We welcome our readers to the eleventh edition of the UC Undergraduate Journal of Slavic and East/Central European Studies. This volume’s eleven papers from twelve talented young scholars from across the country explore a wide array of East/Central European topics from a diverse range of disciplinary perspectives, including literary studies, cultural studies, history, international law, political science, and criminology.

Three papers investigate the construction of identity and consciousness in literary texts. Shaimaa Khanam and Simon Prado (Florida State University) compare the conceptions of ideal masculinity exemplified by the hero’s militaristic exploits in the Greek and Slavic versions of the Byzantine epic Digenis Akritis. Joanna Burdzel (College of the Holy Cross) deciphers the linguistic anchoring of consciousness in Yevgeny Zamiatin’s We by examining the role of literary creation at the center of D-503’s individuation. Miranda Lupion (University of Pennsylvania) discusses the narrator’s struggle to reconcile objective and relative truths while fighting in the Polish-Soviet War in Isaac Babel’s Red Cavalry.

Several papers analyze the relationship between ideology and politics in the post-Cold War world. Elhan Busuladzic (Sewanee: The University of the South) examines the various discursive manipulations of religious identity and collective memory that contributed to the Bosnian genocide. Kathleen Robbins (UCLA) evaluates the role of neo-Eurasianist ideology in Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy decisions. Persia Goudarzi (UCLA) analyzes Russia’s efforts to counter the perceived global hegemony of the West by creating intergovernmental security organizations in Central Asia. Adopting a wide historical lens, Taylor Freitas (UCLA) argues that a constructivist international relations approach provides the best paradigm for assessing the relationship between Russia’s shifting cultural identity and its foreign policy. Finally, James Reston (Wesleyan University) examines three case studies of Russia’s policy of sustaining “frozen” conflicts in the former Soviet Union as a means of maintaining power in the post-Soviet sphere.

The remaining three essays turn their focus toward the late Soviet and immediate post-Soviet era. Melissa Shostak (University of Pittsburgh) scrutinizes Russia’s relationship with the International Monetary Fund and its effect on the country’s monetary policy and economic stability. Heleana Melendez (UCLA) traces Russian organized crime groups’ consolidation of power and the normalization of their presence in society. Anna Perkins (St. Olaf College) makes a case for the Russian dacha as a socio-symbolic space that shapes its inhabitants’ moral and national identity.

With this volume, the UC Undergraduate Journal of Slavic and East/Central European Studies enters its second decade. It is with sadness that we reach this milestone without Professor Olga Kagan. Professor Kagan was instrumental in founding the first University of California Undergraduate Conference on Slavic and East/Central European Studies in 1998. The proceedings of the tenth conference were published as the first volume of this journal. We thank Professor Kagan for her years of service and dedicate this volume to her memory.

We would also like to thank our online editor Susan Bauckus, UCLA Department of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Languages and Cultures undergraduate mentor Yelena Furman, and all of the members of our editorial board for their help in making this journal possible. We also think Leo Duarte of the UCLA International Institute, who published this volume.