Thirty years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the waves that originated in the process still shake the world that we live in today. The collective traumas, wounded egos, misdistribution of resources, contested identities and struggles for reform have resulted in conflicts and even wars. One of the worst is taking place right now in Ukraine.
Join Professor Vladislav M. Zubok, author of Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union, shortlisted for the Pushkin House Book Prize 2022, for a masterly analysis of the implosion of the Soviet Union and its effect on the world 30 years later. Zubok will be in conversation with Professor Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, who is currently researching the reaction of Russian society to the invasion of Ukraine.
This is an in-person and online event.
Myths and flawed explanations shroud the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Zubok’s compelling research offers a major reinterpretation of the final years of the USSR. How could a nuclear superpower that controlled half of Europe fall apart in a matter of months? What appeared to many as a sudden and inconceivable event was the unique combination of misguided reforms, nationalism, political folly and economic meltdown. The precipitous systemic downfall was triggered by a leader who just could not accept the impossibility of ‘socialism with a “human face”’, and the Soviet state was guided to a quiet grave by another man who decided to recreate a ‘Great Russia’. Disillusioned citizens inspired by glasnost soon grew tired of failed promises. And the Western governments, amazed by the change, mostly tried to avoid cataclysmic consequences for themselves.
Zubok’s research comes at a crucial moment, when what was considered ‘history’ has turned round to strike us back. The book helps us to understand the origins of the Russian-Ukrainian clash, and dispels myths that continue to feed nation-building and conflicts in the post-Soviet space.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Gulnaz Sharafutdinova has been Professor of Russian Politics at King's Russia Institute since 2013. She recently published The Red Mirror: Putin's Leadership and Russia's Insecure Identity (Oxford University Press, 2020), exploring issues of authoritarian legitimation in Russia and relying on social identity theory. She is currently working on a book The Afterlife of the Soviet Man: Rethinking Homo Sovieticus and conducts research on digital technologies of governance and vaccine hesitancy in the context of authoritarian regimes. Gulnaz holds a PhD from George Washington University, and speaks fluent Russian, Tatar and English. She was born in Tatarstan, Russia, and still keeps tight connections to her homeland.
Vladislav M. Zubok is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has received many fellowships and grants, including from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Campbell National Fellowship at the Hoover Institution, the Woodrow Wilson Center, and the Paulson Foundation. His books include Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War (1996, co-authored with Constantine Pleshakov), winner of the Gelber Prize; A Failed Empire: the Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (2007), awarded the Marshall Shulman Prize; Zhivago’s Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia (2009);The Idea of Russia: the Life and Work of Dmitry Likhachev (2016); and Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union (2021), shortlisted for the Pushkin House Book Prize 2022. Zubok has authored many articles and essays, most recently in Diplomatic History, Foreign Affairs, The Wall Street Journal, and Engelsberg Ideas.