Konstantin Goldman was arrested in Moscow for displaying Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' as a form of protest against Russia's military policies. Literature, historically central in Russian culture, is now a divisive tool in the ongoing cultural and political conflicts regarding Ukraine. zocalopublicsquare.org

Yane Sandanski (1872–1915) is remembered today as a hero in both Bulgaria and North Macedonia—but the image each country preserves of him is remarkably different. His legacy offers a revealing case study of how modern nationalism reshapes the past to suit present identities, often ignoring the ambiguities and contradictions that shaped historical actors in their own time.

While exploring graffiti in Thessaloniki, a Karah Meyer used AI to decode an unfamiliar anarchist squatter symbol linked to refugee solidarity movements revealing the city’s layered political history and showed how AI can be used to understand local activism, protest art, and hidden messages in public space.

The creation of the Riviera myth- Tracing art and artists from the 1880s through 2000, Silver identifies France’s Mediterranean coast as a dream space for the twentieth century""

Throughout history, dictators have constructed secret police agencies to neutralize rivals and enforce social order. But the same agencies can become disloyal and threatening. This book explores how eight communist regimes in Cold War Europe confronted this dilemma. 

The Bolshevik takeover of Russia created an alternative Russia in exile that never laid down its arms. For two decades, expelled White Russians sought ways to retaliate against the Soviet Union and return home. Their irreconcilability was galvanized by a superstructure, the dominant military organization, the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS).

Presentations by the MCC Fellows at the Melikian Center about the courses addressing issues of Eastern Europe and Eurasia that they have developed during their 2024-2025 fellowship at ASU.

When evidence of war crimes committed between 1998 and 1999 is discovered across sites in war-torn Serbia—including a truck filled with bodies at the bottom of the Danube and mass graves in suburban Belgrade—film director Ognjen Glavonić begins a years-long examination of the unexamined and exploration of the inexplicable. 

During NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, Vlada, a truck driver, is hired to undertake a treacherous path across his war-torn country and deliver mysterious cargo. On a journey where friend and foe prove indistinguishable, Vlada comes to realize the horrifying ramifications of his mission.

Scholars present papers on aspects of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian languages, literatures, linguistics, cultures, and history. 

The identity of modern Macedonia has been shaped by many forces over the centuries, including over the dynamic past 125 years. The hundreds of postcards featuring Skopje, produced locally and abroad, provide a diachronic, image-to-image telling of the city’s history by insiders and outsiders. 

The Time of the Goats by Luan Starova is a postwar Balkan novel that blends memoir, historical fiction, and political allegory to depict life in Macedonia during the early years of socialist Yugoslavia.