Old Ways Everlasting: Reassessing the Results of Soviet Modernization in Ukraine

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

In separate papers, we explore Andrea Graziosi's argument that Soviet modernisation created a 'new ancien regime' from different perspectives: the history of everyday life, the lived experience of the famine's orphans, state-sanctioned violence, and Soviet bureaucrats' response to the 1932-1933 famine in Ukraine, known as the Holodomor. The panel concludes by analyzing contemporary Ukrainian reflections on this historical period and social transformations. In particular, how diverse modern Ukrainians interpret the legacy of these dynamics is considered, including changing ideas of the past, ideas of sociocultural reclamation, and emerging discussions of sociopsychological transformations.

In particular, Skubii's paper explores the transformation process (literally "melting down") of Ukrainian material culture in the early 1930s and during the Holodomor. By analysing the practices of famine survival, state expropriation of property, and mass looting, this paper will illustrate the impact of famine and state policies on the enormous destruction of material culture. Kharchenko's paper explores the new forms of state care for orphans. While in survivor testimonies these establishments are remembered as achievements of modernising policies, archival memory and close text reading suggests otherwise. Mattingly's paper draws on ego documents of the urbanites observing or facilitating the famine. The paper argues that most of these actors tell of the quasi-modern society where belonging to a specific group within a newly established social hierarchy defined access to resources.

Sub Unit

• History: 1900-1945

Chair

• Marta Baziuk, Holodomor Research & Education Consortium (Canada)

Papers

• Orphans into Soviet Citizens: Ambiguity of Modernization in State Care in Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s - Artem Kharchenko, I. P. Kotlyarevsky Kharkiv National U of Arts (Ukraine)

• 'Melting Down' of Ukrainian Material Culture in the Early 1930s - Iryna Skubii, U of Melbourne (Australia)

• Soviet Modernisation Under Anthropological Review - Kristina Hook, Kennesaw State U

• Breaking Modern: Soviet Modernization and Famine in Contemporary Ego-Documents - Daria Mattingly, U of Chichester (UK)

Discussant

• Ronald Grigor Suny, U of Michigan