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 during the post-Stalin era. She is also currently developing a digital showcase of Russian state-sponsored cultural production that is intended to facilitate military success in the ongoing war against Ukraine. Her recently published chapter “In Defense of Historical Truth: The Second Front of Russia’s Information War” can be found in Modern Russian Film as a Battleground in Russia’s Information War (Routledge 2024). Dr. Johnston has worked extensively as an editor and translator of Russian mass media and within the field of international human rights. Prior to her position at the University of Kansas, she held positions as Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Historical Studies and National Security Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security, both at UT-Austin. She has also previously worked as project lead on the Post-Soviet States: People, Power, and Assets oral history archive at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law. Her work has been supported externally by the ASEEES Cohen-Tucker Dissertation Fellowship Program and National Council for Eurasian and East European Research. She holds a doctoral degree from the Department of History at the University of Texas-Austin.