In 2025 we celebrated
20 Years
of digital preservation, open access, and innovative scholarship at the Blavatnik Archive
On the 20th anniversary of our founding, we launched a series of public events that highlighted the power of popular and personal artifacts—postcards, photographs, illustrations, letters, diaries, and testimonies—to preserve and illuminate the past.
Programs
Speakers
Eyeing Soviet History
Program 1
Individual Experiences of the Second World War
Program 2
Jewish Culture in Times of Crisis
Program 3
BA20 Anniversary Series Finale
Program 4
Gennady Estraikh
New York University
Gennady Estraikh is a professor emeritus in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. A Refusenik in the 1980s, he served as the editor of the Moscow Yiddish journal Sovetish Heymland from 1988 to 1991, and later worked at the Oxford Institute for Yiddish Studies and at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. His most recent books are Jews in the Soviet Union: A History: After Stalin, 1953-1967, The History of Birobidzhan: Building a Soviet Jewish Homeland in Siberia, and Yiddish Literature under Surveillance: The Case of Soviet Ukraine.
Samuel Finkelman
Vanderbilt University
Samuel Finkelman is the Mellon Assistant Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. His research focuses on Soviet Jewish history after Stalin. His current book project—Remembering Redemption: The Soviet Jewish Movement’s Russian and Ukrainian Encounters—explores how interethnic exchange shaped Jewish political thought, activism, and collective memory in the post-Stalin USSR.
Zvi Gitelman
University of Michigan
Zvi Gitelman is a professor emeritus of political science and Tisch Professor Emeritus of Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author of numerous books and articles on Soviet and East European Jews and Israel. Gitelman has been a visiting professor at the Russian State for the Humanities (Moscow), Central European University (Budapest), and at Tel Aviv and Hebrew Universities, and has served on the boards of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
Shaul Kelner
Vanderbilt University
Shaul Kelner is a professor of Jewish studies and sociology at Vanderbilt University. He specializes in the sociology of contemporary Jewish life. His latest book, A Cold War Exodus: How American Activists Mobilized to Free Soviet Jews, received grant support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and won a National Jewish Book Award. He has served as a board member of the Association for Jewish Studies and of the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Vanderbilt’s College of Arts and Science recognized him with an Innovative Teaching Award for Creating Engaging In-Person Learning Environments.
Alexandra Zborovsky
University of Pennsylvania
Alexandra (Sasha) Zborovsky is a PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania and a visiting instructor at Bryn Mawr College. She is a historian of the Soviet Union and Jewish life in the former USSR. Her dissertation, Should I Stay or Should I Go: Jewish Repatriation, Family Reunification, and Emigration from the USSR 1945-1995, investigates the emigration of over one million Jews from the former Soviet Union throughout the mid-to-late 20th century.
Eyeing Soviet History
Program 1
Individual Experiences of the Second World War
Program 2
Jewish Culture in Times of Crisis
Program 3
BA20 Anniversary Series Finale
Program 4
Gennady Estraikh
New York University
Samuel Finkelman
Vanderbilt University
Zvi Gitelman
University of Michigan
Shaul Kelner
Vanderbilt University
Alexandra Zborovsky
University of Pennsylvania
Message from the Archive’s Founder
“My family instilled in me an appreciation for education and knowledge, coupled with a strong connection to my culture. These values shaped my life. I’m proud that the Blavatnik Archive—our collections, our work with scholars, and our dedication to free access—provides others the opportunity to share these same values in innovative and highly meaningful ways.”
Message from the Archive’s Executive Director
“Our dedicated team is passionate about finding, preserving, and presenting new perspectives into 20th-century history through the Archive’s collections and projects. We are grateful for the strong partnerships formed over the past 20 years with scholars, institutions, educators, and owners of invaluable primary sources, and we are excited for many future collaborations and initiatives.”
