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Elena Racheva

Former Galina Starovoitova Fellow

    Term

    September 1, 2015 — February 28, 2016

    Professional affiliation

    PhD Candidate, University of Oxford

    Wilson Center Projects

    “The Collective Memory of Stalin’s Repressions in the USSR as a Reflection of Contemporary Russian Politics”

    Full Biography

    Elena Racheva is the author of the book Article 58. Unseized. Stories of The People Who Passed Through What We Fear Most (Moscow, AST 2015; Glagoslav Publications, London, 2019 - forthcoming in print) – an oral history of former victims and perpetrators of Stalin’s GULAG. 

    She received a master’s degree in history in the University of Manchester and is currently working on her PhD project at the University of Oxford, where she investigates the cultural and anthropological basis of violence through the lens of “cycles of violence” in 20th century Russian history.

    For more than 15 years Elena worked as a special correspondent of an independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta where she covered political and social events, disasters and mass protests, and, besides, topics connected with the Soviet history and collective memory. In 2018 she published The Wolfs’ Place – a collection of Novaya Gazeta reportages from different parts of Russia.

    In 2015-2016, as a Galina Starovoitova fellow, Elena worked in the Kennan Institute on a research project The Collective Memory of Stalin's Repressions in the USSR as a Reflection of Contemporary Russian Politics.