Contraband Literature from the USSR and Eastern Europe

Location: Riga, Latvia

Dates: June 2 – June 27, 2025

Credits Offered: 3 credits

• RUSS 25674 (3 credits)

Application Deadline: March 14, 2025

Program Fee: $2,000 (estimate) includes housing (single occupancy room with private bathroom), cultural excursions, and international health and travel insurance. Tuition and airfare are not included in the program fee. If you are not currently a CUNY student and you wish to register for this course, please review tuition rates for non-CUNY, non-degree students here. Non-CUNY students must also submit a Hunter non-degree application, as well as the Hunter Education Abroad office Summer 2025 program application. All students are responsible for arriving at their study abroad location by the first day of the program; this may mean flying the day before.

Tuition and airfare are not included in the program fee.

Travel: Students are responsible for arriving at their study abroad location by the first day of the program; this may mean flying the day before.

Payment Schedule: $350 deposit will be due on or before March 14, 2025. Do not submit your deposit until you have applied and been officially accepted to the program! You will receive an acceptance email from our office to confirm next steps.

Program fee balance: $1,650 (program fee balance; estimate) is due on or before March 28, 2025. Payments must be made with certified check or money order. No cash, personal checks, or credit cards. Payments should be made at the Office of Education Abroad during office hours.

Students are responsible for meeting the payment deadline regardless of funding source: eg. Macaulay Opportunities Fund, scholarships, loans, or any other type of financial aid. Late fees will be applied to all delayed payments.

Financial Aid: Please be sure to meet with the Financial Aid Office to discuss your particular financial aid package.

Scholarships: In addition to the Gilman Scholarship,* students should visit our Scholarships Page for more opportunities. Students interested in applying for the Gilman scholarship should email Stephen Lassonde at ops@hunter.cuny.edu.

This course is an exploration of the first publications, circulation, and reception of clandestine manuscripts from behind the Iron Curtain first published abroad during the Cold War. Although our main historical framework will be 1956-1991, we will start with earlier examples of “tamizdat” in the nineteenth- and early twentieth centuries (Alexander Herzen, Evgeny Zamyatin) and finish with a discussion of the present-day geopolitical situation, when censorship in Russia is back and many writers, artists, and journalists are forced to publish abroad and/or emigrate. Placed at the intersection of literary studies, history, political science, geography, media studies, and other disciplines, the course will consist of lectures and seminars each devoted to an author or a work of literature written at home but first published abroad, with or without the author’s knowledge or consent (e.g., Lydia Chukovskaya’s Sofia Petrovna, Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Stories, Andrei Sinyavsky’s “Pkhentz”). Exterritorial publications of contraband Russian literature will not only be situated in the context of other East European “tamizdats” (e.g., Czech, Polish, Ukrainian), but also juxtaposed to those by such Western authors as George Orwell, whose writings were likewise banned on the inner side of the Curtain throughout the Cold War era.

This course will also offer students an opportunity to contribute to Tamizdat Project, a public scholarship initiative for the study of banned books from the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. Depending on their interests and qualifications, they will work with archives in Estonia and elsewhere in Europe, consult émigré periodicals and book collections at local libraries, transcribe and translate historical documents for publication (book reviews, editorial correspondence, and original manuscripts), conduct interviews with representatives of the Russian and East European literary diasporas, compile bibliographies, and more. All tasks contributed to the project throughout the course will be credited, and as a result every student will develop a portfolio of their own. A reading knowledge of Russian or another East European language is welcomed but not required.

Credits & Grades: Students in this program will receive both course credit and letter grades. Grades will count toward their Hunter GPA.

Syllabus can be downloaded here:

• Russ 25674: Contraband Literature from the USSR and Eastern Europe *

*This syllabus is representative of the program itinerary. The Summer 2025 syllabus will be updated in Spring 2025.