Richard Stites devoted his remarkable talents, energy, and discipline to studying and writing about Russian culture, both highbrow and popular, and his pioneering efforts affected the intellectual landscape in both American and post-Soviet space.

And so a singular mix of Russian and American academia presents this cultural cabaret in Richard’s memory and honor: a pioneering feminist male writer; Eurasianism’s influence on the development of linguistics; pre-World War II Moscow soccer and its fans; the contextual dynamics of a mid-1930’s anti-Stalin joke; the conflicted, 108-year life of a legendary Soviet cartoonist; the imagined story behind the banning of a realistic, female-directed film; an exposition and explanation of Richard’s own impact; the paradox of late Soviet private automobile consumption; the counter-cultural semiotics of criminal tattoos; the banal, profitable world of XXI-century Reality TV; and an eloquent closing tribute.