The article provides a closer reading of Walter Benjamin’s essays Experience and Poverty and Moscow, by juxtaposing the records of his visit to Russia in 1926–1927 with the author’s reflections on the nature of the transformations in the urban space of an early Soviet city. By using the dystopian image of Mickey Mouse as the desired inhabitant of modernity introduced by Benjamin in Experience and Poverty, Seits gives the allegorical and comparative interpretation to the substantial changes in the living space of Moscow that were witnessed by Walter Benjamin.
By
Irina Seits
A Day of the World (Den’ mira) was a documentary volume, published in 1937, that was intended to provide a snapshot of the entire globe on a single day, September 27, 1935. The tensions within and around A Day of the World capture some of the basic contradictions in socialist realism, the official aesthetic method of Soviet art: between publicity and intimacy and between the dream of synchronous, global revolution and the aberrant temporalities of individual experience.
By
Robert Bird
In the present article, the main principles of the reforms in Revolutionary Russia in the sphere of art are analyzed through the example of the reorganization of the Higher Artistic School of the Imperial Academy of Arts of St. Petersburg into the Free Art Studios (Svomas). The studios were to become a tool for the transformation of the surrounding reality and for the development of the artistic consciousness of the people. The intended result of those transformations was the complete spiritual and material harmonization of society, while the perfection of artistic interpretation was to be replaced with the perfection of social living. The research presented here is based on the archival materials and is one of the very first publications on the problems associated with the reform of artistic education in the first post-revolutionary years.
By
Mikhail Evsevyev
The 400th anniversary of the peace treaty between Sweden and Russia has for obvious reasons been in the shadow of […]
By
Thomas Lundén
In the much visited and favorably reviewed exhibition “Revolution. Russian Art 1917—1932” held at the Royal Academy of Arts in February through April 2017, a large number of works was displayed, borrowed from art museums all over Russia and other countries, as well as from private collections.
By
Helene Carlbäck
Lusine Djanian and Alexey Knedlyakovsky at the Bakhtin workshop shared their experiences from the art protest in 2013, in the Russian Republic of Mordovia, the historical place for those serving sentence or being exiled. And it was in this region where Bakhtin spent many years of his life when he was not allowed to live in Moscow. The protest was a direct action to support the demands of Pussy Riot-member Nadezda Toloknnikova, who was serving her sentence in prison for the action in the Moscow Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
By
Ninna Mörner
Early this fall Irina Seits, Russian PhD candidate at CBEES, Södertörn University met with Gustaf Nobel, Ludvig’s great-grandson, in order to talk about the Russian period in the life of his prominent family.
By
Irina Seits
Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie (NLO) [New Literary Observer] (2016) no. 5–6.
By
Maxim Grigoriev
Russian Literature since 1991, Eds. Evgeny Dobrenko and Mark Lipovetsky, Cambridge University Press, 2015, 320 pages.
By
Tora Lane
Renat Bekkin and Almira Tagirdz-hanova, Musulmanskii St. Peterburg.Istoricheskii putevoditel. [Muslim St. Petersburg: Historical Guidebook; The Life of Muslims in St. Petersburg and Its Suburbs] Renat Bekkin and Almira Tagirdzhanova. Moscow and St. Petersburg, 2016, 639 pages.
By
Yulia Gradskova
Issue 2019:3 Special Section: Cultural Heritage and the Property of missing Persons 
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Baltic Worlds covers; the Baltic Sea Region, Eastern Europe, Russia, Caucasus and the Balkan area.