小福利导航

The Center鈥檚 mission is to promote the study of Russian culture and history on the strength of its world-class book, archival and art collections. It sponsors activities that support advanced research by 小福利导航undergraduates, College faculty, and a broad community of scholars: local, regional, national, and international. The Center organizes symposia, lectures, student presentations, cultural events, and publications that seek to serve the scholarly community and the broader public interested in some of the most advanced research undertaken on Russian culture and history today.

In Memoriam: Stanley J. Rabinowitz

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We at the 小福利导航Center for Russian Culture deeply mourn the loss of our Founding Director, Stanley J. Rabinowitz, Henry Steele Commager Professor of Russian, Emeritus. It is thanks to Stanley鈥檚 efforts that the Center鈥檚 collections first came to Amherst. Thomas P. Whitney 鈥�37, the original donor and Stanley鈥檚 friend, envisioned the Center as a living collection, with an active program of events to engage students, scholars, and the wider community. Stanley fulfilled that mission as director from 1991-2017, organizing conferences, lectures, concerts, film screenings, and exhibitions to connect students and the community with the culture he dedicated his life to studying. It is a testament to Stanley鈥檚 vision, passion, and boundless energy that more than thirty years after its founding, the Center鈥檚 collections have more than doubled in size and reach students and scholars across Amherst鈥檚 campus, the Pioneer Valley, and the globe.

In a letter to Stanley before the Center鈥檚 opening in its current home in Webster Hall, Whitney expressed what Stanley鈥檚 work had meant to him: 鈥淚 owe you so much, Stanley. I can鈥檛 really express the gratitude I feel for your steadfast dedication to the cause of Russian culture and for your never failing support for the 小福利导航Center for Russian Culture.鈥� Nor can we.

Opportunities to honor and celebrate Stanley鈥檚 legacy will be shared over the coming months.

A Poem for Stanley, by Polina Barskova

Translated by Catherine Ciepiela

From Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine (2017)

...Most of us in the Western world have little firsthand knowledge of war. Normally, we are not forced to face war, fight in a war, flee from war. We don't get tortured, see our homes and schools collapse, lose relatives and friends to war, spend months locked up in basements "because this is war." When we do get involved, as soldiers, journalists, or relief workers, we go to war or get sent to war - war does not come to us. Those of us who do not go and have not been to war are nevertheless aware of war, sometimes at a deep level. Yet this awareness is usually indirect: it requires inference. Like with a disease, we first encounter symptoms, these heralds of disruption reaching us from regions both intimate and strange. Even as we trace the tremors and the fevers back to the original cause, the source of the disturbance itself stays hidden from view. Many of us in the West have lived with wars for significant parts of our lives, wars that mostly remained out of sight. These hidden wars have become a part of us, shaping our minds, affecting the words, images, and concepts with which we think.

鈥攆rom the preface to , by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky.

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Alexander Archipenko (b. 1887 Ukraine, Russian Empire-d. 1964), "Torso in Space," Bronze on Wood Base. Mead Art Museum. Gift of Julia A. Whitney Foundation.

The 小福利导航Center for Russian Culture adds its name to the ranks of people and organizations outraged by Russia's war in Ukraine and the suffering the Putin government inflicts upon the country and its people. We express our solidarity with those, in Ukraine, Russia, and elsewhere, who oppose this war鈥攐ften at profound risk to themselves鈥攁nd our deepest sympathies for those living with staggering fear and fearing for those they love.

We join the 鈥檚 call 鈥渋n its support of Ukraine and its peoples, by sharing on Ukraine and the war and offering what support we can to those whose livelihoods and lives hang in the balance.鈥�

Please find here the collection of statements by museums and cultural organizations on the invasion of Ukraine: .