Constructing and Re-Constructing the Baikal-Amur Mainline: Imaginaries and Ideologies of a (Post)-Socialist Megaproject

• In Event: The Promises of Infrastructure II: Mediating Late Socialist Modernity

Abstract

The emergence of Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) in the late socialist period involved large-scale technological and social engineering, as well as mass ideological propaganda. The paper analysing media campaigns surrounding the program of the railroad reconstruction and celebrations of BAM anniversaries, argues that Soviet discourses and imaginaries are used as a resource in postsocialist politics of identity and emotion in the region.

Author

• Olga Povoroznyuk, U of Vienna (Austria)