Lecture

Did you know that there were hippies in the USSR? There were. Faced with societal scorn and repression, Soviet hippies created a version of Western counterculture in and despite late Soviet realities that linked them youth cultures beyond the Iron Curtain. How did these Soviet long-hairs defy police harassment, survive psychiatric hospitals force feeding conformism, and social stigma? This live interview with Juliane Furst will delve into the story of Soviet hippies and how they ironically meshed with Soviet life.

The Cold War is often narrowly viewed as a binary struggle: The US versus the USSR. But what did the Cold War look like from the perspective of a small socialist state—Bulgaria—and its cultural engagements with the Balkans, the West, and the Third World? In the 1970s, Bulgaria's communist leadership invested heavily in cultural diplomacy to bolster its legitimacy at home and promote its agendas abroad.

The relationship between the Soviet Union and revolutionary Cuba was a flash point in the Cold War. Soviet aid played a critical role in Cuba—but not without controversy. The Cuban Revolution was born out of a drive to rid itself of imperialist intervention and foreign control. So how did Cuba reconcile the need for Soviet support with efforts to avoid dependency? Soviet-Cuban scientific exchanges were one key area where this tension played out.

Beginning in the early 1960s, the Soviet Union opened its doors to Third World students to study in its universities. The Soviets even established a special university for foreign exchange students, the People’s Friendship University. Tens of thousands came over the next two decades, an ample portion of which were from Africa. What was the experience of African students, many from newly decolonized states with middle class and elite backgrounds, in the Second World? How did Soviet people regard them?

Disability activism developed in the second half of the twentieth century in a world divided by the Cold War. While the history of how Western activists learned to speak in the language of civil rights is well documented and publicly celebrated, the legacies of activists from the socialist countries have been largely erased after the collapse of the communist governments in 1989-1991.

This presentation will explore the structure of decision-making on national security issues as established in the National Security Act of 1947 and as practiced today. While established by law, the US National Security Council is designed to advise the president; most decisions are ultimately up to him.

KEYNOTE ADDRESS
20th Czech and Slovak Studies Workshop
March 18-21, 2021

TRANSATLANTIC COOPERATION IN PANDEMIC TIMES
9:00 am (EDT) | 1:00 pm (GMT) | 2:00 pm (CET)

REGISTER: https://pitt.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMkdu2hpj4uGdG3ZbUonmX4tSawD61rDL...

SPEAKER:
Pavol Demeš, Senior Fellow, The German Marshall Fund of the United States

Studying water infrastructure is an excellent entry point to examine the nexus between the utilization of natural resources and technologies on the one hand, and of politics and everyday life on the other. The talk will first address important findings of a study on irrigation systems and cotton cultivation in Central Asia. Here, the Russian colonizers of the nineteenth century implemented ideas of modernity and transformation that lived on in the Soviet context.

After a botched attempt to poison Alexei Navalny in August 2020, the Kremlin has decided to sentence him to over two years in prison upon the oppositionist’s return to Russia in January. Navalny responded with a bombshell video about the corruption around “Putin’s Palace.” Unsanctioned, mass protests filled the two capitals and tens of provincial cities resulted. The protesters were met with mass, indiscriminate arrests, and police violence. The political ante in this back-and-forth has certainly risen but to what end?

The talk will present an American foreign policy model--capitalist liberal exceptionalism--that accounts for the US behaviors around the world. Most importantly, the model integrates multiple factors, including the international system and domestic politics, into the analysis, delivering a concise interpretation of US foreign policy over time since the foundation of the nation.