#200 American History in Russia w/ Sean Guillory
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 21 June 2021
⏱️ 62 minutes
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Summary
Since establishing Sean's Russia Blog in 2005, Sean Guillory has been one of the most prominent public-facing scholars in Russian and Soviet History. In this episode, Sean gives his insight on the gap between academic research and public perceptions, offers his take on why Cold War-era tropes continue to dominate US-Russia relations, and explains why some Americans left the US in search of a better life in the Soviet Union. Ben & Sean also discuss the ways that studying Americans in the USSR provides valuable insight into the history of the United States in the 20th Century.
Dr. Sean Guillory is Digital Scholarship Curator in the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Since 2015, he has hosted and produced the SRB Podcast, whose mission is to provide a space for experts to share their research with a wider public audience. You can follow Sean on twitter at @SeansRussiaBlog.
This episode was edited by Ben Sawyer.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast is in the Loop, the Legion of Osiris Podcasts. What does that mean? Osiris is a community of great music and culture podcasts. If you like this one, go check out others at Osirspod.com and get in the loop. |
| 0:20.6 | I'm Ben Sawyer and this is the road to now. |
| 0:24.2 | Today's guest is Sean Guillory. |
| 0:26.6 | Sean has been an important figure in sharing academic knowledge about Russia and Soviet history with the public for well over a decade now. |
| 0:35.1 | In 2005, he established Sean's Russia blog, and a few years ago, he |
| 0:39.2 | rolled that over into the SRB podcast. He helps spread knowledge to the general public. But he's |
| 0:45.4 | done so much. He's published in the nation. He's been Al Jazeera. He's just been in a lot of places, |
| 0:50.8 | and he knows how to speak to folks. And aside from that, he's an old friend of both |
| 0:54.8 | me and my wife. He went to grad school with Kelly at UCLA. And I've known him and admired what he's |
| 1:00.0 | doing for a long time. And obviously, he was doing it before us. So probably some influence here |
| 1:05.6 | in seeing that those of us who are scholars can have the type of impact that Sean has had and |
| 1:10.2 | hopefully we're having. |
| 1:11.3 | Our conversation ranges from the state of U.S. Russian affairs today. |
| 1:15.8 | What those of us who study Russia can see is the big problems between the U.S. and Russia in terms of our foreign policies. |
| 1:23.1 | We talk about the gap, just in general, between what we've uncovered through research on Russia and Soviet history and what the general public knows. |
| 1:31.8 | And we also talk about some incredible projects that Sean has going on. |
| 1:36.4 | He's working on two podcast series about travelers in the Soviet Union. |
| 1:40.4 | These are going to be great. |
| 1:41.4 | So we're just happy to have him on as a guest. |
| 1:43.9 | Before we get going with this episode, just a couple of things. First of all, thank you to |
| 1:47.5 | everyone who supports us on Patreon. You've kept this podcast going through the pandemic. |
| 1:52.7 | If you're listening right now and would like to join us, support the podcast, get some bonuses, |
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