The Case of DOXA: A New Chapter in Russian Youth Repression

The Slavic Connexion

On this episode, Lera sits down with Anastasiya Osipova, a scholar of Soviet and contemporary Russian and Ukrainian cultures, who shares about her research on DOXA, a student journal on political harassment in academia that emerged from Higher School of Economics in Moscow in 2017. DOXA was stripped of its status as a university organization in 2019 and since then exists as an independent magazine. After February 2022, DOXA left Russia and continues to operate outside of the country.

"In recent years, Russian student-run DOXA journal has emerged as one of the main platforms for anti-authoritarian youth. Simultaneously a source of independent news (including about Russia’s war in Ukraine), legal resources, and anti-harassment strategies, it sets a unique tone and articulates a consistent set of attitudes for the new generation of Russian youth, for whom detention and imprisonment have become a constant horizon of possibility. Anastasia Osipova looks at the strategies used by the former editors of DOXA who have been living under a pre-trial house arrest following the police raid of the journal’s office in April of 2021. She analyzes their poetic, performative, and activist strategies of dealing with confinement and police aggression––strategies that represent a new chapter in the long history of Russian repression of youth and that mark a decisive departure from both the Soviet dissident model and the actionism of the 2010s."

The interview mentioned in the episode can be found here: https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/its-not-so-easy-to-break-us-despite-everything/
Check out Cicada Press https://www.cicadapress.net/ and the book the Everburning Pilot by Leonid Schwab https://www.cicadapress.net/products-page/

ABOUT THE GUEST
Anastasiya Osipova is scholar of Soviet and contemporary Russian and Ukrainian cultures, with a focus on materialist aesthetics. Her first book, Survival and Mobilization: The Genre Memory of Soviet Prison Writing explores inter-generational aesthetic influence among political prisoners from 1920s to 2020s. In addition to her academic work, she is active as a writer, translator, and publisher of contemporary art and poetry in Russia and Ukraine. In 2013 she co-founded Cicada Press, an imprint committed to publishing formally experimental Eastern European writing.

PRODUCER'S NOTE: This episode was recorded on November 11, 2022 in Chicago Palmer Hilton at the 2022 ASEEES convention. If you have questions, comments, or would like to be a guest on the show, please email [e-mail] and we will be in touch!

CREDITS
Host/Associate Producer: Lera Toropin (@earlportion)
Associate Producer: Cullan Bendig (@cullanwithana)
Assistant Producer: Taylor Ham
Assistant Producer: Sergio Glajar
Assistant Producer: Misha Simanovskyy (@MSimanovskyy)
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 Joey Hendrixx, Mindseye, Nu Tiel Records, Eme Hache)

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

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Special Guest: Anastasiya Osipova.