Since the mid-20th century, science fiction has shaped our view of the nuclear. The possibilities and horrors of the nuclear has had a comparable impact on utopian and dystopian science fiction. American science fiction fans are well versed in the tropes. What was the relationship between the atom and Soviet/Post-Soviet science fiction? In this live interview, Anindita Banerjee will discuss the imagination of the nuclear in Soviet and post-Soviet science fiction.

From 1949 to 1989, the Soviet Union conducted 456 nuclear tests at Semipalatinsk nuclear test site in Kazakhstan. Despite decades of nuclear fallout, Kazakh rural communities inhabit the area around the site. How has living around a nuclear test site shaped those communities and their post-Soviet experience? This live interview with Magdalena Stawkowski will discuss her ethnographic work and the ways the Semipalatinsk test site still shapes economy, environment and subjectivities.

Based on Slovene/Yugoslav and Czechoslovak primary sources, Dr. Habinc will discuss socialist commission shops in comparison with other types of historically known second-hand retail channels. The lecture will examine the role such shops had in socialist consumption practices and in economies of shortage.

Lecture delivered by REEES Digital Scholarship Curator Sean Guillory to residents of Longwood at Oakmont Retirement Community.

Lecture delivered by REEES Digitial Scholarship Curator Sean Guillory to residents of Longwood at Oakmont Retirement Community.

Lecture delivered by REEES Digitial Scholarship Curator Sean Guillory to residents of Longwood at Oakmont Retirement Community.

Sean Guillory, REEES Digital Scholarship Curator, gave a presentation to middle school students at Kentucky Avenue School about Soviet views of America and propaganda films during the Cold War period.

Explore the Warhol with Donald Warhola, Andy’s nephew, and attend a screening of the film "Jan Palach" with an introduction by Jaroslav Kubera, President of the Czech Senate.

Admission is $25.00 for adults/$15.00 for children under 18. Payment by check only by May 21, 2019. Checks should be made payable to Friends of Via and mailed to:

Friends of Via
PO Box 82556
Pittsburgh, PA 15218

Entrance only with prepaid payment. No ticket sales at the door.

The twenty-first annual Russian Film Symposium will focus on the consequences of Muscovite Russia’s by-passing the stages of nation formation in favor of a leap directly into empire as a consequence of its conquest under Tsar Ivan IV (the Terrible) of the Khanate of Kazan in 1552 and Astrakhan in 1554. The sudden expansion of ethnicities, nationalities, language groups, as well as territory necessitated the formation of a strong central state (Moscow) and administration to control and oversee the numerous polities that constituted the newly emerged empire.

Anna Krakus, University of Southern California