Participants

Jeremy Smith⁴; Juliane Fürst⁶; Diana Kudaibergenova¹; Victoria Smolkin⁵; Ronald Suny²; Ekaterina Mikhailova³;  ¹ UCL (SSEES), UK;  ² University of Michigan, United States;  ³ University of Tromsø, Norway;  ⁴ University of Eastern Finland, Finland;  ⁵ Wesleyan University, USA, UK;  ⁶ Leibniz-Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung, Germany

Discussion

In many respects the collapse of the Soviet Union was the ultimate disruption of the latter part of the twentieth century, bringing an end to communist rule across much of Eastern Europe and Eurasia, and leading to the establishment of 15 new independent states. A variety of nationalisms replaced communism as the leading ideology, which found expression in territorial claims and nation-building programmes. However, the predominance of authoritarian forms of rule, political and social practises that are reminiscent of Soviet times, and revanchist imperialist claims on the part of Russia lend some credence to claims that the ‘Soviet legacy’ still lies heavily on the region. Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine has increased references to a ‘new cold war’, suggesting more of a continuity with the Soviet period. This in turn is challenged by a growing discourse of decolonisation and rejection of the ‘post-Soviet’ label all together, while many scholars emphasise the role of agency and choice in developments since 1991. This roundtable is intended as a contribution to discussion of the historical significance of the Soviet collapse. The nature of the transformation; the balance of legacy, path dependency and agency of the post-Soviet states; the subsequent ties and separations between them; national, regional, and post-Soviet identities; decolonisation; and the ways in which the world of scholarship has treated this region will be up for debate by an expert panel and the audience. It refers to society, arts and national ideologies as well as political and economic development. Juliane Fürst specialises in the social and cultural history of the late Soviet Union with a particular eye to non-conformist communities and questions of subculture and the history of emotions. She is working on a ‘emotional history’ of Perestroika under the aegis of her ERC Project ‘Perestroika from below’. Diana Kudaibergenova is a cultural and political sociologist who has written on nationalism dictatorship and protest in post-Soviet space, especially Central Asia. Jeremy Smith has worked extensively on nationality in the Soviet Union and on post-Soviet developments. He will address issues of continuity and agency as raised in his new book The Soviet Union and its Successor, 1970-2020. Victoria Smolkin is a scholar of the Soviet Union, with a focus on Russia and Ukraine. She is interested in ideology as it intersects with politics, religion, history, and memory, in diverse social and cultural contexts, including: the Cold War and anti-Communism; history of religion, secularism, and atheism; cosmic utopianism; and the politics of death and memory. She will address the problem of imagination and sovereignty. She is currently working on a book titled, “The Wall of Memory: Ukraine and Its Histories.” Ronald Grigor Suny is a Soviet historian who specialized in nationality issues, particularly in the South Caucasus, and is now working on a book, Forging the Nation.