Living in Soviet Russia and Beyond

Drawing on film, interviews, literature, and more, this first-year seminar explores what it might have meant to “be” Soviet — and for whom and when. We will focus on lived experience as a topic of historical inquiry, and discuss the challenges and potentialities of doing so. While the primary geographic and temporal focus will be on Russia in the Soviet period, we will also look at examples of neighboring Soviet socialist republics, as well as the period immediately after the USSR’s collapse in 1991.