What was the Soviet Union? Looking back at the Brezhev years
What was the Soviet Union? Looking back at the Brezhev years
Wesleyan University (United States)
20-21 October 2011
20 October
8.00-9.30 pm in Public Affairs, Center 001: Public lecture by Stephen Kotkin
21 October
9.00-10.30 – Politics
Chair Peter Rutland (Wesleyan)
- Martin Dimitrov (Dartmouth): « Tracking public opinion under authoritarianism: The case of the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin. »
- Mark Kramer (Harvard): « Soviet national security affairs and policymaking during the Brezhnev era. »
- Eric McGlinchey (George Mason): « Central Asia under Brezhnev. »
- Nikolai Mitrokhin (Forschungsstelle Osteuropa, Bremen): « The KPSS Central Committee Apparatus, 1970-85: functions in the Soviet political system and the staff. »
Discussant: Valerie Sperling (Clark)
11.00-12.30 – Political economy
Chair James McGuire (Wesleyan)
- Cindy Buckley (SSRC): « Population and health under Brezhnev: A harbinger of things to come? »
- Linda Cooke (Brown): « The Soviet social contract revisited: Critiques, re-considerations, consequences for post-communism. »
- Vladimir Kontorovich (Haverford): « What was the Soviet economy? »
- Joachim Zweynert (Hamburg): « The Soviet economy of the Brezhnev years through the lens of contemporary Soviet economists. »
- Vitaly Naishul: « The Brezhnev administrative market and its follow-ups. »
Discussant Peter Rutland (Wesleyan)
1.30-3.00 – Society
Chair Phil Pomper (Wesleyan)
- Kate Brown (U of Maryland, Baltimore): « ‘We had everything’: socialism in one (closed) city. »
- Lauren Mccarthy (U Mass Amherst): « Law and informal practices in the Soviet Union. »
- Serguei Oushakine (Princeton): « Against the Cult of Things »: Crimes of Late Soviet Consumption. »
- Doug Rogers (Yale): « Nostalgia for Stagnation? Post-Soviet Villagers Recall Rural Socialism. »
Discussant Ethan Pollock (Brown)
3.30-5.00: Culture
Chair Paul Bushkovitch (Yale)
- Yitzhak Brudny (Hebrew University): « Russian nationalism. »
- Christine Evans (U of Wisconsin, Milwaukee): « Television and political authority under Brezhnev. »
- Victoria Smolkin-Rothrock (Wesleyan): « The meaning of life and the problem of indifference: The spiritual crisis of late Soviet Communism » »
- Sergei Zhuk (Ball State): « Detente, mass culture from the West, ‘disco mafia’ and Russification of Soviet Ukraine during the Brezhnev era. »
Discussant Justine Buck Quijada (Wesleyan)
Conference administrator: Gloria Gdovin (ggdovin@wesleyan.edu)