JULIANE FÜRST. IMPERFECT IMPLOSION: THE END OF THE RSFSR AND THE BIRTH OF RUSSIA

© George Hoefler

In this lecture I will argue that the collapse of the Soviet Union was less caused by centrifugal forces outside of the RSFSR but had its deeper reasons in the very problems that were specific to Russia and the RSFSR. It was these problems of the Soviet heartland which prompted the reforms of perestroika, setting in motion a dynamic that proved fatal to the systemic superstructure. Ironically the roots of many of these problems survived the Soviet collapse, producing a Russia that was neither Soviet nor un-Soviet.

Prof. Dr. Juliane Fürst is Professor of Modern European History at the Central European University in Vienna and head of department ‘Communism and Society’ at the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam. She has published widely on Soviet youth culture, dissidence and Soviet nonconformism, most recently a monograph titled „Flowers through Concrete: Explorations in Soviet Hippieland“ (OUP, 2021). She is currently PI to an ERC project ‘Perestroika from below’.

Eintritt frei, in englischer Sprache