Rebecca Johnston

Rebecca Adeline Johnston is a historian of Soviet culture and power with an interdisciplinary focus on information warfare in the Russian and broader post-Soviet space. Her book project, “The End of Illusion: Putting Culture to Work in the Post-Stalin Era, 1953-1964,” utilizes archival materials from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine to examine changing conceptions and utilizations of culture in Soviet politics and society in the years after Josef Stalin’s death. At the University of Texas-Austin, Dr. Johnston held positions as Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Historical Studies, National Security Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security, and project lead at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law. She has also worked extensively as an editor and translator of Russian mass media and within the field of international human rights. She holds a Ph.D. in history and M.A. in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies from the University of Texas-Austin and a B.A. in Russian language and literature from Grinnell College. Her work has been supported by organizations including the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, and American Councils for International Education. She is also a 2023-2024 Digital Humanities Fellow at the Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities here at the University of Kansas.