Homeland in Exile: Navigating Belonging in the Soviet Union

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

In the USSR, belonging remained a particularly complex notion for the more than 100 ethnic nationalities that lived within its borders. Despite the official Soviet policy of the "Friendship of the Peoples," in which all Soviet nationalities were supposedly considered equal and multiculturalism was celebrated, yet, beneath this rhetoric lay a stark reality of discrimination against non-Russian ethnic groups, with Russian language and culture holding a privileged status. The panel focuses on the displacement and discrimination experienced by ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union following the end of the Second World War, centering first-hand experiences and examining how collective memory contributed to these groups' construction of identity and homeland. With a transnational scope stretching from Ukraine to the Russian Far East down to Central Asia and the Caucusus, these papers shed light on how individuals and communities resisted, negotiated, and redefined their place in the Soviet system.

Sub Unit

• History: 1945-1990

Chair

• Anna Kozlova, Carleton U (Canada)

Papers

• Unbelonging and the Search for Home: Narratives of Transnational Mennonite Migrants from Soviet Union to Canada - Anna Kozlova, Carleton U (Canada)

• Rodina: The Generational Difference of Identity Among Soviet Koreans, 1937-1956 - Kim Lacey, Washington U in St. Louis

• From Exile to Homecoming: Collective Memory as a Source of Resilience of the Crimean Tatars - Lev Pavlenko, U of Toronto (Canada)

• A Paradox of Soviet Multiculturalism: Armenian and Azerbaijani Minority Intellectuals in the Shadow of Druzhba Narodov - Ararat Sekeryan, Columbia U

Discussants

• Marek Eby, New York U

• Yelyzaveta Zolotarova, Independent Scholar