Living through History: The Coup of August 19, 1991 -- Hofstra University

On August 19, 1991, a group of communists in the leadership of the Soviet Union led an attempted coup against the legitimate government of then President of the USSR Mikhail S. Gorbachev.  When the coup began, Gorbachev was on vacation in Crimea as tanks rolled into Moscow. On Thursday, November 18 at 7:30 pm EST, Hofstra University, the Hofstra University Department of History, and the Hofstra University Department of Comparative Literatures, Languages, and Linguistics are sponsoring a zoom-based event on Living through History, moderated by Dr. Benjamin Rifkin, Professor of Russian, and featuring:

  • A screening of the documentary film The Event by Sergei Loznitsa, featuring archival footage of people in Leningrad during the day of the coup
  • A panel discussion with the following individuals who were in the USSR on the day of the coup, discussing how they experienced the day with Yulia Komska (Assoc Professor of German, Dartmouth, from Lviv), Eleanor Sutter (retired Senior US Foreign Officer), Anna Talis (programmer at Cisco, from Kazan), Natasha Ushakova (Russian Teacher, Staten Island Technical High School, from Moscow), and Ilya Vinitsky (Professor of Russian, Princeton, from Moscow)

This event is free and open to the public.  Pre-registration is required by 5 pm EST on 17 Nov at this link:  https://news.hofstra.edu/event/30-years-after-the-collapse-of-the-ussr-eye-witness-testimony/