#  Reading Sterne in Stalin's Russia 

 



    ![Blue background with speaker headshots and event logsitical information.](/sites/g/files/omnuum2186/files/styles/hwp_5_4__480x385/public/2026-02/2.26_sterne%20poster.jpg?h=e874799d&itok=jQ4RmMUG) 

 



 

####  calendar\_today Date and Time 

 **February 26, 2026** 

 05:00PM - 06:30PM EST 

####  pin\_drop Location 

 **Room S354, CGIS South**  

 [1730 Cambridge Street  
Cambridge, MA 02138  
United States



 ](<https://www.google.com/maps?q=US MA Cambridge 02138 1730 Cambridge Street>) 



 

 



 

**Petr Budrin**, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Queen Mary University  
Moderator: **Daria Khitrova**, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures

This talk discusses the 1920s and 1930s as a critical juncture in the Russian reception of Laurence Sterne, the author of *Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey*. Drawing on extensive archival research, the book traces how an eighteenth-century Yorkshire writer was read and admired within an increasingly totalitarian society, and places these encounters within their biographical, cultural, and institutional settings. The talk shows how Sterne’s whimsical world—so alien to the Bolshevik vision of society—became, precisely through this incongruity, a revealing lens on early Soviet cultural life.

Co-sponsored by the [Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies](https://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu).

For more information: <https://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/events/reading-sterne-stalins-russia>



 

 



 

 See also:- [ Literature and Culture Seminars ](/events/literature-and-culture-seminars)
 
 

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