Dor Shabashewitz / דור שבשביץ
I’m a journalist, political analyst and consultant with an academic background in history and social anthropology. I used to live in Astrakhan, a culturally Central Asian region colonized by Russia, but the FSB forced me to leave the country because of my journo work for RFE/RL and ethnic minority rights activism in 2021. Since then, I’ve been splitting time between Israel and Armenia. My research interests include ethnic minorities and endangered languages in Russia and Central Asia, emerging secessionist movements, migration and history of lesser-known Jewish communities.
Affiliations
PhD student in History at Tel Aviv University
Affiliated author at the Post-Soviet Conflicts Research Program, Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies
Other things I do
analytical articles on regional politics for New Eastern Europe and Eurasia Review
lectures on ethnic minorities and migration in the ex-USSR at the Foreign Service Institute
advising US immigration lawyers who work with political asylum seekers from Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan
stories about Jewish history and culture for The Forward in Yiddish
research on the sociolinguistics of Judeo-Zo, the South Central Tibeto-Burman languages brought to Israel by the Bnei Menashe community
lots of family history research. I was largely raised by my maternal grandma, a German-speaking Jewish lady born in Kazakhstan to a Latvian father who grew up in Finland and worked at the Soviet embassy in interwar Estonia. As you can guess, the story of her ancestors is fascinating! You can read it here if you speak Russian or trust Google Translate. Additionally, I have a more general blog on Latvian genealogy in English called LatGen
What I used to do
anthropological and sociolinguistic fieldwork in Kazakh, Nogai and Tatar villages around Astrakhan and Seto villages around Pskov
BA thesis on how the Karagash Nogais of Astrakhan changed their ethnic identity twice in under a century (summary in Russian)
MA thesis on the sociolinguistics of Kazakh as an endangered and largely unwritten minority language in Russia (summary)
worked as a junior researcher at the RAS Institute for Linguistic Studies for two years
worked as a journalist at Idel.Realii (RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service in Russian) for four years
worked as a tour guide in Astrakhan for four years
hosted a talk show interviewing Russian immigrants for the Armenian news outlet Infocom
Some of my best articles
Astrakhan: Russia’s least Russian oblast at the crossroads of emerging separatisms
Kazakh as an unwritten language: The case of Astrakhan Oblast
Is fighting ethnic activism the new big trend for Russia’s authorities?
The fight for the right to speak Kyrgyz in Kyrgyzstan’s capital
The Dagestan airport riot — Russia’s first 21st-century pogrom
Moscow’s war on Indigenous Siberian cinema may have long-reaching implications
Abduction of Russian dissident from Kyrgyzstan is another sign of growing authoritarianism
(Almost) all of my articles sorted by media outlet*
*This doesn’t include the articles I wrote for RFE/RL. I used to write under a pen name for safety reasons back when I was still in Russia, and since the Russian invasion of Ukraine all of us are writing anonymously regardless of location.