Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Soviet history has played a significant role in informing Russian national identity and uniting the nation. This discussion will engage with the instrumentalization of this memory during the Yeltsin and Putin era. The presenters Allyson Edwards, Lucy Birge and Issy Sawkins will briefly introduce themselves and their topics, drawing on their expertise in memory of the Second World War during the 1990s, and memory of the 1917 Russian revolution and Holocaust memory in contemporary Russia. They will discuss the chosen narratives and their implications, which are closely linked with the recent constitutional amendments. There will then be a more general discussion with the audience about these developments, with the opportunity for a Q&A session. The discussion will be chaired by Dr Kristin Roth-Ey of UCL.
In English.
Allyson Edwards is a final year PhD candidate a Swansea University. Her research, which is fully funded by the ESRC, seeks to examine the everyday mechanisms behind latent militarisation during the Yeltsin period. She is currently a Teaching Fellow in History at Warwick University and is the Vice-Chair of the Eurasian, East and Central European Studies Woman Academics Forum (EECES WAF)
Lucy Birge is a third year PhD Candidate in Russian Studies at the University of Manchester. She holds a degree in Russian Studies from the University of Sheffield (2012) and an MPhil in European Literature and Culture from the University of Cambridge (2014). She has studied and lived in Yaroslavl and St Petersburg, Russia. Lucy’s research explores Russia’s outward projection strategy via its international broadcasting outlet, Sputnik. Her PhD is fully funded under the auspices of the University of Manchester AHRC project, Reframing Russia.
Issy Sawkins is a second-year, SWWDTP-funded student at the University of Exeter. Her research investigates the contemporary politicisation of Holocaust memory in the Russian Federation. Issy has recently returned from a two-month placement at Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, and she will be moving to Moscow in March for three months of research. Issy is postgraduate representative for the British Association of Holocaust Studies.
Kristin Roth-Ey is a historian of modern Russia at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies and author of Moscow Prime Time (Cornell University Press, 2011). Her current research focuses on the history of Soviet soft power initiatives in Asia, Africa, and Latin America during the Cold War.