Realms of Memory

The challenge of any documentary director with a mission is to make the viewer care. What makes the 2026 Oscar award winning documentary Mr. Nobody Against Putin resonate so powerfully is the love and honesty that inspires it.  This is a production that showcases the unvarnished horrors of Putin’s militarization of Russia following the start of the war in Ukraine through the eyes of one man, Pavel “Pasha” Talenkin.  A school teacher in a small town in the Urals, Pasha is the definition of a Mr. Nobody.  His superpower, however, is his camera.  He is the school videographer.  Inspired by his deep love and attachment to his school and community, Pasha uses his camera to document Putin’s efforts to militarize Russian youth through the school system following the start of the war in Ukraine.  From the Soviet-era industrial backdrop of the town of Karabash to Putin’s efforts to harness the spirit of sacrifice from the Great Patriotic War, memories function on multiple levels in this film.  I had the opportunity to discuss the documentary with former guest and Penn State Professor of Rhetoric and Visual Communication, Katya Haskins.  Katya’s book, Remembering the War, Forgetting the Terror: Appeals to Family Memory in Putin's Russia, is now available in paperback.

The horrors Russia has been inflicting on Ukraine have sadly become a familiar sight on the daily news.  Far less attention has been paid to the consequences of the war for the Russian people.  This is the subject of the 2026 Oscar award winning documentary, Mr. Nobody Against Putin.  It is the story of an ordinary teacher who risks everything to show the world how the war and Putin’s education policies are destroying the lives of Russia’s youth.  To discuss the documentary Katya Haskins will be returning to the podcast.  A graduate of Moscow State University who witnessed the final years of the Soviet Union, Katya is a professor of rhetoric and visual studies at Pennsylvania State University.  She is the author of Remembering the War, Forgetting the Terror: Appeals to Family Memory in Putin’s Russia.  Join me and Katya Haskins on May 5th for a conversation about the documentary, Mr. Nobody Against Putin.

Americans are divided over most things and the past is no different.  We disagree about whether to celebrate or question the past.  We’re at odds over whether history indoctrinates or educates and whether young minds are harmed or helped by exposure to the complexity of the past.  Historian John Garrison Marks argues that the real problem is that Americans dislike ambiguity.  There is no better example of this dilemma than George Washington.  Responsible for the creation of a new American political order based on the ideals of democracy, liberty, and equality, Washington was to his dying day a slave holder.  He was a supporter of gradual emancipation and freed his own slaves in his last will and testament but he never took a public stand against slavery during his lifetime.  How we remember George Washington reveals much about how we understand ourselves and what it means to be American.  A conversation with John Garrison Marks about his book, Thy Will Be Done: George Washington’s Legacy of Slavery and the Struggle Over American Memory, in this episode of the Realms of Memory podcast.

Americans have been struggling with the memory of George Washington since his death.  Should we celebrate his role in the creation of the nation or lament that he actively participated in and profited from the business of slave owning?  Should we underscore that he freed his own slaves in his last will and testament or highlight that he never took a public position against slavery during his lifetime?  Depending on the political context, historian John Garrison Marks argues that Americans have preferred to cherry-pick from Washington’s past to support their agenda in the present.  Only through a fuller understanding of Washington and his legacy of slavery can we arrive at a meaningful, shared past.  A conversation with John Garrison Marks about his book, Thy Will Be Done: George Washington’s Legacy of Slavery and the Struggle Over American Memory, next on the April 7th episode of the Realms of Memory podcast.

99% of Poland’s pre-war Jewish population, the largest in Europe, perished during the Holocaust.  Polish native and Canadian historian Jan Grabowski argues this death toll is inconceivable without the collusion of the general Polish population.  Yet for decades Polish authorities have denied all responsibility.  Instead, they have used the considerable resources of the state to posit that Poles suffered equally or even more than the nation’s Jewish community.  In what Grabowski labels as Holocaust distortion, the memory of the past has been fundamentally divorced from reality, even at the most prominent Holocaust memorial sites.  A conversation with University of Ottawa historian Jan Grabowski about his book, Whitewash: Poland and the Jews, in this episode of Realms of Memory.