Presentations by Streams

Social Control under Stalin and Khrushchev re-examines the question of social control against the backdrop of institutional rivalries and bureaucratic spaces in Stalinist and post-Stalinist Russia. Presenting four chapters of our forthcoming volume, this panel looks at how Soviet leaders defined and redefined socialist legality in the face of rising crime rates, while the procuracy, lower courts, Supreme Court, and other state institutions struggled to resolve important social issues like alimony, housing disputes, and juvenile delinquency. It explores the issue of popular agency and state institutions in the enforcement and negotiation of Soviet norms and how citizens asserted their own legal rights. We hope cast a new light on how the Stalinist and post-Stalinist state tried to discipline and control its citizens, and how people accommodated and occasionally resisted these attempts.