[Bilimsel Haber] CONF.- What is Soviet Now? Identities, Legacies, Memories, April 6-8, University of Toronto

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

CONF.- What is Soviet Now? Identities, Legacies, Memories, April 6-8,
Toronto

What is Soviet Now? Identities, Legacies, Memories

An International Conference sponsored by the Connaught Fund and the
Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies

6-8 April 2006

Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto

For more information and to register, please go to:
http://www.utoronto.ca/ceres/realsocialism.html

'What is Soviet Now?' is the conclusion of a three-year collaborative
project, 'Real Socialism and the 'Second World'.' Funded by a University
of Toronto Connaught grant for seed support for research clusters, the
project is administered by the Centre for European, Russian, and
Eurasian Studies, and directed by Thomas Lahusen (History and
Comparative Literature), Robert Johnson (History), Peter Solomon
(Political Science), Susan Solomon (Political Science), and Lynne Viola
(History).

Fifteen years after the demise of the Soviet Union, the definition and
reality of what it meant to be 'Soviet' remain contested and ambiguous,
subject to perspective and context. 'What is Soviet Now?' will address a
series of themes or problems to explore how the meaning of the Soviet
experience has changed, and is continuing to change, from the founding
utopian dreams and the successful and unsuccessful attempts to implement
them, to its post-Soviet present. Papers will focus on a set of core
themes that may aid us in charting the meanings of 'Sovietness' and the
legacies of the Soviet experience. What remains fifteen years after the
end of the USSR, for those who lived and live within its old/new
borders, for its competitors, its observers? Is what remains socialist?
Is it Soviet? Does memory reconstruct a Soviet past, a socialist past, a
nationalist one, or some combination of all of these categories? How do
we understand post-Soviet nostalgia, which seems to be on the rise in
Russia and other territories of the former Soviet Union?

The conference, which includes papers and film presentations, is open to
the public.

Thursday, April 6
Vivian and David Campbell Conference Facility, South Building

Morning session:

9:15-10:00
Keynote speaker: Masha Gessen (Moscow): 'CCCP = Cool. How Russia Fell in
Love with Soviet All over Again'

10:00-10:30 Discussion

10:45-12:30
  - Ben Eklof (Indiana University): 'By a Different Yardstick': Boris
    Mironov's A Social History of Imperial Russia, 1700-1917, its
Reception in Russia, and Perceptions of Western Hegemony'
  - Lynne Viola (University of Toronto): 'The Historical Legacy of
    Collectivization, or What was Soviet about Collectivization'
Discussant: Wayne Dowler (University of Toronto)

Afternoon session:

2:00-3:45
  - Kathleen Smith (Georgetown University): 'Whither Anti-Stalinism?'
  - Tracy McDonald (McMaster University): 'Who's Afraid of Joseph Stalin?'
Discussant: Steve Maddox (University of Toronto)

4:00-5:45
  - Steve Barnes (George Mason University): 'Forging Soviet Society in the
    Gulag'
  - Judith Pallott (University of Oxford): 'Continuities in Russia's
'Culture of Punishment': Space and Gender in Post-Soviet Patterns of
Penality'
Discussant: Sarah Young (University of Toronto)

Friday, April 7
Vivian and David Campbell Conference Facility, South Building

Morning session:

9:00-11:00
  - Rebecca Manley (Queen's University): 'Memories of Evacuation'
  - Heather DeHaan (Binghamton University): 'The Archaeology of a
Post-Soviet City: Nizhnii Novgorod'
  - Alexei Yurchak (UC Berkeley): 'Socialism Re-Visioned: Pionerki and
Other Soviet Heroes Born Today'
Discussant: Thomas Lahusen (University of Toronto)

11:15-12:30
Documentary film: The Province of Lost Film (A. Gershtein, T. Lahusen,
T. McDonald, A. Nikitin, 2005, 47 min.), followed by discussion

Afternoon session:

2:00-5:45
  - Michael David (University of Chicago): 'Social Welfare or Wasteful
    Excess? The Legacy of Early Soviet Tuberculosis Control Programs in
    Post-Soviet Russia'
  - Dan Healey (University of Wales Swansea): ''Untraditional Sex' and
the 'Simple Russian': Nostalgia for Soviet Innocence in the Polemics of
Dilia Enikeeva'
  - Andrea Chandler (Carleton University): 'Social Identity and the
    Individual in Russian Welfare State Reform since Gorbachev'
  - Nikolai Krementsov (University of Toronto): 'From a 'prominent
biologist' to a 'Red Frankenstein': Il'ia Ivanov in Soviet and
Post-Soviet Biographies'
Discussant: Susan Solomon (University of Toronto)

Saturday, April 8
Room 108, North Building

Morning session:

9:00-11:00
  - Alena Ledeneva (School of Slavonic and East European Studies,
University College London): 'Behind the Facade of Post-Soviet Institutions'
  - Jessica Allina-Pisano (Colgate University): 'Klichkov i Pustota:
    Post-Soviet Bureaucrats and the Production of Institutional Facades'
  - Anton Oleinik (Memorial University of Newfoundland): 'Embeddedness of
    Sovietness in a Particular Model of Power Relationships: A Conceptual
    Framework'
Discussant: Peter Solomon (University of Toronto)

11:15-1:00
  - James Millar (George Washington University): 'Markets, Money and
Private Property. The Persistence of Soviet Socialism in Russia Today'
  - Robert Johnson (University of Toronto): 'Markets and Memories: The
    Moral Economy of the Rynok'
Discussant: Harriet Friedmann (University of Toronto)

Afternoon session

2:00-3:00 General discussion




Distrib. by: Central-Eurasia-L - Announcement List for Central Eurasian
Studies