Questions for discussion:

How did the state and society seek to redefine ‘Russia’ in the wake of the Soviet collapse? How did ordinary Russians experience the 1990s?

Set reading (to be prepared for class discussion):

Source: Svetlana Alexievich, Second-Hand Time, trans. by Bela Shayevich (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2016). ‘Snatches of Street Noise and Kitchen Conversations (2002-2012), pp. 427-434. Scan available here.

Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘Becoming Post-Soviet’, in Tear Off the Masks!, Identity and Imposture in Twentieth-Century Russia, (Princeton University Press, 2005), pp. 303–18. E-book.

Kathleen E. Smith, Mythmaking in the New Russia: Politics and Memory During the Yeltsin Era (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002). Chapter 8, ‘Searching for a New Russian Idea’, pp. 158-172. Scan available here.

Selected further reading:

Adele Marie Barker, ed., Consuming Russia: Popular Culture, Sex, and Society since Gorbachev (Duke University Press Books, 2012).
Mark G. Field, Judyth L. Twigg (eds), Russia's Torn Safety Nets: Health and Social Welfare During the Transition (Palgrave, 2000).
Seth Graham, ‘The Wages of Syncretism: Folkloric New Russians and Post-Soviet Popular Culture’, The Russian Review, Vol. 62, No. 1 (Jan., 2003), pp. 37-53.
Ekaterina V. Haskins, ‘Russia’s Postcommunist Past: The Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the Reimagining of National Identity’, History and Memory, 21 (2009), 25–62 <https://doi.org/10.2979/his.2009.21.1.25>
Stephen Kotkin, and Jan Gross, Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment (Modern Library, 2009).
Stephen Lovell, Destination in Doubt: Russia since 1989 (London: Zed Books, 2006).