| What is Soviet Now? Identities, Legacies, Memories |
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An International Conference sponsored by the Connaught Fund and the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies 6–8 April 2006 Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto "What is Soviet Now?" is the conclusion of a three-year collaborative project, "Real Socialism and the 'Second World'." Funded by a University of Toronto Connaught grant for seed support for research clusters, the project is administered by the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, and directed by Thomas Lahusen (History and Comparative Literature), Robert Johnson (History), Peter Solomon (Political Science), Susan Solomon (Political Science), and Lynne Viola (History). Fifteen years after the demise of the Soviet Union, the definition and reality of what it meant to be "Soviet" remain contested and ambiguous, subject to perspective and context. "What is Soviet Now?" will address a series of themes or problems to explore how the meaning of the Soviet experience has changed, and is continuing to change, from the founding utopian dreams and the successful and unsuccessful attempts to implement them, to its post-Soviet present. Papers will focus on a set of core themes that may aid us in charting the meanings of "Sovietness" and the legacies of the Soviet experience. What remains fifteen years after the end of the USSR, for those who lived and live within its old/new borders, for its competitors, its observers? Is what remains socialist? Is it Soviet? Does memory reconstruct a Soviet past, a socialist past, a nationalist one, or some combination of all of these categories? How do we understand post-Soviet nostalgia, which seems to be on the rise in Russia and other territories of the former Soviet Union? The conference, which includes papers and film presentations, is open to the public. 
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