Latvia – Contraband Literature from the USSR and Eastern Europe

Location: Riga, Latvia

Term: Summer 2026

Credits Offered: 3-6 credits

• RUSS 25677 (3 credits)
• RUSS 25678 (3 credits)

Financial Aid: Please be sure to meet with the Financial Aid Office to discuss your particular financial aid package. 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.

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.

Full program details available on our study abroad portal. Click HERE to learn more!

RUSS 25677: Banned Books from the Cold War to the Present: 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, Putin’s Russia and beyond. 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 books by such Western authors as George Orwell, which 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 25678: Banned Books from the Cold War to the Present: Practicum in Translation and Archival Research

This course, conceived of as a hands-on workshop and an extension of RUSS 25677, will offer students an opportunity to contribute to Tamizdat Project, a public scholarship initiative for the study of banned books from the Cold War to the present. Depending on their interests and qualifications, students will work with archives in Latvia, consult émigré periodicals and book collections at local libraries and online, 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 25677 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 yet again under an attack. Our special guest will be Ainsley Morse, a literary translator and professor of Russian literature at University of California San Diego, who will offer a series of workshops devoted to translating contemporary Russian and East European authors into English. 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.