The Duck of Minerva

Lisa Gaufman

Elizaveta Gaufman is Assistant Professor of Russian Discourse and Politics at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. She is the author of "Security Threats and Public Perception" (2017) and "Everyday Foreign Policy: Performing and Consuming the Russian Nation after Crimea" (2023)

Recent Posts

Judging a book by its cover II

Judging a book by its cover II

by Lisa Gaufman | 3 October, 2023 | , ,

Part I here if you are interested On the day of German reunification anniversary I bring you the sequel to the post on the new Russian history book. Only, if you read this history book, you will not find the term "reunification" - it's reserved for Crimea and Donbas - instead, you will find a passage about Western Germany "annexing" the Eastern one. Believe it or not, it is actually a toned down version of another history textbook co-authored by Medinsky: in "World History for 11th grade" he straight up called it an "Anschluss" highlighted in bold. Yes, the untranslated German term that was...

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Judging a book by its cover II

Judging a book by its cover

by Lisa Gaufman | 17 August, 2023 | ,

When I was in middle school I loved history: ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, the Middle Ages always fascinated me. Often during the summer vacation, I would read the history books in advance to prepare for the upcoming history classes (big surprise, I am a nerd). Old habits die hard, so this summer I picked up - actually, clicked on - the updated version of the Russian history book for high-schoolers "Russian history 1945 - beginning of 21st century". This version is co-written by the former culture minister and current aide to President Putin Vladimir Medinsky and the rector of...

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People were hoping for Tchaikovsky, but got Wagner instead

People were hoping for Tchaikovsky, but got Wagner instead

by Lisa Gaufman | 26 June, 2023 | ,

If you spent the entire Friday night and Saturday glued to the news about Prigozhin's armed rebellion, you are either an IR-head, a Russia-watcher or the Ukrainian army running out of popcorn. The avalanche of hot-takes about the start of a civil war, theoretical debates about a coup or not a coup and an army of blue-check grifters with the latest FSB letters reigned the day. The pundits who rushed to their keyboards with the news of Russia's impeding collapse saw their takes turn to pumpkins even before midnight: after Wagner's mostly unobstructed march to Moscow and seizing Rostov on Don...

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Indoctrinate Me Softly

Indoctrinate Me Softly

by Lisa Gaufman | 1 December, 2022 | ,

“Some came to kill and the others came to protect” says the main male character with a charisma of a doorknob to his love interest in the “based on real events” movie “Crimea” (2017), financed by the Russian Ministry of Defense. The hour and a half epic features many equally deep and meaningful conversations between a female Ukrainian journalist from Kyiv and a male Russian soldier from Sebastopol whose romance is set against the annexation of Crimea in 2014. In its official annotation, “Crimea” promises not a saga of the two warring clans of Montague and Capulet. This is a story about...

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No, Critical Race Theory was not a “thing” in the Soviet Union

No, Critical Race Theory was not a “thing” in the Soviet Union

by Lisa Gaufman | 5 November, 2021 | ,

According to a recent tweet, which I am not going to link to, "CRT" led to "multiple civil wars and transnational conflicts by the 1990s" in the Soviet Union. The simple answer is no, but let me explain in more detail. Some have dubbed the Soviet Union an "affirmative action empire" that glorified internationalism, anti-racism, anti-colonialism; at home, however, one could see a much less rosy picture. The notion of nationality, which is bound in Western Europe to the concept of citizenship, derives in Russia from a Soviet atavism that included ‘Natsional’nost’ (ethnicity) in the vital...

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Light Summer Reading

Light Summer Reading

by Lisa Gaufman | 21 July, 2021 | , ,

Ah, those days when you did not feel guilty for reading something that does not contain the term “poststructuralism” and/or footnotes. Back in my teenage years, I used to devour all the books I could get during the summer. I had some favorites: Alexandre Duma’s The Count of Monte-Christo (1844-1846) and The Valley of the Moon (1913) by Jack London. If the Monte Christo long-drawn out revenge plot is a great motivational read for staying in academia, The Valley of the Moon was a type of a comfort read with its slow-paced love story/farming manual features.  Following Paul Musgrave’s...

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Putin-Biden summit, but make it an 18th century gossip column

Putin-Biden summit, but make it an 18th century gossip column

by Lisa Gaufman | 6 July, 2021 | ,

Gentle reader*, People that have an itch at scribbling generally entertain their visitors with their happy projects, high flights, and wonderful publications, therefore 'tis to be supposed this blogue is in great measure the subject of many a drawing-room or a Twitteur discourse. Hence, when the handsome city of Geneva has been suffused by the members of the ton aching to catch a glimpse of the illustrious statesmen that graced its palaces with their presence, it is but no wonder that this author had to reserve quite a bit of ink to illuminate their readers on the...

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The peace, women’s suffrage and reproductive rights activist you might not know: Aletta Jacobs.

The peace, women’s suffrage and reproductive rights activist you might not know: Aletta Jacobs.

by Lisa Gaufman | 8 March, 2021 | , ,

Aletta Jacobs. Raise your hand if you have never heard her name! In our neck of the tulip fields, however, she is a celebrated professional: she was the first woman to be officially enrolled and graduate with a doctorate at the university in the Netherlands (shoutout to my employer - Rijksuniversiteit Groningen!) and the first woman to receive a medical degree. On top of those accomplishments, she was a women’s suffrage and peace activist, and helped establish Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, a Novel prize winning anti-war organization. To celebrate international...

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A Marx Allergy

A Marx Allergy

by Lisa Gaufman | 25 February, 2021 | , ,

If you are allergic to, let’s say peanuts, you would always carefully check the packaging of the food you buy: does the factory use them? Can there be traces in the sauce? After an unpleasant experience that might have involved a trip to the hospital or an EpiPen, you would want to avoid a repeat performance. This is almost the exact attitude of the Russian intellectual elite towards even a whiff of critical theory. Imagine growing up with endless rows of Lenin’s works in the book cabinets of your history teacher and being forced through Marxist and Leninist dialectics at university, not to...

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Trump’s Budweiser Putsch

by Lisa Gaufman | 9 January, 2021 | , , ,

US President Donald Trump gestures as he arrives to a "Make America Great Again" campaign rally in Cincinnati, Ohio, on August 1, 2019. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images) This is a guest post by Emily Holland, an Assistant Professor in the Russia Maritime Studies Institute at the US Naval War College & Hadas Aron, a Faculty Fellow at the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies at NYU. This week’s violent takeover of the Capitol Building has fueled the ongoing debate on the future of American democracy. For several years analysts have...

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