Vladimir Nabokov and Anatomy of Russian Exile – Free Online Lecture
Vladimir Nabokov is politically relevant again. In the last decade, the theme of immigration and dissent in Russia has become as important as it was half a century ago before the Soviet Iron Curtain fell in the late 1980s. Nabokov’s Western choice originated in his political circumstances—exile to Europe and then America after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. His émigré status allowed him to take a literary journey from the closed nature of 19th century Russian literature and politics to an opposite extreme—openness of 20th century America.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when the West came to Russia through the possibilities of travel and freedom, the cultures of foreign exile and the Russian inside managed to merge. The 20th century Nabokov, whose books taught how to live with liberty, promised to become the most important cultural and literary phenomenon for Russia in the 21st century. However, the increasingly stifling regime of Vladimir Putin shattered those hopes, bringing lessons of the post-1917 exile back to the fore.
Nina Khrushcheva is a professor of International Affairs at The New School in New York and a contributor to Project Syndicate: Association of Newspapers Around the World. Her articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, and other international publications. She is the author of several books including In Putin’s Footsteps: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia’s 11 Time Zones (2019) (co-authored) and Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and Politics (2008). Her latest book (in Russian) is a biography of her great-grandfather, Nikita Khrushchev: An Outlier of the System (Diletant, 2024).
Follow the link below to register for the free online lecture by Nina Khrushcheva.
She will discuss how the lessons of Vladimir Nabokov’s post-1917 exile have once again become relevant.
Saturday, December 14, 2024
1-2:14 (Eastern Time)
REGISTRATION LINK:
https://secure.lglforms.com/form_engine/s/bfyAzUgNS8P4sDY6Etyupw
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This program will be recorded and posted to the museum’s YouTube channel.
Questions? Call (315) 858-2468 or email [email protected]