The SCRSS organises a regular programme of lectures,
film shows, exhibitions, seminars and other events at its premises
in London. The Society is also involved in educational and commemorative
events associated with the Soviet War Memorial in London. Events
are open to both SCRSS members and non-members, unless otherwise
stated. The opinions expressed in lectures are those of the individual
speakers and not necessarily those of the SCRSS.
Venue and Tickets
Standard ticket prices for talks are £3.00 (SCRSS members)
and £5.00 (non-members). All other events or classes are
priced as indicated. Our library openings are normally every first
Saturday of the month.
2024 Events Diary
January 2024
Please note: there is no Saturday library
opening in January 2024.
From Thursday 25 January 2024
- 29 February 2024, 18.00 - 20.00
Zoom Online Evening Class: Russian Language for Good Intermediate
Level
Rolling 10-week Zoom evening class, taught by Christine Barnard,
former lecturer in Russian at Westminster University. Note:
this is the remaining 6 weeks of the term that started on 30 November
2023, following the Christmas / New Year break. The group
is friendly, informal and strictly non-competitive. One hour free
conversation, one hour reading, with a short break in-between.
The group will read a variety of short stories or short extracts
from longer books, with suggestions welcome. The current text
is Tyotya dyadi Fyodora. There is availability for new
members to join the class - for more information or to request
a free one-session trial, email Christine Barnard direct on rtstrans1@gmail.com.
Fee for 10 weeks: £40.00 (SCRSS members only). Why not become
an SCRSS member to join this enjoyable
class - rates are competitive.
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February 2024
Saturday 3 February 2024, 11.00
- 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening
Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors by appointment
only. Access the library collections and borrow books from
the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is
also usually available for a small donation. Tea and coffee available.
Members - please bring your membership card.
Tuesday 6 February 2024, 19.00
- 20.00
Zoom Online Lecture: Professor Bill Bowring on Lenin, Self-Determination
of Nations and the 1924 Constitution of the USSR
First talk in our '1920s USSR' series for
spring 2024, reflecting the decade in which the Society was founded.
Lenin had campaigned from before the outbreak of the First World
War for the destruction of the Tsarist Empire and for the principle
of the right of nations to self-determination. This principle
was the central core of the first constitutions of Soviet Russia
and of the USSR. Lenin was uncompromising on the issue of a federation
of Soviet national republics and the right to secession. This
culminated in the Constitution of the USSR, approved on 31 January
1924, which stated in the opening Declaration: "... this
Union is a free federation of peoples equal in rights... the right
to freely withdraw from the Union is assured to each Republic."
Lenin's principled insistence on the right of nations to self-determination
remains highly controversial in Russia and has had a continuing
impact on the motivation of President Vladimir Putin. For many
years Putin has raged against Lenin - as a German agent who destroyed
the Russian Empire for money, and as an enemy of Russia who maliciously
planted an 'atomic bomb' under the USSR with the federative Constitution
of 1924 and created a fictitious state, Ukraine, to be an enemy
of Russia. This appears to have been one of his prime considerations
in his decision to invade Ukraine, as he explained in detail in
his speech of 21 February 2022.
Booking: via Eventbrite
(booking closes on 6 February 2024 at 16.00). Normal ticket
prices apply. Shortly after the event, a link
to the online recording of this talk will be sent to all those
who book (available for up to 30 days).
Bill Bowring has taught at Birkbeck College, University of
London, since 2006; he is a Barrister, taking cases to the Strasbourg
Court; and is a fluent Russian speaker, with many publications
in Russian and about Russia, including 'Law, Rights and Ideology
in Russia: Landmarks in the Destiny of a Great Power' (2013).He
was a regular visitor to Russia up until the start of the Covid
pandemic in February 2020. He was Chair of the SCRSS from 1989
to 1997, and has been President since 19 May 2007. In 1991, after
the collapse of the USSR, he proposed the re-naming of the SCR
(Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR) to the SCRSS (Society
for Co-operation in Russian & Soviet Studies).
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March 2024
Saturday 2 March 2024, 09.30 -
10.45
Zoom Online Lecture in Russian: Associate Professor Nataliya Semenova
on The Nostalgia Trend in Contemporary Russian Literature
/ Nostal'gicheskaya tendentsiya v sovremennoi russkoi literature
Free talk in Russian for SCRSS members only.
Associate Professor Nataliya Semenova discusses the nostalgia
trend in contemporary Russian literature, live from St Petersburg.
Full details available on Eventbrite (see link below)
Booking: now open on Eventbrite (booking
closes on Friday 1 March 2024 at 17.00). Within 48 hours after
the event, a link to the online recording of this talk will be
sent to all members who book (available for up to 30 days).
Saturday 2 March
2024, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening
Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors by appointment
only. Access the library collections and borrow books from
the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is
also usually available for a small donation. Tea and coffee available.
Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your
membership card.
From Thursday 7 March 2024
for 10 weeks, 18.00 - 20.00
Zoom Online Evening Class: Russian Language for Good Intermediate Level
Rolling 10-week Zoom evening class, taught by Christine Barnard,
former lecturer in Russian at Westminster University. The group
is friendly, informal and strictly non-competitive. One hour free
conversation, one hour reading, with a short break in between.
The group reads a variety of short stories or short extracts from
longer books, with suggestions welcome. The current text is Chekhov's
Dama s sobachkoi (Lady with a Lapdog). There is currently
availability for new members to join the class. For more information
or to request a free one-session trial, email Christine Barnard
direct on rtstrans1@gmail.com.
Fee for 10 weeks: £40.00 (SCRSS members only). Why not
become an SCRSS member to join this
enjoyable class?
Wednesday 20 March 2024, 19.00
- 20.00
Zoom Online Lecture: Andrew George on Andrei Platonov's 'Chevengur'
as a Marxist Novel
Second talk in our '1920s USSR' series for
spring 2024, reflecting the decade in which the Society was founded.
Andrei Platonov (1899-1951) was a Soviet Russian writer who is
now becoming widely recognised in the West. His 1928 novel Chevengur
has recently been re-published in a new English translation by
Robert and Elizabeth Chandler. Chevengur is variously
considered to be a dystopian satire or a revolutionary novel on
the idea of communism, while its author has been portrayed as
both an ardent opponent of Soviet socialism and a loyal Soviet
revolutionary.
In this talk Andrew George discusses how Platonov, his life, and
his work, in particular Chevengur, relate to Marxism
in their historical, cultural and political contexts. He contends
that Platonov was a complex Bolshevik thinker living through complex
times (including the Civil War, New Economic Policy and Five Year
Plans). Platonov was involved in the Russian Revolution not only
as a writer, but also as an engineer working on electrification,
irrigation and land reclamation projects in Russia and Central
Asia. The talk will include the publication and translation history
of Chevengur in Russian and English, in the USSR and
abroad.
Booking: via Eventbrite
(booking closes on 20 March 2024 at 16.00). Normal ticket
prices apply. Shortly after the event, a link
to the online recording of this talk will be sent to all those
who book (available for up to 30 days).
Andrew George took his first degree in Russian at Queen Mary
University of London. He completed his MA in Russian and East
European Literature and Culture at University College London on
'The Revolutionary Marxist Subject of Platonov's Chevengur'. His
research interests include socialist and communist culture, history,
philosophy, politics and society.
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April 2024
Saturday 6 April 2024, 11.00 -
16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening
Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors by appointment
only. Access the library collections and borrow books from
the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is
also usually available for a small donation. Tea and coffee available.
Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your
membership card.
Tuesday 16 April 2024, 18.30
- 19.30
Zoom Online Lecture in Russian for Members Only: Associate Professor
Nataliya Semenova on 'Moscow Literature' in Contemporary Russian
Culture / 'Moskovsky tekst' v sovremennoi russkoi kul'ture
Free talk in Russian for SCRSS members only.
Following her successful Zoom talk for the SCRSS in March 2024,
Associate Professor Nataliya Semenova returns to discuss the phenomenon
of 'Moscow literature' - part of the wider trend for mapping space
already seen in 'St Petersburg literature' and others. She will
focus on a number of aspects of 21st-century works - from memoir
literature by V. Aksenov and A. Nilin, to documentary reconstructions
and utopian manifestations of the contemporary city in the novels
of S. Belyakov and D. Danilov. Full details in Russian on Eventbrite,
including Nataliya Semenova's academic credentials. Live from
St Petersburg.
Booking: via Eventbrite
(booking closes at 15.30 on Tuesday 16 April 2024). Within 48
hours after the event, a link to the online recording of this
talk will be sent to all members who book (available for up to
30 days).
Wednesday 24 April 2024, 19.00
- 20.00
Zoom Online Lecture: Professor Jeremy Hicks on Oedipal and
Incendiary: Revisiting Pudovkin's Film Adaptation of Gorky's Mother
(1926)
Third talk in our '1920s USSR' series for
spring 2024, reflecting the decade in which the Society was founded.
Vsevolod Pudovkin's The Mother (1926) boldly reworked
Gorky's 1908 novel in the spirit of the creative reflection on
the relation between Freudianism and Marxism in the 1920s, an
intellectual current repressed in the USSR from the 1930s. It
was perhaps the provocative mix that led the film to be more widely
censored on its international release even than Battleship
Potemkin. This talk explores the adaptation and the film's
reception, especially in the UK.
Booking: via Eventbrite
(booking closes on 24 April 2024 at 16.00). Normal ticket
prices apply. Shortly after the event, a link
to the online recording of this talk will be sent to all those
who book (available for up to 30 days).
Jeremy Hicks is Professor of Russian Culture and Film at Queen
Mary University of London where he teaches courses on Russian
film history and literature. He is the author of four books and
many articles on Russian and Soviet history, film, especially
documentary, literature and journalism. His publications include:
'Dziga Vertov: Defining Documentary Film' (London and New York,
2007) and 'First Films of the Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and the
Genocide of the Jews, 1938-46' (Pittsburgh, 2012), which won the
2013 ASEEES Wayne Vucinich Prize "for the most important
contribution to Russian, Eurasian, and East European studies in
any discipline of the humanities or social sciences". His
most recent book is: 'The Victory Banner over the Reichstag: Film,
Document and Ritual in Russia's Contested Memory of World War
Two' (Pittsburgh 2020). He is currently researching the relationship
between film and the international famine relief campaign to Soviet
Russia and Ukraine in 1921, and he frequently reviews and writes
about contemporary documentary in the former Soviet countries.
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May 2024
Saturday 4 May 2024, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening
Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors by appointment
only. Access the library collections and borrow books from
the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is
also usually available for a small donation. Tea and coffee available.
Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your
membership card.
Saturday 18 May 2024, 11.00 - 13.00
In-person Event: SCRSS Annual General Meeting
Held at the SCRSS office. SCRSS members only.
Note: the talk by SCRSS Trustee and art historian
Christine Lindey at 14.00 (see below) is free to members who attend
the AGM.
Saturday 18 May 2024, 14.00 - 15.00
In-person Lecture: Christine Lindey on Alexander Deineka (1899-1969),
People’s Artist of the USSR
Fourth talk in our '1920s USSR' series for
spring 2024, reflecting the decade in which the Society was founded.
In-person illustrated talk held at the SCRSS office.
Alexander Alexandrovich Deineka (1899-1969) was just eighteen
and studying in his native Kursk when the Bolshevik Revolution
began in 1917. Soon after he was at Moscow's now celebrated VKhUTEMAS
(Higher Art and Technical Workshops) where he honed his Marxist
aspiration to create a new Soviet art.
In 1922 he co-founded the Association of Artists for Revolutionary
Russia (AARA). Intending to create a new heritage for the new
worker state, these artists imparted clear meanings in accessible
realist styles without being narrowly academic.
Deineka's Defence of Petrograd (1928) sought a compromise.
It celebrates the workers' foundation of the Soviet state in a
style that moderately absorbs Cubism and Expressionism while retaining
clear legibility to express the new Soviet reality. Most of his
subjects celebrated factory workers, miners, modernity, youth
and aspiration as expressed by flight and sport - with football,
the quintessential male working-class sport, claiming a special
place.
Deineka ruffled many an academician's feathers yet he was eventually
honoured as a Hero of Socialist Labour, People's Artist of the
USSR, a full member of the USSR Academy of Arts and a Lenin Prize
winner.
Booking: Tickets available on the door. Free
to SCRSS members who attend the preceding Annual General Meeting
at 11.00. Otherwise normal ticket prices apply.
Christine Lindey is an art historian with a special interest
in Soviet and Socialist art. She was formerly an Associate Lecturer
in art history at Birkbeck College, University of London, and
at the University of the Arts, London. She is the author of five
books, including her latest 'Art for All: British Socially Committed
Art from the 1930s to the Cold War' (2018) and her influential
'Art in the Cold War: From Vladivostock to Kalamazoo' (1990),
which pioneered the comparative study of Soviet and Western Art.
Now retired from teaching, she continues to write regular art
reviews for the Morning Star newspaper, as well as articles and
book reviews on Russian and Soviet art for the SCRSS Digest.
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June 2024
Saturday 1 June 2024, 11.00 -
16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening
Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors by appointment
only. Access the library collections and borrow books from
the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is
also usually available for a small donation. Tea and coffee available.
Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your
membership card.
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July 2024
Saturday 6 July 2024 (time TBC)
In-person Event: SCRSS Centenary Celebration 1924-2024
SCRSS members only. Details to follow.
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August 2024
Saturday 3 August 2024, 11.00
- 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening
Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors by appointment
only. Access the library collections and borrow books from
the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is
also usually available for a small donation. Tea and coffee available.
Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your
membership card.
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September 2024
Saturday 7 September 2024, 11.00
- 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening
Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors by appointment
only. Access the library collections and borrow books from
the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is
also usually available for a small donation. Tea and coffee available.
Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your
membership card.
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October 2024
Saturday 5 October 2024, 11.00
- 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening
Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors by appointment
only. Access the library collections and borrow books from
the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is
also usually available for a small donation. Tea and coffee available.
Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your
membership card.
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November 2024
Saturday 2 November 2024, 11.00
- 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening
Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors by appointment
only. Access the library collections and borrow books from
the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is
also usually available for a small donation. Tea and coffee available.
Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your
membership card.
Back to top
December 2024
Saturday 7 December 2024, 11.00
- 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening
Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors by appointment
only. Access the library collections and borrow books from
the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is
also usually available for a small donation. Tea and coffee available.
Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your
membership card.
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