Smithsonian Journeys Experts

Nadieszda Kizenko teaches Russian and East European History at the State University of New York at Albany.  She received her degrees at Harvard University, Columbia University, and the Harriman Institute. Prof. Kizenko explores the intersection of nations and empires, of history and culture, and the extent to which religion has been a constituent element of national and imperial identity.  She has long been fascinated by how the Baltic nations succeeded in keeping their distinctive identities even when ruled by Germans, Poles, Swedes, and Russians—and how the Swedes and Poles have reinvented themselves as power shifted and as the Russian empire extended its reach.

         Prof. Kizenko’s research, supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Sciences Research Council, and the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, has allowed her to publish widely on questions of religion and empire.  Her most recent books are Good for the Souls: A History of Confession in the Russian Empire (Oxford, 2021) and Orthodoxy in Two Manifestations? The Conflict in Ukraine as Expression of a Fault Line in World Orthodoxy (Peter Lang, 2022).