“Escaping the long shadow of Homo Sovieticus: Reassessing Stalin’s popularity and its relationship with values and attitudes in Post-Soviet Russia”

CBEES Advanced Seminar with Matthew Blackburn, University of Warsaw, and the Institute of Russian and Eurasian Studies, Uppsala University

Speaker: Matthew Blackburn, visiting research fellow, Department of Political Science, University of Warsaw, and researcher, the Institute of Russian and Eurasian Studies, Uppsala University.

Discussant: Nikolay Zakharov, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Södertörn University

Chair: Mark Bassin, Professor of History of Ideas, CBEES, Södertörn University

Abstract:
It is often asserted that the values and attitudes of Soviet man (Homo Sovieticus), seen in nostalgia for the Soviet past and the rising ‘popularity’ of Stalin, lives on in contemporary Russia, acting in as a negative factor in social and political development. This paper examines the Homo Sovieticus legacy argument that attitudes to Stalin are central to Russia’s authoritarian regression and failed modernisation. The critique of this legacy argument has three parts. Firstly, after examining the problematic elements of the Levada centre approach, I offer alternative explanations for understanding sociological data on Stalin and the repressions. Secondly, given attitudes in polling data differ according to the wording of the questions, I argue that Stalin must be understood as a multidimensional character who provokes significant ambivalence. Thirdly, I examine interview data showing that, for those with a pro-Stalin position, ‘defending Stalin’ is only a small part of a broader illiberal statist worldview that is not obviously part of a ‘Soviet legacy’. Survey data from the trudnaya-pamyat (difficult memory) project is also examined, which demonstrate common reluctance to discuss much of the Stalinist past and a preference for a ‘de-politicised’, agonistic version of memory politics.

Bio:
Matthew Blackburn is a visiting research fellow at the Department of Political Science at the University of Warsaw and researcher at the Institute of Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University. His research focuses on political legitimation, memory politics, nationalism and identity politics in the post-Soviet space.

Join the seminar on campus: MA 796

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