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Session Submission Type: Panel
Since the fall of the USSR, historians have worked through the Soviet experience, period by historical period. In recent years we have turned our attention to the glasnost years. For many of us it is a welcome return to origins since our careers started during, or were stimulated by, Gorbachev’s innovations. This panel proposes a re-examination of those reform years with the benefit of several decades of hindsight. Each of the three papers, on the cinematic interpretation of the Afghan War, the science of environmental health, and the role of money, will focus on an important but understudied area of glasnost. We remember very rapid change in the second half of the 1980s. Each paper is a close study of the chronology of that change. With an emphasis on “early Gorbachev,” each will seek the pivot point when it became clear that a long ossified regime gave way to “new thinking.” Beyond that chronology, the papers will also examine carefully the new thinking itself and the extent to which it broke with the past. While in some cases the new thinking was optimistic and opportunistic, in others it may be better characterized by disillusionment and a collapse in confidence. Finally, we will examine how the change in direction was received by the population.
Reel War: The Soviet-Afghan War on Screen - Jeff W. Jones, UNC at Greensboro
Glasnost and the Overturning of the Soviet Science of Environmental Health - Christopher Burton, U of Lethbridge (Canada)
Cashless Rubles: Gorbachev’s Economic Reforms and the End of the USSR - Martin J. Blackwell, Stetson U