Please join us for the launch of Professor Gulnaz Sharafutdinova’s book The Afterlife of the 'Soviet Man’, which she will discuss with Professor Svetlana Stephenson, revealing how power and politics influence the processes of knowledge production along with our everyday views, and ideas we live by.
In this thought-provoking work, Sharafutdinova follows the lives and ideals of several anti-communist writers and dissidents, who have encountered communism and have developed powerful ideas about the effects of the communist system and ideology on people living in communist states. The intellectual biographies of Cheslaw Milosz, Georgy Markov, Alexander Zinoviev and Vladimir Bukovsky highlight the historical and political contingencies underpinning the evolution of their thinking. The analytical deconstruction of Yuri Levada’s intellectual legacy exposes the outdated theoretical foundations of the concept of ‘simple Soviet man’ that provided an empirical and scientific grounding to the term homo sovieticus.
About the speakers
Gulnaz Sharafutdinova is Professor of Russian Politics and Director of the King's Russia Institute. She is an author of the award-winning The Red Mirror: Putin’s Leadership and Russia’s Insecure Identity (Oxford University Press, 2020) and Political Consequences of Crony Capitalism Inside Russia (Notre Dame University Press, 2010).
Svetlana Stephenson is a Professor in Sociology at the School of Social Sciences at the London Metropolitan University. She is convener of the University’s Interdisciplinary Research Forum. Her latest book is Gangs of Russia: from the Streets to the Corridors of Power (Cornell University Press, 2015).