Learn about The Christian Science Monitor’s impactful reporting from Russia during the twentieth century. We’ll explore the paper’s longstanding engagement with that country, from the last years of Tsarist rule to the beginning of the Russian Federation, following the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse. Our guests are Marshall Ingwerson, a former Monitor correspondent in Moscow, and Dorothy Rivera, Manager of Research Services at the Library. She gives special attention to the career of correspondent Edmund Stevens, including his series “This is Russia Uncensored,” which earned the Monitor its first Pulitzer Prize in 1950. Stevens’ examination of Soviet society stood out for its in-depth and courageous truth-telling during the Stalin era. Drawing from his own reporting in the last decade of the twentieth century, Ingwerson discusses what it was like for Russians to confront the possibilities of a new future after the Soviet Union’s fall.
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Podcast guests
Marshall Ingwerson is a journalist and former Editor of The Christian Science Monitor. He led its 2017 relaunch as a daily digital subscription product dedicated to helping people understand each other across divides. As a reporter, he was based in Moscow, where he won an Overseas Press Club citation in 1997. He also worked for the Monitor in Washington, DC, where he covered the White House, as well as in Miami, Los Angeles, and Boston. From 2017 to 2020, he was chief executive of a nonprofit that runs Principia College in southern Illinois and an independent school in St. Louis serving ages pre-K through grade 12. Ingwerson currently lives in southern California, where he is developing a new idea: “The What Works Initiative.”
Dorothy Rivera has worked as a researcher at The Mary Baker Eddy Library since November 2014, now serving as Manager of Research & Reference Services. She came to the Library from the National Archives and Records Administration, where she worked as an archives technician. She holds a master’s degree in history from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a bachelor’s in history and political science from Johns Hopkins University.
