Course Description:
What was the Soviet Union and what has come next? This course will examine the Soviet and post-Soviet space as a world area, considering its social, political and economic development under and after socialism. It will examine what it was like to live in the constituent republics of the Soviet Union – including in the Caucasus and Central Asia – and whether and why common patterns (corruption, oligarchy, informal politics) can still be found in its successor states.
We shall explore the Soviet Union as a distinct socio-cultural system which impinged on people’s sense of culture, identity, and self; how economics defined interpersonal relations and social power; how the social structures and informal economies of Soviet socialism mediated the failed “transition” to market economy; and how present-day political economies of post-Soviet states have developed in the light of financial globalisation and polarisation.
We shall approach this from a broadly economic anthropological perspective, with a focus on daily life and the ways of thinking and interacting that define it. The course will be conducted in seminar format, based mainly on discussion of readings, with occasional lectures and films. Readings include some of the key texts produced by post-Soviet “insiders” and Western “outsiders” in the last two decades as well as the most recent contributions to the literature. Although the focus is on the post-Soviet world, the course may help students advance their knowledge of the relationship between political economy and social transformation more broadly.
