The fourth lecture in the Fall 2025 Havighurst Center colloquium series, "Soviet Propaganda: History and Legacy" will feature Emil Draitser, who will talk about Soviet satire as propaganda.
Born in Odessa, Ukraine, to a working-class Jewish family. Emil Draitser studied at the Odessa Polytechnic Institute and Moscow School of Journalism. Under his pen name "Emil Abramov", he began his writing career as a freelancer, contributing satirical articles to leading Soviet periodicals, such as Literary Gazette, Izvestia, Youth, and Crocodile, as well as on the Central Radio, TV, and in the satirical newsreel "The Wick" (Mosfilm). In 1970, he received a Special Prize for his satirical stories at the All-Union Literary Contest.
Eventually blacklisted for writing an article critical of an important official, he immigrated to the United States. In 1975, he settled in Los Angeles, where he earned a Ph.D. in Russian literature from UCLA. Since 1986, he has been Professor of Russian at Hunter College in NYC.
