• Pavel Khazanov
  • Pavel Khazanov
  • Assistant Professor
  • Degree: Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania M.A., Center for Research in Modern European Philosophy (London, UK) B.A., University of California, Los Angeles
  • Campus Address:

    15 Seminary Place, Room 4123
    New Brunswick, NJ 08901

  • Office Hours:

    Tuesdays, 2:00pm - 3:00pm, in person
    by appointment, via zoom or in person


 

Research Interests:

I research late Soviet and post-Soviet Russian culture, focusing especially on the evolution of the ideology of the Russian intelligentsia between the 1950s ‘Thaw’ and the present. Primarily, I study how political ideals such as socialism, liberalism and nationalism were interpreted among Russian elites and their audiences, and how these ideas influenced literature, criticism, film and art of the 20th and the 21st century.

I am also interested in the forging of Soviet discourse on Stalinist and post-Stalinist subjectivity in the works of such authors and critics as Andrei Platonov, Georg Lukács, Mikhail Lifshitz, and Vladimir Sappak.

My first book project, The Russia That We Have Lost: Pre-Soviet Past as Anti-Soviet Discourse (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023) examines how inventive recollections of the pre-Revolutionary past allowed late Soviet intellectual leaders and their audiences to define themselves and articulate a political horizon that ended up shaping the post-Soviet era.

My current book project, The New Narod: Russian liberalism and the Idea of Popular Will seeks to answer three key questions: how did a Soviet history of imaging popular will leading Russian liberals, especially in 1991, when they came to believe that popular will was forging a post-Soviet Russia? Why did this founding moment lead to almost immediate political disappointment? And can the cultural memory of 1991 play a political role in Russia in the future?

Honors/Awards:

ASEEES First Book Subvention Recipient for The Russia That We Have Lost (Fall 2022)

Kluge Fellow, Library of Congress, Washington DC (Jan-Oct 2022)

Collaborator, National Endowment for the Humanities Collaborative Research Grant (Type 2): “The Post-Soviet Public Sphere: Multimedia Sourcebook of the 1990s,” directed by Maya Vinokour (2019-2022)

Max Weber Fellow in History and Civilization, European University Institute, Florence (2017-2018)

Mellon Foundation- Council for European Studies Dissertation Completion Fellowship (2016-2017)

Benjamin Franklin Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania (2011-2016)

Publications:

The Russia That We Have Lost: Pre-Soviet Past as Anti-Soviet Discourse. University of Wisconsin Press, November 2023. Awarded the Fall 2022 First Book Subvention from the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies. Under contract for publication in Russian at NLO Press: anticipated release 2024-2025.

“A Petrovich Inside of Every New Russian: The Disciplinary Regime of the Capitalist ‘Vanguard Group’ at 1990s Kommersant.” The Russian Review 82:3 (2023), 470-485

“The Most Important Thing is to Remain a Human Being: Decembrist Protest, Soviet Lichnost’, and the Post-1968 Mass-Market Histories of Natan Eidelman and Bulat Okudzhava.” The Slavic and East European Journal 65:3 (2021), 478-498

“What is Our Life? A Game: What? Where? When? and the Capitalist Gamble of the Soviet Intelligentsia.” The Russian Review 2:2020, 269-292

Review of Plots Against Russia: Conspiracy and Fantasy After Socialism, Eliot Borenstein (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2019). The Russian Review 1:2020, 163-165

Introduction: “Mikhail Lifshitz and the Dialectical Politics of Art.” Pushkin Review 20:2018, 67-73

Translation: Mikhail Lifshitz, “On Pushkin, A Letter to G. M. Fridlender, 8 April, 1938.” Pushkin Review 20:2018, 75-85

“Honest Jacobins: High Stalinism and the Socialist Subjectivity of Mikhail Lifshitz and Andrei Platonov.” The Russian Review 4:2018, 576-601.

Review of Socialist Realism in Central and Eastern European Literatures: Institutions, Dynamics, and Discourses, Evgeny Dobrenko, Natalia Jonsson-Skradol, eds. (London: Anthem, 2018). The Russian Review 4: 2018, 650-652

“Vladimir Sappak’s Humanism on Soviet TV,” European University Institute Max Weber Fellow Working Papers 4:2018

Book Manuscript in Progress

The New Narod: Russian liberalism and the Idea of Popular Will

Courses Taught at Rutgers:

Russia’s Long 19th Century in Literature and Culture (Rutgers Core: AHp)

The Soviet Century in Literature and Culture (Core: AHp)

Russia Between Empire and Nation (Core: CC, cross-listed with CompLit.)

Russians Abroad (Core: WCr)

Love and Death in the Russian Short Story (Core: WCd, AHo, AHp)

Russian and Soviet Film (cross-listed with Comp. Lit., Cinema Studies)

Russia After Stalin: Literature, History Theory (Senior Seminar, Cross-listed with History, CompLit.)

Art & Power: Aesthetics in the Soviet Century (Core: AHo, AHp, cross-listed with Art History, CompLit.)

Nabokov (cross-listed with Comp. Lit., English)

Refuge from Empire: Global Russophone Émigré Cultures (Honors Seminar, Core: WCd)