Professor Erin Hutchinson has an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University and currently teaches the political and cultural history of the Soviet Union at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her book project, The Cultural Politics of the Nation after Stalin, 1953-1991, explores how intellectuals sought to transform cultural understandings of the nation in the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin. Her dissertation received the 2021 Harold K. Gross Prize and was a finalist for the 2021 Cohen-Tucker Dissertation Prize. She received a Research Fellowship from ASEEES to conduct research for the project in Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, and Moldova. In this episode, she gives an insider and expert view on the Ukraine crisis and its background and how everyday commoners like us can do to help.