91°µÍø

Thursday, April 16
Victoria Lomasko, graphic artist
The Last Soviet Artist

Victoria Lomasko was born in Serpukhov, Russia in 1978. An artist and journalist, Lomasko is the author of Other Russias (n+1 Books, 2017) and the coauthor of Forbidden Art. Her work has been exhibited in numerous shows in Europe and in the United States. She lived in Moscow until March 2022 and now lives in exile. In 2019, Lomasko spent two weeks at 91°µÍø completing her mural “Atlases,” which now hangs on the third floor of King Library.

Her latest book – and the focus of the event – is entitled (n+1 Books, 2025). In this powerful chronicle of change and resistance, Lomasko takes the measure of the post-Soviet space in the late Putin years. The Last Soviet Artist opens with a series of beautifully illustrated trips to Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Georgia, and the North Caucasus, where Lomasko interviews a long list of varied subjects (artists, activists, teachers, senior citizens, schoolchildren), about gender rights, grassroots politics, and the ghosts of the Soviet past. In the book’s second section, Lomasko depicts with great immediacy the drama of the Belarusian revolution and attends the final major protests in Russia on the eve of the invasion of Ukraine—which in turn leads to the third section, written entirely in exile. How do ordinary people navigate historic changes? How do different generations make sense of their shared present? Equally attentive to its interlocutors and their landscapes, The Last Soviet Artist is an unforgettable work of graphic reportage. 

Winner of the 2022 Pen Catalan Free Voice Award and the 2023 Prix Couilles au Cul pour le Courage Artistique, Festival de BD d’Angoulême.

King Library 320, 4:30-5:45pm 

part of ongoing Havighurst Center focus: Dissent in Russia Today, Emigration and Exile

Thursday, April 17
Victoria Lomasko, graphic artist
Drawing Workshop

Following her lecture on April 16, artist and graphic journalist Victoria Lomasko will conduct a drawing workshop.  The Workshop is free but pre-registration is recommended:  

No drawing experience needed. The Havighurst Center will provide materials.

King Library, Makerspace, 1:00-4:00pm

 
Friday, April 24
Serhii Plokhy, Harvard University
The Nuclear Age: Chernobyl 40 Years After

12:00-1:00pm online with Lane Library ()

Join us for an online discussion with the preeminent historian and bestselling author Serhii Plokhy about his latest book, . 

In The Nuclear Age, Plokhy, the Mykhailo S. Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University, explores why governments have acquired and stockpiled nuclear weapons and reveals the global failure to reach meaningful nuclear arms treaties. Plokhy argues that the risk of nuclear war has never been so high: Russia threatens nuclear aggression in its war on Ukraine; China is constructing hundreds of new missile silos; and India and Pakistan are locked in ongoing nuclear competition. Plokhy also examines how more countries than ever have come within perilous reach of acquiring nuclear arms, while new technologies, such as hypersonic missiles and artificial intelligence, make the nuclear landscape increasingly unpredictable.

Co-sponsored by 91°µÍø’s Havighurst Center for East European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies and moderated by its director, Stephen Norris, this event is timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, which Plokhy has also written about in his books and ,

April 27

Havighurst Center Colloquia Series: Democracy in Post-Communist Eastern Europe
Michael Bernhard, University of Florida
Paradoxes of Democratic Accountability in the Age of Democratic Backsliding

This Colloquia series looks at a political development that has transpired in post-accession Eastern Europe-- democratic backsliding--examining it from different analytical perspectives: conceptual, theoretical, comparative and empirical. 

Harrison Hall 303, 11:40am - 1:00pm