Episode #10: Anti-Soviet identities in the USSR

Andrei Tarkovsky on the set of Stalker.

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In this ep Evgenia and I talk about Jewish nationalism and other identities that started cropping up in the Soviet Union in 1960s and 1970s, when disillusionment began to set in with the boomer generation. While some discovered Zionism and Judaism, others got baptized — like Evgenia’s dad and uncle did.

—Yasha Levine

PS: Evgenia mentioned an essay on socialist realism by a Soviet writer named Andrei Sinyavsky, who went by the pen name Abram Tertz. You can read it in English, along with his novel — The Trial Begins.

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Check out our previous episodes: 

• Episode #9: The End

• Episode #8: Breeders

• Episode #7: Adam Curtis, get out of my head

• Episode #6: Navalny, the Kremlin, and the curse of neoliberalism

• Episode #5: The Serf aka Холоп

• Episode #4: Palestine and Soviet Jews

• Episode #3: Eduard Limonov and Natalia Medvedeva w/Thierry Marignac

• Episode #2: All the Sad Soviet Immigrant Lit

• Episode #1: Russians Against Politics

• Episode #0: The Ukrainian-Canadian left & Chrystia Freeland's Nazi grandpa