Studying, Writing, and Building the "End of History": Sovietologists after the Collapse of the Soviet Union

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel turns to a paradigm-shifting moment in the history of the Soviet Union and Soviet studies, one which had a profound effect on regional knowledge production: Perestroika, the Soviet Union’s collapse, and its aftermath. Heralded by many as an era of unprecedented openness, the years immediately preceding and following the end of the Soviet Union ushered in a series of structural changes and destabilized assumptions about how the region should be studied, which disciplines and institutions should study it, and who should fund them. Vera Tolz-Zilitinkevic's paper reflects on her time working as an analyst at and eventually the head of Radio Liberty's Research Department in Munich, Germany from 1985 to 1994. She focuses on how different kinds of regional experts with different forms of training and personal backgrounds shaped the intellectual and journalistic debates, particularly around the so-called Soviet "nationalities question," that emerged in the department during the Gorbachev and Yeltsin years. Sheila Fitzpatrick's paper looks at the variety of responses by individual Sovietologists and major institutions such as Columbia’s Harriman Institute and Harvard's Russia Research Center to the Soviet Union's--and Sovietology's--collapse. Yana Skorobogatov's paper examines the Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs's contributions to the formulation of economic "shock therapy" as a case study of western academia’s investment in "building capitalism" in Russia after the collapse of communism. Combined, these papers set out to address the broader question of how experts and knowledge producers acclimate, or fail to acclimate, to contingencies that dramatically unsettle the places and people they study.

Sub Unit

• History: Since 1990

Chair

• Adam E Leeds, Columbia U

Papers

• The End of the Cold War and Radio Liberty Research Beyond Moscow: Personal Reflections - Vera Tolz-Zilitinkevich, U of Manchester (UK)

• Sovietologists and the End of the Cold War - Sheila Fitzpatrick, Australian Catholic U (Australia)

• Importing 'Shock Therapy' to Russia: Jeffrey Sachs, Economics, and the Rise of the Globalist-Academic after the Collapse of the Soviet Union - Yana Skorobogatov, Columbia U

Discussant

• Sergey Radchenko, Johns Hopkins U