For fifty years, Empress Maria Feodorovna (1759–1828) shaped Pavlovsk Park into one of the most celebrated English-style landscapes in Europe, and into a political instrument. Though her position as a consort and later dowager empress was structurally precarious, Maria Feodorovna used garden design, planting, and architecture to build relationships, conduct diplomacy, and argue for causes ranging from the preservation of serfdom to the commemoration of Russia's victory over Napoleon. This talk draws on my new book to explore Pavlovsk as a primary source for understanding women's political agency at the Russian imperial court. Moving chronologically from Maria Feodorovna's arrival as Grand Duchess in 1776 through her decades as the garden's main patron, I trace how she navigated shifting relationships with Catherine II, Paul I, and Alexander I by using flowers, monuments, and diplomatic exchanges of exotic seeds to signal loyalty, mourning, fertility, and authority. I argue that green spaces, often dismissed as decorative or domestic, in fact gave elite women like Maria Feodorovna a rare channel for political voice, at a moment when few other avenues were open to them.

SPEAKER: Ekaterina Heath (University of Sydney)

SOBESEDNIK: Alexander Martin (University of Notre Dame)

This event will be hosted in person only. RSVP to attend. Please RSVP by no later than 9 am on October 1.

Despite a cash windfall due to higher oil prices in 2026, Russian government faces a multitude of economic, political and military challenges. What are the implications for internal politics in Russia, the war in Ukraine, Russia’s hybrid war against Europe, and the upcoming elections in European countries? What should US and Europe do to prepare for a weaker but a potentially more aggressive Russia in 2027?

Sergei Guriev is one of the world’s most authoritative scholars of Russian economy and politics and the tenth Dean of London Business School, a position he has held since August 2024. Professor Guriev is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), a Member of Group of Thirty, a Global Member of the Trilateral Commission, Senior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France, Ordinary Member of the Academia Europaea, and an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Economic Association. 

Before joining LBS as Dean and Professor of Economics, Sergei Guriev was the first Provost of Sciences Po in Paris (2022-24), where he has been a tenured professor of economics since 2013. In 2016-19, he was on leave from Sciences Po serving as the Chief Economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. In 2004-13, he was the Rector of the New Economic School in Moscow. In 2006, he was selected a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

This event is co-sponsored by the NYU Department of Russian and Slavic Studies.

This event is online only. Join the meeting here.

This flash panel, organized for the two hundredth anniversary of the legendary Decembrist Uprising, features four young scholars pioneering new directions in this classic field. Alina Mezenova will explore how the image of the Decembrists evolved and was reinterpreted in Russian and Soviet culture in the twentieth century. Stanislav Tarasov examines how the Age of Sensibility and moral philosophy contributed to the Decembrist worldview. Yasyn Abdullaev demonstrates how the uprising’s legacy contributed to the rise of a conspiratorial mentality in the Russian state security apparatus. Finally, Anna Nath offers a philosophical meditation on what it meant for the Decembrists to break through their present moment to “become revolutionary.” 

SPEAKERS: Alina Mezenova (Notre Dame), Stanislav Tarasov (Independent), Yasyn Abdullaev (Berkeley), Anna Nath (Rutgers)  

SOBESEDNIKI: Ingrid Kleespies (University of Florida) and Emily Wang (Notre Dame)