Congratulations to Russian Flagship students Alex Steiner and Kendall Werneiwski, who participated in the UCLA Undergraduate Conference on Slavic and East/Central European Studies in Los Angeles on April 29, 2017. Steiner and Werneiwski were nominated by the Russian Flagship Program to participate in the annual conference, where students have the opportunity to integrate their language skills with focused investigations into the histories, politics, literatures, and cultures of the regions where those languages are spoken.
Russian Flagship Program coordinator Laura Weigel sat down with Steiner and Werneiwski for a quick Q&A on their work:
Alex Steiner is a senior majoring in Russian and international studies. Steiner spent summer 2016 studying abroad in St. Petersburg, Russia, and will study abroad on the Russian Overseas Flagship capstone program in Almaty, Kazakhstan in academic year 2017-18. Steiner’s conference paper focused on the history and present-day use of the term “fifth column” in Russian political discourse and its implications for the domestic Russian political opposition and international relations.