Ellison Center Lecture Series
The 2024-2025 Ellison Center Lecture Series
In-person at the University of Washington
A lecture series presenting new research.
This series is organized by the Ellison Center with the generous support of the Henry M. Jackson Foundation.
After the Gulag: A History of Memory in Russia’s Far North | Tyler Kirk, University of Alaska, Fairbanks
March 6, 2025 from 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM
Smith Hall Room 306, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
About the Lecture
The history of memory is critical for understanding present-day Russia, where history is being distorted in order to justify the largest land invasion in Europe since 
WWII. Since Russia’s Supreme Court ordered the closure of the International Memorial Society – Russia’s oldest human rights and civic organization – in December 2021, local historians have taken on Memorial’s work as best they can. Dr. Tyler Kirk’s talk will explore how victims of Stalinist repression and members of civil society came together to write an alternate history of the Soviet Union as it collapsed. He will highlight how Gulag survivors influenced the history and memory of Stalinist repression in the USSR and why their narratives are unwelcome in Russia today.
About the Speaker
Tyler C. Kirk is Associate Professor and the Arthur T. Fathauer Chair in History at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He is a historian of Russia, the Soviet Union, and the circumpolar North. He teaches courses on European and Northern History at UAF. Dr. Kirk has published several articles in Kritika and The Russian Review, as well as a full-length monograph, After the Gulag: A History of Memory in Russia’s Far North (Indiana University Press, 2023). His current research examines the legacies of forced labor and the environment in the Soviet Union.
Prisoners | A film by Evgeniya Chirikova about Ukrainian civilian prisoners captured by Russian security forces in occupied Ukrainian territories
April 14, 2025 from 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.
Allen Library, Allen Auditorium (Room G81L)
About the Film
This film is about Ukrainian civilian prisoners who were captured by Russian security forces in occupied territories. The reasons for detention can be anything – from a photo of Russian
equipment or a Ukrainian flag on a phone to speaking the Ukrainian language. According to Ukrainian human rights organizations, at least 7,000 Ukrainian civilian prisoners are currently held in Russian prisons, five times more than the number of recognized political prisoners in Russia. The number of civilian Ukrainian prisoners left in torture prisons in the occupied territories remains unknown.
Typically, such people disappear after their arrest, and even close relatives may not know their fate for years. Sometimes, they appear in Russian propaganda stories – broken, showing signs of torture, and forced to confess to absurd accusations. But over time, the truth comes to light, and it is shocking.
The first episode of the film is based on three stories told by the relatives of Ukrainian civilian prisoners: a mother whose son was taken by the FSB, a wife whose husband was taken away, and a young woman left without both parents due to the Russian occupation.
About the Filmmaker
Evgeniya Chirikova first rose to prominence as the organizer of one of the first grassroots environmental groups dedicated to protecting the Khimki Forest near Moscow. She is one of the leaders of the Russian opposition, having served on the Coordinating Council of the opposition alongside Alexei Navalny and Boris Nemtsov in the fight for fair elections and democratic change in Russia. Chirikova is also the founder of the media project Activatica, which spreads information about civic activism. After Russia’s aggressive invasion of Ukraine, Chirikova became actively involved in human rights work, assisting Ukrainian refugees. Currently, she is investigating terror in the occupied territories of Ukraine and what is happening to Ukrainian prisoners in Russian concentration camps. In Russia, Putin’s regime has fabricated five criminal cases against Chirikova on terrorism charges, arrested her in absentia, and added her to the list of terrorists and extremists.
June 2, 2025 from 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM
Thomson Hall Room 317, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
About the Lecture
Why do some protests in autocracies attract popular participation while others do not? This paper argues that when opposition elites and the masses have divergent motivations for protesting, anti-regime mobilization struggles to gain momentum. Moreover, this weak elite-mass linkage is further exacerbated when autocrats
selectively repress protests led by opposition elites while making concessions to those organized by ordinary citizens. To empirically test these claims, I examine the case of Kazakhstan, where frequent protests remained small in scale until the massive January 2022 demonstrations. An analysis of daily-coded protest data (2018–2021) reveals that protests led by opposition elites predominantly focused on political issues such as human rights, elections, and political prisoners, whereas spontaneous mass protests were primarily driven by economic concerns, including welfare, income, and utilities. A 2021 conjoint experiment further highlights citizens’ underlying preferences on public dissent, showing that respondents were more sympathetic toward protests centered on economic issues rather than political demands. Additionally, an online survey experiment conducted after the January 2022 protests suggests that citizens are more likely to support demonstrations that initially emerged over economic grievances but later expanded to political demands, compared to those that remained focused solely on economic concerns.
About the Speaker
Masaaki Higashijima is an Associate Professor of Comparative Politics at the Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo. He is currently affiliated with the Ellison Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. His research interests include comparative political economy, autocratic politics, regime change, and Central Asia. His work has appeared in premier political science journals, such as the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Politics, and World Development. He published his first book, The Dictator’s Dilemma at the Ballot Box: Electoral Manipulation, Economic Maneuvering, and Political Order in Autocracies (University of Michigan Press, 2022), which won the Honorable Mention of the ASEEES Ed A Hewett Book Prize. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science at Michigan State University in 2015.
Sponsors
The annual REECAS Lecture Series is organized by the Ellison Center for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies at the University of Washington in partnership with the Henry M. Jackson Foundation.