economy or planned economy exert more persuasive soft power? Specifically, I examine if art from the United States or the Soviet Union appealed to

decolonized countries during the Cold War. I expect to find the United States’ art was more appealing to India, revealing the liberal values implied within the art carried stronger soft power than the Soviet Union’s ideology.

 

An Eastern Autopsy: The Collapse of the Soviet Union in Eurasian Memory Politics – Eytan Goldstein 

From 1989 to 1991, protests convulsed Eurasia and shook the world. Those tremors are still felt today. In the intervening decades, no convergence on democratic Western values transpired, leaving the memory of the Soviet Union’s collapse as a challenge to regime legitimacy. My thesis contributes to scholarship by bringing forth well over a hundred unique Chinese and Russian-language sources to understand how Eurasian states attempt to create a narrative of the Soviet collapse to legitimize their own policy preferences. 

This thesis confirms Beijing’s enormous interest in the Soviet collapse – a fact most clearly illustrated by President Xi Jinping’s 2012 speech. My research demonstrates that Xi assumed power at the same time that the intensity of these studies peaked in China. With respect to ethnic separatism as a cause of the Soviet collapse, Chinese mnemonic actors contend that the Soviets mismanaged the nationalities question. On foreign policy, Chinese thinkers criticized Soviet overextension but subsequently focused on “peaceful evolution” as playing a role in the USSR’s disintegration. Chinese scholarship consistently emphasizes failed party discipline and Soviet economic mistakes. In considering states of the former Soviet Union, my research finds that Russia has increasingly embraced the Soviet legacy. While Kazakhstan deemphasizes the unrest of the Soviet collapse, that history became weaponized in Georgian elite discourse. This thesis draws on content evaluation and quantitative discourse analysis of Chinese and Russian scholarly articles, along with expert interviews, in a comparative small-n case study to create a typology of China’s evolving memory regime. By comparing Beijing’s remembrance of the USSR’s disintegration with those of the aforementioned states, this thesis chronicles the formalization of diverse mnemonic responses to the Soviet collapse.

 

PANEL 3 

An Uncertain Future for EU Enlargement: Russian Hybrid Warfare in Georgia, Moldova and Serbia – Henry McDaniel

The European Union is at a crossroads. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has compelled key member states to increasingly collaborate on key matters such as security, defense, and the rule of law. Perhaps the most important development since February 2022 has been the granting of candidacy status of Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia. This development comes from both a desire from these candidate states to receive the financial support and strong diplomatic ties that come with EU membership, and a push for the EU to enlarge in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine. Because Ukraine is actively engaged in a war with Russia, it is unlikely to meet the infrastructural and governmental criteria required for accession anytime in the near future. Kateryna Odarchenko states, “Effective governance reforms, particularly in the fight against corruption, are essential for Ukraine’s EU aspirations. Aligning with EU legal standards across 35 policy areas including taxation, energy, and judicial reform will also require a monumental effort.” While Russia is using military force to wage war with Ukraine, it is also engaged in another kind of war with the West. It is a war of sabotage and disinformation, with Russia seeking to destabilize and dismantle Western democratic institutions. Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric interprets the expansion of Western bedrock institutions such as EU and NATO as a threat to Russia’s ‘sphere of influence.’ As he feels this sphere of influence growing smaller, Putin is using hybrid warfare to destabilize and divide nations on the verge of joining the EU, and ideally bring them closer to Russia both politically and diplomatically. In this thesis, I will analyze how Russian Hybrid Warfare contributes to democratic backsliding in Georgia, Moldova and Serbia, and what Russia is doing to prevent these states from meeting the EU’s merit-based accession criteria, and therefore preventing them from full EU membership. 

 

Foreign Policy in Flux: Balkan States Between East and West – Edward Gibson

Why do some post-communist states pursue Atlanticist and pro-European foreign policies? I argue that these states chose to pursue these policies based on a cost-benefit analysis of both domestic and external factors undertaken by the current regime. The outcome of this

analysis then determines what foreign policy that regime will pursue based on what will allow it to maintain power. I explore how these regimes conduct this cost-benefit analysis by examining the foreign policy orientations of states in the Balkans, using Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria as case studies. I utilize novel interview data generated through discussions with European diplomats, members of the European Parliament, European Union officials, Government officials, and other experts who specialize in post-communist state affairs. This thesis employs process tracing and discourse analysis to understand how these actors complete their cost-benefit analysis in determining their foreign policy since Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. This research contributes to the study of how small states determine their foreign policy orientations. It also demonstrates that Balkan states pursue whatever foreign policy will allow them to extract the most benefit from other international actors. The findings might prove helpful to Western institutions seeking the cooperation of these small post-communist states.

 

Reigniting the “Silk Road Spirit” and the New Age of Central Asian Diplomacy – Alexander Schrier

Once the historical epicenter of the ancient Silk Road, the “Central Asian Five” (C5)—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—had remained politically and economically isolated in the decades following their independence from the Soviet Union. However, a new “spirit” began emerging after 2014, one aimed at reinvigorating a renaissance of economic, political, and social cooperation in the region. This thesis examines why the C5 states have embraced this spirit through regional sovereignty initiatives (RSIs). Unlike state sovereignty initiatives, RSIs are collectively focused on safeguarding a region from external influence. States achieve this by strengthening regionalism and expanding partnerships with middle powers, reducing reliance on great powers. Examples include—but are not limited to—energy and transportation investments, alliance formation, and the establishment of forums for regional leaders to meet. I explore this shift through the “Sovereignty Endurance Theory,” which posits that a disruption in the external balance of power (BoP) in 2014 spurred C5 support for RSIs. Key forces impacting the external BoP include the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Russia-Ukraine War, and China’s outsized regional economic role. I test my theory through a comparative case study of each C5’s path towards RSIs. While making a significant contribution to the overall study of Central Asia, this thesis offers a framework for how other fragmented regions can adopt RSIs to maintain their sovereignty in a multipolar world.

 

 

PANEL 4

Dostoevsky: Oedipal Death and Resurrection – Lauren Cho

As one of the most influential writers of the nineteenth century, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s fiction continues to captivate readers today. Why? His works invoke paternal conflict, staging and restaging psychoanalytic childhood dramas and fantasies. In White Nights, an unnamed

narrator attempts to attain his romantic interest by superseding her former lover. Being preceded by another male presence who, by virtue of being chosen by the preceding female presence, has claims to superiority, evokes an essential Freudian oedipal conflict. In The Double, Mr. Goliadkin’s own thwarted love – his inability to gain the affection of Klara Olsufyevna – anticipates and commissions the birth of his identical double – his junior, who takes over his life. While White Nights depicts the son’s oedipal perspective as a failed usurper, then Dostoevsky’s The Double shifts to conceive the father’s horror, should his theoretical son succeed. But his final novel, The Brothers Karamazov, portrays both paternal and filial perspectives at once, repositioning oedipal conflict not as a destructive misfortune, but as an essential, generative hurdle. In Dostoevsky’s oedipal relationalities, the son’s self-fulfillment demands his father’s death.

 

Unnamed Illnesses and the Semioticization of Ill Bodies in Tolstoy – Tova Tachau

“The body is not mute, but it is inarticulate; it does not use speech, yet begets it” claims sociologist Arthur Frank as he explains how bodily experiences of illness inherently resist linguistic representation and pose a challenge to all patients who must give voice to their symptoms. To overcome this epistemological gap, we often resort to metaphors to describe illness experiences—i.e. burning pain or the act of fighting an illness—which points to the very arbitrary nature of assigning language to “inarticulate” bodies. Indeed, the practice in medical science of naming an illness is a symbolically charged mode of medical semioticization, altering the patient’s inner experiences under a medicalized narrative and stripping the body of its (potential) voice. While the inexpressibility of illness and the arbitrary nature of medical language have received significant attention in contemporary medical humanities scholarship, these themes were thoroughly explored over a century ago in the writings of Leo Tolstoy. Many of Tolstoy’s characters suffer from unnamed illnesses, which physicians fail to identify and cure. Through the diseases and personal reflections of Nikolenka’s maman (Childhood, 1852), Natasha Rostova (War and Peace, 1867), and Ivan Ilych (The Death of Ivan Ilych, 1886), Tolstoy reveals how medical knowledge consistently falls short of grasping the patient’s true illness experience. Whether or not a cure is possible, Tolstoy roots the sole method of understanding an illness in the patient’s testimony and not in the physician’s traditional medical discourse. Tolstoy’s texts thus foreshadow a shift in medical epistemology only now starting to be realized in contemporary medical education that places emphasis on the patient’s perspective. This paper argues that through a return to Tolstoy’s manifestations of unnamed illnesses, medical professionals and readers alike can learn to listen for the speech that the ill body begets and recognize the need for its inclusion in the creation of medical epistemology.

 

PANEL 5

Холод (Cold) – a poem by Julia Bochkarev

Click (Холод _ The Cold - Julia Bochkarev.docx - Google Docs) to access the text and an English word-for-word translation.

 

Love From the First Sight – Natalia Ilieva

The story, inspired by Nikolai Karamzin’s “Poor Liza,” reimagines its motifs in a modern context, examining love, loss, and the impact of fate on human relationships. The story follows Alena, a bright and ambitious student from Moscow who moves to London for university, eager to embrace independence and new experiences. Amidst her academic and social life, she unexpectedly falls in love with John, a charismatic yet enigmatic man who becomes her world. Their passionate romance, however, is built on fragile foundations, and when John mysteriously disappears for a “business trip,” Alena is left to navigate a deep emotional void. Her devotion to him, once a source of light and warmth, transforms into a consuming force of despair, echoing the tragic downfall of Karamzin’s heroine.  The narrator, revealed in the end to be John's acquaintance, unveils the truth about John’s double life and his remorse after losing Alena.

 

The Young Man Who Took Things Apart – Will Kelly

In “The Young Man Who Took Things Apart,” Zakhar, a successful real estate developer in 2076 Peoria, Illinois, finds his meticulously ordered world unraveling. What begins as a curious act of vandalism—the disassembly of office bathroom stalls—escalates into a surreal epidemic of systematic deconstruction. Elevators vanish into neatly stacked parts, traffic lights are dismantled piece by piece, and soon, the very architecture of corporate life collapses into disorder. As the city succumbs to an inexplicable force of disassembly, Zakhar drifts through the chaos in a dreamlike stupor, caught between his grand ambitions, his fading sense of control, and the creeping realization that something fundamental about his world is coming apart. Blending absurdist humor with existential unease, the story echoes Tolstoy’s “Alyosha the Pot”and the disorienting style of Daniil Kharms, presenting a vision of modernity where the impulse to build is met with an equally powerful urge to undo.

 

PANEL 6

Perfect: The Diary of Anaïs Archambeau – Zoe Mackey

This short story is inspired structurally and in literary nature by "The Diary of a Madman" by Nikolai Gogol and "The Queen of Spades" by Alexander Pushkin. The hero, Anaïs Archambeau, is a student at the University of Pennsylvania whose deep-seated need for perfection results in her psychological and physiological decline. Her diary entries show how her need for perfection slowly starts to take over her life, while the people around her are trying to communicate with her that this level of obsession is unhealthy and may lead to an outcome similar to the end of the story.

 

Logic Lost – Miah Margiano

What happens when a high-achieving Penn student—whose life runs on thirty-minute Google Calendar increments and whose actions are solely governed by an internal force she calls Logic—wakes up one morning to find that Logic is gone? In this absurdist modern-day reworking of Gogol's “The Nose,” a student engineered for success begins to spiral after her most sacred internal system suddenly disappears. A satire of the perfectionist culture at elite undergraduate institutions that trains students to perform polish while suppressing unnecessary emotion or distraction, “Logic Lost”follows one dutiful overachiever's descent into absurdity—and asks whether we might recognize ourselves in her frantic attempt to construct a life optimized for success at the expense of being.