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Understanding Russia: Vincent Lépinay guest of the "Vis a vis" podcast

In this new episode of the "Vis a vis" podcast, Vincent Lépinay, researcher at the médialab, examines two centuries of the development of French scholarship on Russia and its contemporary implications.

How was knowledge about Russia formed in France? How did they evolve over the last two centuries? And how does it contribute, today, to influence France’s foreign policy?

That is the topic of the latest episode of Vis a Vis, a podcast produced by the Alliance Program at Columbia University. It interrogates and contrasts the perspectives of Columbia faculty with their French and European counterparts. The podcast aims to challenge our understanding of key global issues by focusing on a variety of urgent concerns.

In this episode, Emmanuel Kattan and Vincent Lépinay, professor at Sciences Po and researcher at the médialab, discuss how France has studied, imagined, and interpreted Russia across two centuries of political upheaval. Their conversation traces the academic, linguistic, and diplomatic traditions that shaped French knowledge of Russia, and asks what this history can tell us about the urgent questions facing Europe today.

The conversation draws on Vincent Lépinay’s new book, Connaissances françaises de la Russie. XIXe siècle – 24 février 2022, co-authored with Estelle Lezean, and follows the evolution of French Russian studies from the 19th century through the Cold War, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the present war in Ukraine.

Iframe https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/4ARh7nmz5tHrFOXshDLfBs?utm_source=generator&si=163d5eac78ed4f6b