Rethinking Soviet and Post-Soviet Research

The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine has sent shockwaves throughout the world, but it is just the most recent manifestation of a long legacy of imperialist and colonial violence. For academics who have devoted their lives to studying Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia, the war has forced a long overdue reckoning with a status quo  centering Russia and its metropoles and a dependence on access to Russian archives. Rethinking Soviet & Post-Soviet Research will endeavor to begin decolonizing and de-centering prevailing research priorities, address challenges and opportunities for researchers largely cut off from in-person archival work in Russia, and bring together a network that will diversify scholarship through alternative archival strategies and perspectives. 

These events aim to tackle the following urgent questions:

• Decolonization & De-Centering: How can the profound practical and psychological shift resulting from the Ukraine War inspire us to rethink our field, to reconsider entrenched hierarchies and priorities, and to center subjects, regions, and histories that have been marginalized?  

• Alternative Archives: How can we reorientate our archival priorities toward resources in the Baltics, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and around the globe? How can we learn from colleagues already expert in conducting research in these regions?

• Digitizing and Databasing: How can digitization of resources help us navigate this new archival space? How can we consolidate our collective knowledge about digitized sources and broaden access to this evolving corpus of digitized materials?

• New Paths to Russian Archives: What kind of (e.g. remote) Russian archival access is still available to scholars? How can we safely and legally interact with museums, libraries, and archives in Russia? How can a research strategy that prioritizes decolonization and decentring draw upon both central and regional Russian archives to uncover marginalized stories?

With these aims in mind, we are organizing a series of events during Trinity Term 2023, which will include:

• Network-Building Events
• Decolonization & De-Centering Reading Groups
• Sources & Resources: Digital Archive Database

The local network and the preliminary database will serve as the foundation for an international conference to be held in Oxford on September 25, 2023. The conference is being organized in coordination with Professor Polly Jones (Faculty of Medieval & Modern Languages) and Zbigniew Wojnowski (Faculty of History/OSGA), Eleanor Peers (University of Cambridge) and the Social Science Library, with joint funding from the Faculties of Faculty of Medieval & Modern Languages, Faculty of History, and Oxford’s School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA), and University College. 

The graduate organizers for Rethinking Soviet & Post-Soviet Research are:

Jake Robertson - 2nd year DPhil, Faculty of Medieval & Modern Languages

Talia Kollek - 3rd year DPhil, Russian & East European Studies 

Emmi Joensuu - 3rd year DPhil, Faculty of History 

Rethinking Soviet & Post-Soviet Research is part of the TORCH Critical-Thinking Communities