Politics of Infrastructure across the Soviet/Post-Soviet Transition

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

When the Soviet empire fell, it left behind a legacy of infrastructure. States that emerged from the transition had to contend with dams, mines, power stations, and communication networks built in the Soviet period that constrained and enabled development in specific ways. More than just physical constructions, the Soviet infrastructural legacy included forms of expertise, institutions and intellectual traditions, legal frameworks and cultural capital, all of which shaped the trajectories of post-socialist societies. This panel seeks to rethink the Soviet/post-Soviet transition period through the lens of infrastructure studies. How did existing infrastructure shape post-Soviet politics and society? And how did the transition change the infrastructure itself? With a focus on the edges of the empire, panelists look at developments in the Baltics, Central Asia and the Caucasus, and infrastructure ranging from dams and mining to communications networks.

Sub Unit

• History: 1945-1990

Chair

• Katherine Zubovich, SUNY Buffalo

Papers

• Political Networks: Data Exchange as Revolution from Late Socialism to the Information Age in Eastern Europe - Aro Velmet, U of Southern California

• The Return of the Sea?: Post-Soviet Solutions to Central Asia’s Aral Sea Disaster - Sarah Cameron, U of Maryland, College Park

• Industrial Disaster and Microbial Life: The Politics of Bioremediation in Pollution Zones of Late Socialist Estonia - Anna Helena Liiv, U of Tartu (Estonia)

• A Border Dam Across Regimes: From 'Friendship Garden' to 'Water Imperialism' in East Anatolia - Taylor Zajicek, Williams College

Discussant

• Katherine Zubovich, SUNY Buffalo