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Session Submission Summary

Social Parallels in the History of Russia, the USSR, and East Europe

Thu, November 21, 12:00 to 1:45pm EST (12:00 to 1:45pm EST), Boston Marriott Copley Place, Floor: 4th Floor, Grand Ballroom Salon E

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The panel brings together historical and historiographical research on East European, Russian, and Soviet societies. It examines topics with an overarching theme of parallels, interconnections, and influences within and between countries, institutions, and peoples from the late 19th century until today.
The first paper discusses how the late 19th century all-European prison reform was received in the Russian Empire, and how it was implemented in the Empire’s North-Western periphery, in the Grand Duchy of Finland, both in theory and in practice. The second paper sheds light to the political and ideological discussions of social democrats in two Western areas of the Russian Empire that became independent in the aftermath of the October Revolution in Russia: Poland and Finland. The social democratic parties of both newly established countries can be perceived as parallel reactions to the Communist-dominated Soviet Russia in the making. The third paper turns to the Soviet Union of the Stalin and post-Stalin eras and continues the discussion of ideology and society from the point of view of representations of reality in Soviet media and culture. The final paper of the panel discusses the legacies of Soviet era Anti-Normanist theory in the historiography and memory politics of contemporary Belarus. It concentrates on the medieval contacts between Denmark and Belarus and the ways in which the memory of these contacts has changed.
Together these papers show the changes and continuities in social thinking and practices of various nations of the former Russian Empire.

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