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Tagged: Russian Empire

The Russian Orthodox Church and Modernity

By Regina Elsner. Russian Orthodoxy is often suspected to be pre or anti-modern because of its difficulties engaging with a plural and secular society – for example, when relating to democracy, human rights, or gender diversity. After the end of the Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church associated increasingly with the agenda of the political elites in Russia and other successor states of the Soviet Union.

“I’m interested in the movement of people with strange ideas” – 5in10 with Gregory Afinogenov

Gregory Afinogenov is an assistant professor of Imperial Russian History at Georgetown University and a Tandem Fellow in Global & Transregional History at the German Historical Institute Washington DC. He received his PhD in Russian history from Harvard University and his BA in history and philosophy from Fordham. His first book, “Spies and Scholars: Chinese Secrets and the Pursuit of World Power in Imperial Russia”, is forthcoming from Harvard University Press in Spring 2020. More broadly, Afinogenov’s research deals with the international social and political consequences of knowledge-making, from cybernetics in the Soviet Union to pastoral poetry in eighteenth-century New York.