Contraband Literature from the USSR and Eastern Europe

Location: Riga, Latvia

Dates: June 2 - June 27, 2025

Credits Offered: 3-6 credits

• RUSS 25675 (3 credits)
• RUSS 25676 (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.

RUSS 25676: Contraband Literature from the USSR and Eastern Europe: History and Theory

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, with a focus on the Baltics (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), their colonial past and literary relationships with Russia. Although our main historical framework will be the late Soviet period (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. This way, we will build a historical narrative for banned books across different periods: the Russian Empire, the USSR and Eastern Europe, the post-Soviet space, and Putin’s Russia. Placed at the intersection of literary studies, history, political science, geography, media studies, book history, and other disciplines, the course will feature lectures and seminars devoted to works of literature written at home but first published abroad, with or without the authors’ knowledge or consent (e.g., Anna Akhmatova’s “Requiem,” Lydia Chukovskaya’s Sofia Petrovna, Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Stories, Andrei Sinyavsky’s “Pkhentz,” to name but a few). 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. A reading knowledge of Russian or another East European language is welcomed but not required.

RUSS 25675: Tamizdat: Banned Books from the Cold War to the Present (Practicum)

This course, conceived of as a hands-on workshop and an extension of RUSS 25675, will 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, students will work with archives in Latvia, consult émigré periodicals and book collections at local libraries, transcribe and translate historical documents for publication on the Tamizdat Project website (book reviews, editorial correspondence, diaries, etc.), conduct interviews with representatives of the local diasporas, compile bibliographies, and work on their own research projects. All tasks contributed to Tamizdat Project throughout the course will be credited, and as a result every student will develop a portfolio of their own. While RUSS 25675 will provide students with a historical context and a theoretical perspective on banned books from the former USSR and Eastern Europe, this course will focus on cultural exterritoriality and book publishing outside Putin’s Russia and other countries, where creative expression is censored or undergoing an attack (e.g., Lukashenko’s Belarus). Our special guest will be Mark Lipovetsky, a literary critic and professor of Russian literature at Columbia University, who will offer a series of workshops devoted to today’s Russian and East European authors and texts in exile. Under Prof. Lipovetsky’s guidance, students will learn how to write book reviews, and why it matters. 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 25676: Contraband Literature from the USSR and Eastern Europe *
• RUSS 25675 (3 credits)**

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