Left Perspectives on Method III: Neoliberal/Cultural Turn in Histories of Socialism

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The 1980s and 1990s were marked by important caesurae, both historical and historiographical. Wide-ranging, global changes in political economy ushered in a new age of inequality. It also saw the rise and consolidation of a new set of approaches to the history of the Soviet Union and socialism generally that have largely come under the rubric of “the cultural turn.” Like many such analytical shifts, it has presented itself as a corrective to errors and omissions in past approaches to history. This panel will begin to explore it in a different light: as a shift in social concerns, cultural ethics and politics, and academic writing about 20th century encounters with socialism, a shift, that is, that has been consonant with the seismic global transformations of its times, i.e. with the rise and consolidation of neoliberalism. The panel will explore several corners of the field of Soviet history (debates over Soviet nationalities, environmental history and the Cold War) to illuminate these connections of recent history and historiography.

Sub Unit

• History: 1945-1990

Chair

• Renny Hahamovitch, U of Michigan

Papers

• Nationalizing States, Negotiated Sovereignties and Soviet Modernity: Soviet History Beyond the Empire Paradigm - Bryan John Gigantino, Georgian American U

• Soviet Environmental History and the Cultural Turn - Alexander Thomas Herbert, Worcester Polytechnic Inst

• Abetting Neoliberalism: Cold War History and the Post-Revisionist Synthesis - Oscar Sanchez-Sibony, U of Hong Kong (China)

Discussants

• Anna Yu. Krylova, Duke U

• Lewis Henry Siegelbaum, Michigan State U