Presentations by Streams

This panel is comprised of papers forming part of a 2025 Europe-Asia Studies Special Issue based on the first-ever Conference of Political Historians of the Post-War Soviet Union, held at the University of Glasgow in June 2022. The special, and these papers, are designed to foreground a ‘return to political history’ in the study of the USSR and its constituent republics. These papers focus on the tension between the ‘push’ of the recurring power struggles and instability that characterised the post-Stalin period, and the ‘pull’ of political debates within and among the Soviet republics in Ukraine, Latvia, and Belarus. As Soviet politics were fundamentally linked to personalities, this panel ties together the issues of succession, high politics/rivalries, and the roles of key Soviet political personalities with a paper about Ekaterina Furtseva.