The Slavic Connexion The University of Texas at Austin

On this special episode, Sergio and Misha get the opportunity to speak with Sasha Zaritska, the lead singer of U-pop band KAZKA, and Andriy Urenov, producer and manager of the band. Their new single "Bez Kohannya" (Without Love) is out this Friday! Listen to the end of the episode for a sneak preview. Learn more about KAZKA and check out their music on their official site https://kazka.band/en/.


To watch an amazing concert given in the Kyiv metro by Kazka in late 2022, follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjE9fmy-0f0&t=1247s


PRODUCER'S NOTE: This episode was recorded on March 21st, 2023 at The University of Texas at Austin. Special thanks to the Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services at UT Austin, in particular thanks to Jacob Weiss and Jared Marxuach.


If you have questions, comments, or would like to be a guest on the show, please email slavxradio@utexas.edu and we will be in touch!


CREDITS
Host/Associate Producer: Sergio Glajar
Host/Assistant Producer: Misha Simanovskyy (@MSimanovskyy)
Associate Producer: Lera Toropin (@earlportion)
Associate Producer: Cullan Bendig (@cullanwithana)
Assistant Producer: Taylor Ham
Admin Assistant: Eliza Fisher
Supervising Producer: Katherine Birch
Recording: LAITS, Jared Marxuach
Editing and Sound Design: Michelle Daniel


Music Producer: Charlie Harper (@charlieharpermusic) www.charlieharpermusic.com (Main Theme by Charlie Harper and additional background music by KAZKA, provided courtesy of Andriy Urenov)


Executive Producer & Creator: Michelle Daniel (@M_S_Daniel) www.msdaniel.com


DISCLAIMER: Texas Podcast Network is brought to you by The University of Texas at Austin. Podcasts are produced by faculty members and staffers at UT Austin who work with University Communications to craft content that adheres to journalistic best practices. The University of Texas at Austin offers these podcasts at no charge. Podcasts appearing on the network and this webpage represent the views of the hosts, not of The University of Texas at Austin.

Special Guest: KAZKA.

On this episode, Valentina Glajar and Alison Lewis share their personal stories and research on the history of East Germany's STASI and Romania's Securitate and the dismantling of these secret police forces. Thank you for listening!


You can listen to Douglas Selvage's episode here: https://www.slavx.org/listen/episode/b54c0fff/operation-denver-and-russias-disinformation-playbook-with-douglas-selvage


ABOUT THE GUESTS
Dr. Valentina Glajar is a professor of German at Texas State University. She is the author of a number of books, her latest coedited with Alison Lewis and Corina L. Petrescu, are Secret Police Files from the Eastern Bloc: Between Surveillance and Life Writing (Camden House, 2016) and Cold War Spy Stories from Eastern Europe (University of Nebraska Press, 2019).


Dr. Alison Lewis is a professor of German in the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Melbourne. She is the author or editor of numerous books, including Secret Police Files from the Eastern Bloc: Between Surveillance and Life Writing and Cold War Spy Stories from Eastern Europe (Potomac Books, 2019).


PRODUCER'S NOTE: This episode was recorded on November 11, 2022 at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago, Illinois during the ASEEES 2022 Convention.


If you have questions, comments, or would like to be a guest on the show, please email slavxradio@utexas.edu and we will be in touch!


CREDITS
Host/Associate Producer: Taylor Ham
Host/Associate Producer: Sergio Glajar
Associate Producer: Lera Toropin (@earlportion)
Associate Producer: Cullan Bendig (@cullanwithana)
Assistant Producer: Misha Simanovskyy (@MSimanovskyy)
Social Media Manager: Eliza Fisher
Supervising Producer: Katherine Birch
Audio Editor: Blaine Young
Recording, Editing, and Sound Design: Michelle Daniel


Music Producer: Charlie Harper (@charlieharpermusic) www.charlieharpermusic.com (Main Theme by Charlie Harper and additional background music by Shaolin Dub, Blue Dot Sessions, Michelle Daniel Trio, The Incredibles theme, James Bond theme)


Executive Producer & Creator: Michelle Daniel (@M_S_Daniel)


DISCLAIMER: Texas Podcast Network is brought to you by The University of Texas at Austin. Podcasts are produced by faculty members and staffers at UT Austin who work with University Communications to craft content that adheres to journalistic best practices. The University of Texas at Austin offers these podcasts at no charge. Podcasts appearing on the network and this webpage represent the views of the hosts, not of The University of Texas at Austin.

Special Guests: Alison Lewis and Valentina Glajar.

On this episode, Cullan talks with Professor Michal Kšiňan about his monograph on the Slovak national hero and co-founder of Czechoslovakia, Milan Rastislav Štefánik. Michal talks about Štefánik's military career and meteoric rise and the place he continues to hold in Czechoslovakia history and memory. Thanks for listening!


ABOUT THE BOOK
https://www.routledge.com/authors/i21001-michal-kian
This is the first scientific biography of Milan Rastislav Štefánik (1880–1919) that is focused on analysing the process of how he became the Slovak national hero. Although he is relatively unknown internationally, his contemporaries compared him “to Choderlos de Laclos for the use of military tactics in love affairs, to Lawrence of Arabia for vision, to Bonaparte for ambition ... and to one of apostles for conviction”. He played the key role in founding an independent Czechoslovakia in 1918 through his relentless worldwide travels during the First World War in order to create the Czechoslovak Army: he visited Serbia and Romania on the eve of invasion by the Central Powers, Russia before the February revolution, the United States after it declared war on Germany, Italy dealing with the consequences of defeat in the Caporetto battle, and again when Russia plunged into Civil War. Several historical methods are used to analyse the aforementioned central research question of this biography such as social capital to explain his rise in French society, the charismatic leader to understand how he convinced and won over a relatively large number of people; more traditional political, military, and diplomatic history to show his contribution to the founding of Czechoslovakia, and memory studies to analyse his extraordinary popularity in Slovakia. By mapping his intriguing life, the book will be of interest to scholars in a broad range of areas including history of Central Europe, especially Czechoslovakia, international relations, social history, French society at the beginning of the 20th century and biographical research.


ABOUT THE GUEST
Michal Kšiňan is a researcher at the Institute of History of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava. He defended his PhD theses in history summa cum laude in 2011. He wrote his PhD theses en cotutelle between University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, where he later also lectured (2018–2019), and the Institute of History of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava where he currently works. He wrote several books about Štefánik, edited or coedited 5 volumes and published dozens of scientific papers on different topics. His works were published in Slovak, French, English, Italian, German and Russian. In 2006, he graduated from history and French language and literature at the Faculty of Pedagogy, Comenius University, Bratislava. In 2007, he got his Master 2 recherche from Contemporary Central European History at University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.


PRODUCER'S NOTE: This episode was recorded on November 1, 2022 via Zoom.


If you have questions, comments, or would like to be a guest on the show, please email slavxradio@utexas.edu and we will be in touch!


CREDITS
Host/Associate Producer: Cullan Bendig (@cullanwithana)
Associate Producer: Lera Toropin (@earlportion)
Assistant Producer: Taylor Ham
Assistant Producer: Sergio Glajar
Assistant Producer: Misha Simanovskyy (@MSimanovskyy)
Executive Assistant: Eliza Fisher
Supervising Producer: Katherine Birch
Audio Editor: Blaine Young
Recording and Sound Design: Michelle Daniel


Music Producer: Charlie Harper (@charlieharpermusic) www.charlieharpermusic.com (Main Theme by Charlie Harper and additional background music by Shaolin Dub, Simon Mathewson, Blue Dot Sessions,)


Executive Producer & Creator: Michelle Daniel (@M_S_Daniel) www.msdaniel.com


DISCLAIMER: Texas Podcast Network is brought to you by The University of Texas at Austin. Podcasts are produced by faculty members and staffers at UT Austin who work with University Communic

On this episode, Cullan sits down with lauded historian Ulf Brunnbauer, managing director of the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg, Germany, whose research on the social history and anthropology of Southeast Europe reveals that the Balkan region is in many ways more globalized than the rest of Europe.


ABOUT THE GUEST:
Ulf Brunnbauer, Academic Director of the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg, holds a PhD in history from the University of Graz, Austria (1999). In 2006, he was awarded a habilitation by the Free University of Berlin, and since 2008 he holds the Chair of Southeast and East European History at the University of Regensburg. His most recent books include In den Stürmen der Transformation (2022, with Philipp Ther and others) and The Routledge Handbook of Balkan and Southeastern European History (2021, ed. with John Lampe). He is also author of Globalizing Southeastern Europe. Emigrants, America and the State since the 19th Century (2016). Read an interview with him from ASEEES: https://www.aseees.org/membership/ulf-brunnbauer


PRODUCER'S NOTE: This episode was recorded on November 11th, 2022 at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago, Illinois at the ASEEES 2023 Convention.


SlavX is hosting an in-person and virtual conference on global media in diplomacy and foreign policy at The University of Texas at Austin, April 9-12, 2023. The call for papers can be found here: https://slavx.org/connexions. We hope to receive submissions from graduate students especially in countries all over Europe, Asia, and Africa. If your institution is interested in participating, please reach out to slavxradio@utexas.edu with the subject line "#CONNEXIONS CONFERENCE PARTNERSHIP". Thank you!


CREDITS
Host/Associate Producer: Cullan Bendig (@cullanwithana)
Associate Producer: Lera Toropin (@earlportion)
Associate Producer: Taylor Ham
Assistant Producer: Sergio Glajar
Assistant Producer: Misha Simanovskyy (@MSimanovskyy)
Social Media Manager: Eliza Fisher
Supervising Producer: Katherine Birch
Recording, Editing, and Sound Design: Michelle Daniel


Music Producer: Charlie Harper (@charlieharpermusic) www.charlieharpermusic.com (Main Theme by Charlie Harper and additional background music by Tea K Pea, Chicochico, Mindseye, Uncanny)


Executive Producer & Creator: Michelle Daniel (@M_S_Daniel) www.msdaniel.com


DISCLAIMER: Texas Podcast Network is brought to you by The University of Texas at Austin. Podcasts are produced by faculty members and staffers at UT Austin who work with University Communications to craft content that adheres to journalistic best practices. The University of Texas at Austin offers these podcasts at no charge. Podcasts appearing on the network and this webpage represent the views of the hosts, not of The University of Texas at Austin.

Special Guest: Ulf Brunnbauer.

On this episode, historian Dr. Ivan Kurilla from European University in St. Petersburg shares about his research on the rich and little-known history of US-Russia relations since the 18th century. Dr. Kurilla explains how the US and Russia are "constitutive others" that have developed historically within the same political language, were both projections of the Greater Europe, and at times shared similar social and political upheaval and transformation. Please visit European University's website at https://eusp.org/ for more on their program for international students (as described by Dr. Kurilla in the episode) held now in Yerevan, Armenia. https://eusp.org/en/news/eusp-revamped-international-programs-explore-what-is-happening-in-russia-and-eurasia-today


ABOUT THE GUEST
Ivan Kurilla is a Professor of History and International Relations at European University, St. Petersburg. His primary field of interest is the history of U.S.-Russian relations, especially during the American antebellum and Civil War periods. In addition, he has organized workshops, published articles, and edited volumes on the use of history, historical memory, and historical politics in Russia and the post-Soviet space. Dr. Kurilla has also published articles on relations between the state and society in contemporary Russia. His articles have been published in the leading Russian historical journals, as well as in the Journal of American History, Demokratizatsiya, Journal of Cold War Studies, Problems of Post-Communism, and Nationalities Papers. In 2010 he translated into Russian the classic monograph by Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State. Dr. Kurilla serves on the editorial board of Amerikanskii ezhegodnik (American Yearbook) of Moscow’s Russian Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the council of the Russian Society for U.S. History Studies and a member of the council of the Free Historical Society.


PRODUCER'S NOTE: This episode was recorded on November 12th, 2022 at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago, Illinois during the ASEEES 2022 Convention.


If you have questions, comments, or would like to be a guest on the show, please email slavxradio@utexas.edu and we will be in touch!


CREDITS
Host/Assistant Producer: Misha Simanovskyy (@MSimanovskyy)
Associate Producer: Lera Toropin (@earlportion)
Associate Producer: Cullan Bendig (@cullanwithana)
Associate Producer: Taylor Ham
Associate Producer: Sergio Glajar
Social Media Manager: Eliza Fisher
Supervising Producer: Katherine Birch
Recording, Editing, and Sound Design: Michelle Daniel


Music Producer: Charlie Harper (@charlieharpermusic) www.charlieharpermusic.com (Main Theme by Charlie Harper and additional background music by Makaih Beats, Mindseye, Paradigm, Chad Crouch, Uncanny)


Executive Producer & Creator: Michelle Daniel (@M_S_Daniel)


DISCLAIMER: Texas Podcast Network is brought to you by The University of Texas at Austin. Podcasts are produced by faculty members and staffers at UT Austin who work with University Communications to craft content that adheres to journalistic best practices. The University of Texas at Austin offers these podcasts at no charge. Podcasts appearing on the network and this webpage represent the views of the hosts, not of The University of Texas at Austin.

Special Guest: Ivan Kurilla.

On this episode, venerated political scientist Dr. Robert Freedman joins us to expound on the various wars and conflicts that Russia has gotten into, not only in Ukraine, but also in Syria, Libya, Mali, and more. Dr. Freedman articulates Putin's current goals as he sees them, touches on the liberal use of the Wagner Group by Russia, and prognosticates on the future of the war in Ukraine and Ukraine's prospects in joining Western security organizations. Thanks for listening (and happy holidays to all)!


ABOUT THE GUEST
Professor Robert Freedman received his B.A. in Diplomatic History from the University of Pennsylvania and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in International Relations from Columbia University. He was an Assistant Professor of Russian History at the United States Military Academy (West Point) and Associate Professor of Political Science and Russian at Marquette University, before his extended career in Baltimore as Professor of Political Science and later the President of the Baltimore Hebrew University. Now, he is visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University and continues to hold an appointment at the Baltimore Hebrew University. He is the author or co-author of five books on Soviet foreign policy and fifteen on Israel and the Middle East. He has consulted with U.S. and Israeli government agencies, served on significant government delegations, and been a commentator innumerable times on major news outlets. He is a highly respected authority in the U.S. foreign policy community.


PRODUCER'S NOTE: This episode was recorded on November 13th, 2022 at Palmer House Hilton in Chicago, Illinois at the 2022 ASEEES convention.


If you have questions, comments, or would like to be a guest on the show, please email slavxradio@utexas.edu and we will be in touch!


CREDITS
Host/Associate Producer: Taylor Ham
Host/Assistant Producer: Misha Simanovskyy (@MSimanovskyy)
Associate Producer: Lera Toropin (@earlportion)
Associate Producer: Cullan Bendig (@cullanwithana)
Assistant Producer: Sergio Glajar
Social Media Manager: Eliza Fisher
Supervising Producer: Katherine Birch
Recording, Editing, and Sound Design: Michelle Daniel


Music Producer: Charlie Harper (@charlieharpermusic) www.charlieharpermusic.com (Main Theme by Charlie Harper and additional background music by Holizna, Jazzafari, Kai Engel,Makaih Beats)


Executive Producer & Creator: Michelle Daniel (@M_S_Daniel) www.msdaniel.com


DISCLAIMER: Texas Podcast Network is brought to you by The University of Texas at Austin. Podcasts are produced by faculty members and staffers at UT Austin who work with University Communications to craft content that adheres to journalistic best practices. The University of Texas at Austin offers these podcasts at no charge. Podcasts appearing on the network and this webpage represent the views of the hosts, not of The University of Texas at Austin.

Special Guest: Robert O. Freedman.