BOOK >> Post-Soviet Graffiti: Free Speech in Authoritarian States
For more than a decade, Alexis Lerner combed the alleyways, underpasses, and public squares of cities once under communist rule, from Berlin in the west to Vladivostok in the east, recording thousands of cases of critical and satirical political street art and cataloging these artworks linguistically and thematically across space and time. Complemented by first-hand interviews with leading artists, activists, and politicians from across the region, Post-Soviet Graffiti provides theoretical reflection on public space as a site for political action, a semiotic reading of signs and symbols, and street art as a form of text.
The book answers the question of how we conceptualize avenues of dissent under authoritarian rule by showing how contemporary graffiti functions not only as a popular public aesthetic, but also as a mouthpiece of political sentiment, especially within the post-Soviet region and post-communist Europe. A purposefully anonymous and accessible artform, graffiti is an effective tool for circumventing censorship and expressing political views. This is especially true for marginalized populations and for those living in otherwise closed and censored states.
Post-Soviet Graffiti reveals that graffiti does not exist in a vacuum; rather, it can be read as a narrative about a place, the people who live there, and the things that matter to them.
Project Website: https://postsovietgraffiti.com/
Where to Buy the Book:
POLICY WORK >>
2021 executive summary
Across Canada and in the majority of U.S. states, genocide education is not yet a curricular requirement. While some teachers introduce Holocaust education through history or literature, many students first encounter the Holocaust and other state-sanctioned and systematic mass murders through nontraditional sources, such as though comic books, social media accounts, video games, and television shows. I use a pre/post-treatment survey design to assess what 3,593 teens across Canada and the United States know and think about the Holocaust and antisemitism. My treatment was a two-day virtual conference called Education Days, organized by the Holocaust education not-for-profit organization Liberation75. I conclude that while students have a basic understanding of antisemitism and the Holocaust, they have nevertheless been impacted by Holocaust denial and would benefit from educational mandates. I propose that Holocaust educational mandates are adopted in the Province of Ontario.
2024 Executive summary
In 2021, Liberation75’s pre/post-treatment survey of 3,593 teens across North America found that one in three respondents believed that the Holocaust was exaggerated, fabricated, or that they were not sure what to think. In response, the Province of Ontario enacted a Holocaust education mandate — the first in Canada — for its approximately 153,000 Grade 6 students (Ontario Data Catalogue 2023) effective September 2023. Liberation75, in collaboration with other Holocaust organizations, partnered with Ontario’s Ministry of Education to support the implementation of this mandate. As part of this effort, Liberation75 launched an application process through its “Ernie’s Books” initiative, allowing Ontario Grade 6 teachers from public and Catholic schools to apply for free sets of books for their classrooms. The book chosen for the treatment was To Hope and Back: The Journey of the St. Louis (2011), written by award-winning Canadian author Kathy Kacer and published by Second Story Press as part of their Holocaust Remembrance Program for Young Readers. Liberation75 received applications from Grade 6 teachers from all 72 school boards across the province and provided 26,000 copies of the book. To assess the effectiveness of this educational intervention, pre- and post-treatment surveys were administered to participating classrooms. The pre-treatment survey was completed by 11,266 students, and the post-treatment survey was completed by 5,101 students. These surveys aimed to measure changes in knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to the Holocaust, antisemitism, and discrimination. Key findings demonstrated improvements in students’ understanding of the Holocaust, with the proportion of students affirming the historical accuracy of the Holocaust rising from 67% to 81%. Additionally, students demonstrated substantial empathy, with 87% expressing sadness for those affected by the Holocaust, and many showing a desire to combat antisemitism and hate in contemporary Canada. These results suggest that the Holocaust educational intervention not only enhanced student knowledge but also fostered empathy, social responsibility, and a commitment to moral action.
PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLES >>
(with Andrew Gelman) “In Pursuit of Campus-Wide Data Literacy: A Guide to Developing a Statistics Course for Students in Nonquantitative Fields.” Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education. 2023.
“The Co-optation of Dissent in Authoritarian States: Post-Soviet Graffiti in Moscow.” Comparative Political Studies. 2021 [First View, 2019]
“Quantifying the Archives: Leveraging the Norms and Tools of Data Science to Conduct Ethical Research on the Holocaust.” Holocaust Studies. 2021
"Mitigating the Risks of Resource Extraction for Industrial Actors and Northern Indigenous Peoples." Arctic Review on Law and Politics, 8: 23-51. (2017) With Victoria Koshurina, Olga Chistanova, and Angela Wheeler.
“Crime and Punishment: Hate Crime Legislation, Public Opinion Polling, and the Jewish Minority in Contemporary Russia.” Journal of Jewish Thought 1, no. 5 (December 2015): 57-72.
“Russian Revolutionary Women’s Movements: Formation, Progression and Demise. 1867 – 1881.” University of Michigan Journal of Political Science 3, no. 2 (Spring 2009): 19-39.
BOOK CHAPTERS >>
“Analyzing Holocaust Archives Through a Quantitative Lens.” The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Genocide. Edited by Sara E. Brown and Stephen Smith. Abingdon: Routledge. (2022)
“Partizaning, Various Interventions. Moscow.” Out of Time, Out of Place: Public Art (Now). Edited by Clare Doherty. London: Thames and Hudson. (2015)
MANUSCRIPTS IN PREPARATION >>
“On the Run: Opposition Candidate Behavior in Hybrid Authoritarian Regimes” (with Colleen Wood)
“A Conceptual Primer on the Systemic Opposition in the Authoritarian Context” (with Colleen Wood)
“Is Scholarly Track-Two Diplomacy Effective in an Age of US-Russia Tensions?”
Dissent Management in Authoritarian States
“Can Armchair Activism Reduce Repression of Political Opposition Candidates in Autocratic States?”
“Social Media Disinformation and Holocaust Denial Among North American Teens”
DISSERTATION >> “The Calculus of Dissent Management in Authoritarian States”
My dissertation addresses the theme of authoritarian state control, asking which political opposition candidates running for president encounter targeted state repression. In “The Calculus of Dissent Management in Authoritarian States,” I amass the professional biographies of over 4,100 potential presidential candidates across the post-Soviet region from 1991-2018. Using an original dataset and a mixed-methods approach that includes both quantitative modeling and in-depth case studies, I show that incumbent presidents in autocratic states are less likely to repress independent candidates with robust foreign ties. This implies that popular opinion in one nation can influence the fate of a candidate in another. This project contributes to big questions in the field—most salient, how do autocratic leaders perceive and respond to political threats? My research also contributes methodologically, as I develop an innovative method for studying the nuances of authoritarian elections and behavior under conditions of limited information.
Speaking at the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C. after having won an award to conduct Post-Soviet Graffiti research in Russia during the 2012 Presidential Election.