On Soviet and Post-Soviet Inventions of Tradition

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

In its classic definition by Eric Hobsbawm, an “invented tradition” denotes “a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past.” This roundtable aims to consider cases of invented traditions during the Soviet and post-Soviet Period. It approaches these cases from various disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives, including history, anthropology, and literary studies, and it is animated by such questions as: What processes of “formationalization add ritualization” (to borrow from Hobsbawm) can be discerned in contemporary invented traditions? To which anxieties — in keeping with the theme of the conference—might the invented traditions we examine be understood as compensatory cultural responses? Given that invented traditions are understood as central to the historiography of modernity, how might we understand them in the conjuncture of the post-Soviet and the post-modern? What kinds of pasts do these post-Soviet invented traditions imagine and seek to restore?

Sub Unit

• Anthropology/Cultural Studies

Chair

• Michael M. Kunichika, Amherst College

Roundtable Members

• Katerina Clark, Yale U

• Adeeb Khalid, Carleton College

• Serguei Alex. Oushakine, Princeton U

• Mikhail D Suslov, U of Copenhagen (Denmark)

Session Manager

• John Meyer, LASA