Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year, academics with expertise in Russian history and politics were suddenly in demand and sought out for their ability to help contextualize Russia’s aggression, including at St. Joe’s.
Several recent on-campus events this semester about the war have featured Lisa Baglione, Ph.D., professor of political science, and Melissa Chakars, Ph.D., associate professor and chair of the history department, along with Tetyana Berezovski, Ph.D., professor of mathematics, who is from Ukraine.
However, as is the case nationally, Russian studies at St. Joe’s has been on the decline in recent decades, with the university ceasing to offer a minor in Russian studies in 2003, according to Baglione.
Baglione, who has taught at St. Joe’s since 1992, said she has witnessed these shifts in the state of Russian studies at St. Joe’s from the early days when Provost Vincent McCarthy, Ph.D., enthusiastically backed the development of the program, to the program’s dissolution less than 10 years later.
“The world cared, right after the end of the Soviet Union, and we could still keep them caring into the nineties,” Baglione said. “But after the terrible economic collapse and the seeming political irrelevance of Russia, the world just stopped caring. I couldn’t get people interested in some of the classes I was teaching.”
Many U.S. colleges and universities promoted Russian studies programs during the height of the Cold War, according to a 2015 Report on the State of Russian Studies in the U.S. by the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies. The Cold War, defined as a period of intense political hostility between the U.S. and its allies and the Soviet Union and theirs, lasted from about 1945 to 1991.
Shifts in the political landscape following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, waning student interest in Russia and budget cuts contributed to the decline of Russian studies by 2015, according to the report.
The Russian Studies Program at St Joe’s, which became the Russian & East Central European Studies program “to be more inclusive,” Baglione said, at one point offered a minor and a certificate. For the minor, students were required to take six courses, two of which were Russian language courses. The core faculty included Baglione, Katherine A. S. Sibley, Ph.D., professor of history and director of the American Studies program; Thomas Marzik, Ph.D., former professor of history; and Milica Bookman, Ph.D., professor emerita of economics.
Joseph Navitsky ’98, Ph.D., associate professor of English at West Chester University, is one of the program’s “great success stories,” Baglione said.
Navitsky majored in English and minored in international relations at St. Joe’s, but he received a certificate for Russian studies. While he now works as an English professor, he said the skills and content he learned through St. Joe’s Russian studies continue to inform the way he teaches.
“By studying other countries and the culture and history of other countries, especially ones that may not be the traditional ones that are studied by American students, we learn more about ourselves and about the history and culture of our own country in the world,” Navitsky said.
St. Joe’s students interested in Russia and East Central Europe can still put together an informal concentration, Baglione said, but “nothing like [the former program] exists anymore.” Baglione is teaching Russian Politics in the fall 2022 semester.
“We always tell interested students to take as many courses as possible, and then they can discuss this in a cover letter or an application and explain their concentration in Russian studies,” Baglione said. “Without a good Russian language program and the ability to make other hires, it really isn’t possible.”
Both Baglione and Chakars said the language piece is an important one.
“You can’t do research on Russia unless you study the Russian language,” Chakars said.
This spring, five students are enrolled in Beginning Russian and two students are enrolled in Intermediate Russian. Only a handful of students have enrolled in Russian language courses each semester since at least 2015.
Navitsky recalled being only one of two students enrolled in Russian language courses when he was at St. Joe’s in the late 1990s.
“I understood even as soon as I graduated in ’98 that the program wasn’t in a position to expand because, of course, it takes some kind of financial commitment on the part of the university, particularly for those language courses,” Navitsky said. “There’s not a full-time Russian language instructor, so a university has to bring in someone else from the outside to teach a class that may only have two or three students in it.”
St. Joe’s Russian language courses are taught by Yakov Goncharov, who also teaches Russian in the department of global interdisciplinary studies at Villanova University.
Ray Spraggins ’24, a criminal justice major, is one of the students enrolled in Goncharov’s Beginning Russian course in fall 2022. Spraggins said he is looking forward to taking the course, given his interest in pursuing counterterrorism as a career path after college.
“Currently, Russia plays a great deal, probably the greatest, cyber threat to the United States,” Spraggins said. “So putting two and two together, I thought that I would clearly benefit from learning Russian and trying to become fluent in that language.”
For many years, Baglione led an effort to offer more Russia-related events, courses and extracurriculars on campus, to no avail.
“I do understand it has to do with limited resources,” Baglione said, adding that the demand for Russian language instruction also never materialized.
As Baglione took on new and more demanding roles, both in her career and personal life, she said she recognized that she was no longer able to keep up with this commitment.
“So, we kind of died,” Baglione said. “There was only so much of me to go around. The university really didn’t care.”
Mitchell Orenstein, Ph.D., professor and chair of Russian and East European studies at the University of Pennsylvania and senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, has authored numerous books and become an established figure in the field of Russian studies. Orenstein acknowledged the field has changed over the years based on historical events and contexts.
But Orenstein said he does not see a decline in expertise in Russian studies in universities. For him, the problem is the U.S. government’s lack of investment in experts.
“I think that there’s always been plenty of expertise on Russia in universities, and we’ve been training people who have a lot of expertise,” Orenstein said. “I think the issue is more that in the government, people weren’t hiring Russia experts, except the intelligence agencies.”
Adam Richwine ’16, M.A. ’18, who works in defense and intelligence, majored in political science and international relations while at St. Joe’s. He wrote his thesis on Chechen nationalism in Russia and had planned to study abroad in Russia until Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. He said government policy drives the need for experts.
“If you look at where our priorities lie, it’s China,” Richwine said. “It’s not Russia as much anymore. Russia has had too much going demographically [and] wrong for them economically. They’re more of a pariah than they’ve ever been. I think Russia is still going to be relevant, but China is by far where all the resources are going.”
For now, Russia’s war in Ukraine has refocused people on that part of the world again.
“We’re still not at the level probably of interest that we were in 1989, although it may go up to that point given the recent events,” Orenstein said.
Chakars said the war in Ukraine underscores the importance of being an informed, global citizen.
“People just don’t really know anything about Ukraine,” Chakars said. “And to wake up on Thursday, [Feb.] 24, it was really shocking. In terms of Russia, you have to have people who study this part of the world because people really don’t understand.”
Devin Yingling ’22 contributed to this story.