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On today’s episode we sit down with Max from International Research Centre DDR (IFDDR) to discuss their excellent study on land reform and socialist agriculture in the German Democratic Republic (known globally by it’s German acronym the DDR - Deutsche Demokratische Republik):
The Land to Those Who Work It: From Land Reform to Socialist Agriculture in the DDR
Study description:
Within just 45 years, the conditions in the East German countryside changed fundamentally. This transformation took place in several stages.
The first stage (1945–1948) instituted a land reform that broke up the centuries-old land ownership structures in the countryside. This process of democratisation created the first framework for new relations of production based on cooperation. The second stage (1952–1960) was characterised by the Genossenschaftsbewegung (the cooperative movement), which was able to resolve the contradictions between modern technology and small-scale production in the interests of farmers and agricultural workers, without ruining, displacing, or subordinating them to the interests of big business, as occurs under capitalism. By the same token, the agricultural cooperatives also provided the rural population with previously unattained social and cultural rights and opportunities. The third and final stage (1970s–1980s), built on this foundation and saw the development of large agricultural production complexes and deepening cooperative relationships between the various stages of production, from primary production to processing and distribution.
Of all the changes in East Germany’s forty-year socialist history, the most revolutionary developments occurred in agriculture, as they were the most comprehensive.
International Research Centre DDR (IF DDR) is a research collective tht investigates the history of the German Democratic Republic (DDR) and the societal changes it achieved. The DDR’s 40-year commitment to progress, peace, anti-fascism, anti-colonialism, and internationalism stands in sharp contrast to the history of capitalist West Germany and represents a wealth of knowledge for progressive movements seeking to tackle social challenges today.
IFDDR’s objective is to enrich current debates with historical experience. To do so, it examines and analyses the functioning of key sectors of the DDR’s socialist society: the planned economy, the health care system, the legal system, agriculture, education and so on. A critical appraisal of this history offers a deeper perspective on the fundamental possibilities and difficulties that arise when constructing alternative social, economic, and political models.
Read more about IFDDR here
Check out their studies here
Episode music:
შავი პრინცი და ბაბე - “დაკარგული გული”
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On today’s episode we discuss Cold War liberalism with historian Daniel Bessner.
In the mid-twentieth century, Cold War liberalism exerted a profound influence on the US state, US foreign policy, and liberal thought across the North Atlantic world. The ideology transformed politics, society, and culture writ large. From impacting US foreign policy in the Middle East, to influencing the ideological contours of industrial society, to shaping the urban landscape of Los Angeles, Cold War liberalism left an indelible mark on modern history.
During the Cold War and through the US-led post-Cold War “unipolar” moment, Cold War liberalism and Neo-conservativism guided a messianic US foreign policy. In post-Soviet countries like Georgia and beyond these ideologies would have profound influence, the remnants, contradictions and consequences of which we can still see today.
Daniel Bessner is an Associate Professor in American foreign policy at the University of Washington. He co-hosts the podcast American Prestige and has published pieces in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The New Republic, The Nation, n+1, and other venues. He is the co-editor of Cold War Liberalism: Power in a Time of Emergency (2026)
Check out Cold War Liberalism: Power in a Time Of Emergency here
Listen to the American Prestige podcast here
Episode music credits:
SVLA - ბნელი და ნათელი ღამეებიhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZk_9uPWuXw
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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On today's podcast we welcome Ivan Katchanovski to discuss his most recent book The Russia-Ukraine War and its Origins: From the Maidan to the Ukraine War (2025) .
Ivan Katchanovski specializes in researching comparative politics, conflicts, political communication, and policy in Ukraine, the US, and Canada. He teaches at the School of Political Studies and the Conflict Studies and Human Rights Program at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He previously held academic positions at Harvard University, the State University of New York at Potsdam, the University of Toronto, and the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress.
Open access to the book:
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-98724-3
Book description:
This open access book examines the Russia-Ukraine war and its origins. Based on analysis of a large number of primary and secondary sources, it provides a systematic analysis of this crucial war, its nature, outcome, possibility of peaceful settlement, violence against civilians, and origins. The book examines the role of such factors as the NATO accession of Ukraine, Russian imperialism, democracy, genocide, and the far-right in the start of the war and traces the conflict escalation ladder, which culminated in this war, to preceding violent conflicts in Ukraine, in particular, the Euromaidan, the Maidan massacre, the Russian annexation of Crimea, and the war in Donbas. The Russia-Ukraine war is the most significant armed conflict of the 21st century in the entire world and in Europe since World War Two in terms of countries involved, casualties inflicted, and actual and potential impact in the world. This book analyzes the involvement of different conflict parties, such as the Ukrainian, Russian, and Western governments, Donbas separatists, and the far right, in this crucial war and in the Euromaidan, the Maidan massacre, the Russian annexation of Crimea, and the war in Donbas, and the nature of these conflicts. This book also examines support for pro-Western/pro-nationalist and pro-Russian/pro-communist political parties and presidential candidates and attitudes towards separatism and joining the European Union, NATO, and the union with Russia in regions of Ukraine in parliamentary and presidential elections and surveys since the Euromaidan.
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After spending decades in Soviet and Western archives, historian Michael Jabara Carley has released a magnum opus three part trilogy on the Soviet diplomatic struggle - and ultimate failure - to create a defensive alliance and collective security arrangement against Nazi Germany in Europe in the years prior to the outbreak of World War 2.
On today’s episode we are joined by Michael Jabara Carley to discuss how Soviet diplomatic efforts for an anti-Nazi alliance failed, the intransigence of Western powers, what led to the 1939 Nazi-Soviet non aggression pact, the ultimate causes of World War 2, the uses and abuses of History today and much more.
Michael Jabara Carley is a professor of History at the Université de Montréal. His research and writing focuses on the history of the relations of the USSR with the western powers especially in the period from 1917 to 1945. His work has made wide reaching use of Soviet and European archives. His books include: Stalin’s Great Game: War and Neutrality, 1939-1941 (2025), Stalin’s Failed Alliance: The Struggle for Collective Security, 1936-1939 (2024), Stalin’s Gamble: The Search for Allies against Hitler, 1930-1936 (2023), Silent Conflict: A Hidden History of Early Soviet-Western Relations (2014). -
On today’s episode, historian Mohamad Kadan takes us on a deep dive into the emergence of Marxism and Communist politics in Palestine in the early 20th century and immediately following the Nakba - the mass ethnic cleansing and displacement of Palestinians in 1948 during the establishment of the state of Israel.
Mohamad explores how questions of Palestinian anti-colonial struggle and self-determination, class, Marxist internationalism, nationalism, Zionism and imperialism shaped articulations of Marxism and on the ground Communist political organizing in Palestine.
Mohamad Kadan is a PhD student in History at Rice University, focusing on global histories of Palestinians, the communist movement, and settler colonialism.
His writing can be found here:
https://rice.academia.edu/MohamadKadan
For more reading on Communism in Palestine:
https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/328-the-palestine-communist-party-1919-1948
https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/10.3366/hls.2010.0103https://www.jstor.org/stable/43997993
Episode image:
Palestinians raise their arms during an outdoor rally in Abou Ghosh in 1936, likely to vote to endorse the general strike that would become the longest in modern history. (PhotoQuest/Getty Images) -
On today’s episode we explore the emergence and development of Bolshevism in Georgia, from the Russian Empire-wide revolutionary moments of 1905 and 1917, through the era of Menshevik rule in the Democratic Republic of Georgia (1918-1921), to the establishment and first decade of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic 1921-1931.
In the discussion, we examine the local roots of Bolshevism in Georgia in the years prior to Sovietization in 1921, as well as the role of youth and youth organizations in pre-Soviet revolutionary processes and mobilizations as well as in early Soviet state and nation building in the Georgian SSR.
Our guest is Giorgi Beridze
Giorgi Beridze is a Doctor of Political Science and an invited lecturer at the Department of Political Science at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University. His doctoral research examined labour policy-making and the role of business elites in Georgia, with particular attention to transformations in policymaking following the signing of the Association Agreement with the European Union in 2014.
His research interests include the history of the Marxist movement in Georgia, labour history, labour rights, Europeanization theory, biopolitics, and security studies. From 2023 to 2024, he served as Head of the Department for the Study of the Archives of the Democratic Republic and the Recent History of Georgia at the Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University Library. During this period, his research focused on the history of Social Democracy and the Marxist movement in Georgia before, during, and after the Russian Revolution.
His work has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals, including Europe-Asia Studies, TalTech Journal of European Studies, and Revolutionary Russia. He is also the co-author of several books published in Georgian by Tbilisi State University Press, including works on the First Democratic Republic of Georgia, the history of the Marxist movement in Georgia, and the history of youth protest movements at Tbilisi State University. -
This weeks discussion thematically compliments and follows on our previous episode on Marxism and China (episode 64 - give it a listen!).
Sitting down with Tings Chak, we examine China’s radical transformations from 1949 until today by centering a few questions: how was the mass alleviation of poverty accomplished in China? Is it an ongoing process? What does “socialist construction” have to do with it? Is China socialist? What kinds of contradictions has Chinese economic development faced? And how has China’s rapid and radical improvement in living standards shaped it’s place in the world? And what does this all mean for the global south in 2026?
Tings Chak is the Asia co-coordinator and art director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. She is an editor of Wenhua Zongheng: A Journal of Chinese Contemporary Thought and is currently pursuing her doctorate at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Find Tings on social media at:
X: @t_ings @tri_continental
instagram: @tingschak @thetricontinental
Some links:Poverty alleviation: https://thetricontinental.org/studies-1-socialist-construction/
Chinese Revolution historical overview: https://mronline.org/2024/10/01/seventy-five-years-of-the-chinese-revolution/
Wenhua Zongheng latest on Trump: https://thetricontinental.org/wenhua-zongheng-2025-2-trump-2-0-global-order/
Go To Yan’an: Culture and National Liberation: https://thetricontinental.org/dossier-yanan-forum/
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On today’s episode we have a wide reaching, in depth and fascinating discussion on Chinese Marxism.
We examine Marxism’s historical emergence in China and it’s adaptation to Chinese conditions - both as an idea guiding the Communist Party of China that culminated in the 1949 Chinese revolution as well as post-1949 state craft and socialist development in China. We also pay special attention to the influences of the Russian Revolution and Soviet Union on Chinese Marxism and socialism, as well as the critical differences and tensions between them from the 1920s, through Soviet collapse in 1991, to how the Soviet experience is understood in China today.
Our guest is Professor of Politics and International Relations at East China Normal University Dr. Josef Gregory Mahoney.Dr. Mahoney also serves as a Concurrent Professor of Marxism and Senior Research Fellow with Jiangsu’s top think tank—the Institute for the Development of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics —based at Southeast University in Nanjing. He teaches seminars on Marxism at ECNU, and his research methods emphasize dialectical and historical materialism, including his recent work on China’s rise as an advanced technological society undergoing rapid green transformations.
He holds a Ph.D., M.Phil., and B.A. from George Washington University; as well as an M.PA. and M.S.P.H. from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Prior to his doctoral studies he was a public health officer with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC/ATSDR).
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On today’s episode we discuss internal border delimitation in the early Soviet Union. Our discussion covers a wide geography - from Central Asia to the South Caucasus to the Ukrainian-Russia borderlands. How did internal borders get delimited after the establishment of Soviet power in the 1920s and 30s? What role did borders play in nation building? And how do economic factors shape the border delimitation process?
Our guest today is Stephan Rindlisbacher author of the book Borders in Red: Managing Diversity in the Early Soviet Union
https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501780585/borders-in-red/
Stephan Rindlisbacher (European University Viadrina Frankfurt, Oder) is a researcher specializing in Eurasian history. In his ongoing projects, he focuses on the early Soviet state’s national policies and their regional implementation. This includes Ukraine, the South Caucasus and Central Asia.
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On today's episode we discuss Afghan communism and the consequences of the 1978 Saur Revolution in the context of a longer story of Afghan anti-imperial modernity and Soviet-Afghan relations.
How and why was the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan different from interventions by other powers in the country? How do analyses of the 1979 Soviet invasion that center the “empire” framework limit our understanding of the history of Afghan anti-imperial modernity, Soviet-Afghan relations and Afghanistan’s place in the world?
Our guest is Adam Alimi and we use his article ”Beyond Empire: Why the Soviet invasion (and withdrawal) of Afghanistan was different” as the basis for the conversation.
Article summary and link:
The Taliban’s return to power in August 2021 set off the usual literatures of failure in studies on Afghanistan. These accounts – graveyard of empires, tribalism, Islam – helped temper the hubris of US foreign policy in its so-called ‘longest war’. Naturally, unforgiving Afghanistan was doomed to remain in the Stone Age, as the British and Soviets had discovered before. Still, the Soviet comparison as an account of the broader failure in Afghanistan is wanting. By drawing on newer global histories of Afghanistan, the periodization of modernity-failure is recast in more interesting ways. Specifically, this article advances the argument that the Soviet connection in Afghanistan, understood here in the long term and not just as the invasion in 1979, cohered with the winds of modernity and anti-imperialism animating the region in the twentieth century. Markers of Afghan modernity, such as late modernization (state-building), political economy (rural social property relations), and revolution (communism), are explored. The US occupation after 2001 is also used as a point of comparison to refocus the history of Afghanistan beyond empire.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19436149.2025.2499294
Adam Alimi is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics at York University, Toronto Canada. His research focuses on Marxist theories of development in the Global South. -
On today’s episode we explore the role of the historical Ukrainian far-right, specifically the Nazi-collaborationist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, in the development of post-Soviet Ukraine’s national memory regime. In particular we address a paradox - how did these far right political formations and their historical narratives, despite limited and regionally specific popularity, assume disproportionate influence on Ukraine’s post-Soviet national-memory regime since 1991? What role did the far right nationalist diaspora play? And how do the Russia-Ukraine War as well as the broader normalization of ethno-nationalism in politics and academia reinforce far right memory politics?
Our guest today is historian Per Rudling. As a basis for discussion we read his recent article
“Repatriating An Edifying Past: The Diaspora Ukrainian Authoritarian Right and Power Over Memory, 1991–2021”Article description:
The recent history of the Ukrainian authoritarian far right is one of paradoxes. If one looks at the polls, it has performed poorly; its modest successes have been regional and short-lived. On the other hand, it has been highly successful in terms of shaping memory politics in the country. It has had a disproportional influence on history writing, having invested significant efforts into building an effective structure in the field of memory management. Radical nationalists have also come to staff senior positions as deans and vice chancellors at Ukraine’s top universities, the ministry of education, the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory (UINP), and the archives of the Ukrainian Security Service (HDA SBU). The hard right has gained a disproportionate influence on “soft issues” of identity and the shaping of “national memory” – not only by running the governmental memory institutes, but also by hands-on drafting of memory laws outlawing “disrespect” for the OUN, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), and other historical far-right groups. This study seeks to trace and contextualize the repatriation of the ethnonationalist hard right from emigration and its role in shaping an infrastructure of memory production – in particular, under presidents Yushchenko (2005–2010) and Poroshenko (2014–2019).
Per Rudling is associate professor of History at Lund University and author of Tarnished Heroes: The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in the Memory Politics of Post-Soviet Ukraine (2024) and The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism 1906-1931 (2014) -
During the 1950s and 1960s, the Soviet Union began a new era of political engagement with the global south. One feature was development assistance. The Soviet Union embodied, offered and inspired an alternative approach to development, industrialization and modernization across the global south. Countries such as Ghana, Guinea and Mali in the 1950s-60s were governed by nationalists, not Marxists or Communists, and were newly independent from European imperial-colonial control.
Soviet specialists assessed the difficult conditions of these post-colonial countries as opening a path for “non-capitalist” development: state led modernization. As opposed to a Western promoted primacy of markets and individuals, “non-capitalist” development would ensure sovereignty and economic growth by shielding against French or British neo-colonial exploitation, improving living standards, empowering the state and strengthening political ties with the socialist world.
To discuss all this and more, we welcome historian Alessandro Iandolo, author of the book Arrested Development: The Soviet Union in Ghana, Guinea and Mali 1955-1968
Book description:
In Arrested Development, Alessandro Iandolo examines the USSR’s role in West Africa during the 1950s and 1960s as an aid donor, trade partner, and political model for newly independent Ghana, Guinea, and Mali.With a strong economy in the 1950s, the USSR expanded its global outreach, supporting economic development in post-colonial Africa and Asia. Many nations saw the Soviet model as a path to political and economic independence. Drawing on extensive Russian and West African archival research, Iandolo explores Soviet ideas, sponsored projects, and their lasting impact.
Soviet specialists worked alongside West African colleagues to design ambitious development plans, build infrastructure, establish collective farms, survey mineral resources, and manage banking and trade. These collaborations—and the tensions they created—shed light on how Soviet and West African visions of development intersected. Arrested Development positions the USSR as a key player in twentieth-century economic history, reshaping global approaches to modernization.
Alessandro Iandolo is Lecturer in Soviet and Post-Soviet History at University College London.The episode art is a 1960 poster from the Georgian SSR by Giorgi Pirtskhalava that reads: კოლონიზატორებო გაეთრიეთ! - Colonizers, get out!
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In the 1950s, the Soviet Red Cross gained positions in the governing bodies of the International League of the Red Cross, supported by newly established Red Cross and Red Crescent societies in the decolonizing world. Seeking to shape public opinion abroad, it established medical and research facilities in Algeria, Ethiopia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, and Cambodia. The Soviet Red Cross also had a presence in India, where Soviet doctors practiced medicine, published research in Indian journals, and trained future Indian doctors. Notably, most Soviet doctors were women, an unprecedented phenomenon in the 1950s. The USSR sought to redefine humanitarianism, shifting it from a Western concept of philanthropy to socialist development aid, effectively equating humanitarianism with socialism.
On today’s episode we discuss the ins and outs of the Soviet Red Cross, its mission in India between 1953-1964, and the relationship between socialist humanitarianism and medicine in the Cold War with Severyan Dyakonov.
Check out Severyan’s article - “Resilience, Perseverance, and Sense of Diplomacy:” The Soviet Red Cross in India, 1954–1963
https://www.academia.edu/130335796/The_Soviet_Red_Cross_in_India_1954_1963_DYAKONOVSeveryan
Severyan Dyakonov is a historian specializing in Soviet foreign policy and socialist internationalism in the decolonizing world. His research explores the influence of socialist ideology on development programs in Asia and Africa, and its long-term legacies—many of which remain underacknowledged due to Cold War-era narratives. He is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada), currently investigating the international activities of the Soviet Red Cross and also serves as an Associate at the Center for Digital Humanities at the Geneva Graduate Institute, contributing to the mapping and digitization of Red Cross–related archival materials. -
We sit down with Adela Hîncu, historian and editor of the volume Texts and Contexts from the History of Feminism and Women’s Rights East Central Europe, Second Half of the Twentieth Century (2024) to discuss feminist thought in post World War 2 socialist East Central Europe.
Book description:
A compendium of one hundred sources, preceded by a short author’s bio and an introduction, this volume offers an English language selection of the most representative texts on feminism and women’s rights from East Central Europe between the end of the Second World War and the early 1990s. While communist era is the primary focus, the interwar years and the post-1989 transition period also receive attention. All texts are new translations from the original.The book is organised around themes instead of countries; the similarities and differences between nations are nevertheless pointed out. The editors consider women not only in their local context, but also in conjunction with other systems of thought—including shared agendas with socialism, liberalism, nationalism, and even eugenics.
The choice of texts seeks to demonstrate how feminism as political thought was shaped and organised in the region. They vary in type and format from political treatises, philosophy to literary works, even films and the visual arts, with the necessary inclusion of the personal and the private. Women’s political rights, right to education, their role in nation-building, women, and war (and especially women and peace) are part of the anthology, alongside the gendered division of labour, violence against women, the body, and reproduction.
https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789633864548/texts-and-contexts-from-the-history-of-feminism-and-womens-rights
open access pdf: https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/98220/9789633864548.pdf
Adela Hîncu is an intellectual historian who focuses on the history of social sciences, Marxist social theory, and women’s political thought in Romania and East Central Europe after the Second World War. Currently a Marie Curie fellow at the Institute of Contemporary History in Ljubljana, she researches the transnational history of social expertize from Eastern Europe from the 1970s to the early 2000s. -
On today’s episode we discuss how international and regional communist parties and actors influenced the political development of the Greek Communist Party between 1918-1956, with a special focus on the Soviet Union and the Balkans. Our guest Nikos Marantzidis published his book Under Stalin’s Shadow: A Global History of Greek Communism in 2023.
Book description:
Under Stalin's Shadow examines the history of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) from 1918 to 1956, showing how closely national Communism was related to international developments. The history of the KKE reveals the role of Moscow in the various Communist parties of Southeastern Europe, as Nikos Marantzidis shows that Communism's international institutions (Moscow Center, Comintern, Balkan Communist Federation, Cominform, and sister parties in the Balkans) were not merely external factors influencing orientation and policy choices.Based on research from published and unpublished archival documents located in Greece, Russia, Eastern and Western Europe, and the Balkan countries, Under Stalin's Shadow traces the KKE movement's interactions with fraternal parties in neighboring states and with their acknowledged supreme mentors in Stalin's Soviet Russia. Marantzidis reveals how, because the boundaries between the national and international in the Communist world were not clearly drawn, international institutions, geopolitical soviet interests, and sister parties' strategies shaped in fundamental ways the KKE's leadership, its character and decision making as a party, and the way of life of its followers over the years.
Nikos Marantzidis is Professor of Political Science in the Balkan, Slavic, and Oriental Studies Department at the University of Macedonia and Visiting Professor at Charles University in Prague. He has published extensively on Greek and European Communism and Greek civil war history -
What is the relationship between "human rights" and neoliberalism? How deeply are contemporary ideas, ideals, and visions of "human rights" influenced by neoliberalism? What can early theorists and ideologues of neoliberalism tell us about Cold War and post-Cold War uses of human rights discourse in international organizations and governance? And what are the implications of it all for a country like Georgia which experienced radical neoliberal reforms and state-economy building in the post-Soviet period?
On today's episode we sit down with Jessica Whyte to discuss her 2019 book, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights and the Rise of Neoliberalism.
Book description here:
Drawing on detailed archival research on the parallel histories of human rights and neoliberalism, Jessica Whyte uncovers the place of human rights in neoliberal attempts to develop a moral framework for a market society. In the wake of the Second World War, neoliberals saw demands for new rights to social welfare and self-determination as threats to “civilisation”. Yet, rather than rejecting rights, they developed a distinctive account of human rights as tools to depoliticise civil society, protect private investments and shape liberal subjects.
https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/500-the-morals-of-the-market
Jessica Whyte is a Scientia Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales, Australia, with a cross-appointment in the Faculty of Law.
https://www.unsw.edu.au/staff/jessica-whyte
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In this wide reaching discussion, we sit down with historian Alex Marshall. Using his own works such as "The Caucasus under Soviet Rule" (2010) and the edited volume "Global Impacts of Russia's Great War and Revolution: The Arc of Revolution, 1917-24" (2019) as jumping off points, we discuss everything from how Soviet history is written and persistent historiographic debates, to why the Soviet past is still relevant to the left and how current political shifts influence how questions about the Soviet Union are asked and why. Framing the whole discussion is liberalism's terminal crisis, and what this means for history writing about the Soviet Union, the historical and political imagination of the left and more.
Alex Marshall is a senior lecturer of History at the University of Glasgow. His books include "The Caucasus Under Soviet Rule" (2010) and the edited volume "Global Impacts of Russia's Great War and Revolution: The Arc of Revolution, 1917-24" (2019). He is currently working on a manuscript about Soviet Second Secretary during the Cold War, Mikhail Suslov.
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On today's episode we explore the ins and outs of the 1936 Soviet Constitution - also known as the "Stalin Constitution" - how it was written, what it guaranteed, what led to its drafting, how it affected life in the USSR as well as the social, political and economic contexts surrounding its drafting.
We pay particular attention to how the tensions between central authority in Moscow, regional actors and popular sovereignty created a unique context for the practice and development of Soviet democracy, federalism and constitutionalism, complicating black and white narratives of Soviet political centralization.
Our guest is Samantha Lomb - author of Stalin’s ConstitutionSoviet Participatory Politics and the Discussion of the 1936 Draft Constitution - here is a description of the book:
"Upon its adoption in December 1936, Soviet leaders hailed the new so-called Stalin Constitution as the most democratic in the world. Scholars have long scoffed at this claim, noting that the mass repression of 1937–1938 that followed rendered it a hollow document. This study does not address these competing claims, but rather focuses on the six-month long popular discussion of the draft Constitution, which preceded its formal adoption in December 1936. Drawing on rich archival sources, this book uses the discussion of the draft 1936 Constitution to examine discourse between the central state leadership and citizens about the new Soviet social contract, which delineated the roles the state and citizens should play in developing socialism. For the central leadership, mobilizing its citizenry in a variety of state building campaigns was the main goal of the discussion of the draft Constitution. However, the goals of the central leadership at times stood in stark contrast with the people’s expressed interpretation of that social contract. Citizens of the USSR focused on securing rights and privileges, often related to improving their daily lives, from the central government."
Dr. Lomb works at Vyatka State University in Kirov, Russia. She received her PhD in history from the University of Pittsburgh in 2014. Her first book, Stalin’s Constitution: Soviet Participatory Politics and the Discussion of the 1936 Draft Constitution, was published in 2017. Currently she is working on a book manuscript about collective farm life in the 1930s and a research project on repression. On the topic of collectivization, she has published an article "Moscow is Far Away: Peasant Communal Traditions in the Expulsion of Collective Farm Members in the Vyatka–Kirov Region 1932–1939" in Europe Asia Studies in 2022 and a book chapter called “Nashi/ne Nashi, Individual Smallholders, Social Control, and the State in Ziuzdinskii District, Kirov Region, 1932–9” in Social Control under Stalin and Khrushchev: The Phantom of a Well-Ordered State, edited by Immo Rebitschek and Aaron B. Retish (University of Toronto Press: August 2023). She was also the editor of Win or Else: Soviet Football in Moscow and Beyond, 1921–1985, written by Larry Holmes, published in 2024.
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On today's episode we welcome architect and researcher Levan Asabashvili to discuss the emergence and development of public housing in the Georgian SSR and what happened to Georgia's housing stock after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
We also explore how Soviet-wide architectural trends in different periods (early Soviet, Stalinist, post-World War 2) manifested in the Georgian SSR and how architecture aligned with ideology, economics and nationhood, with special attention to housing in the Georgian case. We also discuss the role housing played in the emergence of the Soviet middle classes in the late Soviet period and the implications this had for the Soviet Union's collapse.
Throughout the discussion, references are made to images of buildings, all of which can be found here:
https://georgiaphotophiles.wordpress.com/2013/01/26/tbilisi-public-architecture-timeline/
Levan Asabashvili is an architect and researcher based in Tbilisi. He studied architecture at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts and later at Delft University of Technology. Levan is a co-founder of Urban Reactor, a collective focused on exploring the built environment, and has been involved in establishing the Georgian branch of do.co.mo.mo, an international organization dedicated to documenting and preserving modernist architecture. He also works with Architecture Workshop on design projects and is currently pursuing a PhD at Georgian Technical University, where his research focuses on Soviet architecture and the social, political, and economic factors that have shaped architectural movements.
Read Levan's article "AT THE ROOTS OF POST-SOVIET ARCHITECTURE" here:
https://danarti.org/en/article/at-the-roots-of-post-soviet-architecture---levan-asabashvili/10
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On today's episode we examine how broader shifts in the global order, globalization and geopolitical trends since the end of the Cold War led to the current European security crisis and political context for the Russo-Ukraine War. We also explore how this context shapes Georgia's geopolitical and security environment, and is sowing the seeds for more open discussions about what geopolitical neutrality and explicit multi-vectorism could mean for Georgia.
With guest co-host Beka Natsvlishvili, we welcome Richard Sakwa on to Reimagining Soviet Georgia.
Richard Sakwa is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Kent, U.K.
His research interests include: political developments in Russia, international politics and the Second Cold War, multipolarity and global realignments, prospects for socialism, problems of European and global order, the English School and international systems.
A description of Sakwa's recent book The Lost Peace: How the West Failed to Prevent a Second Cold War (2023, Yale University Press) below:
The end of the Cold War was an opportunity—our inability to seize it has led to today’s renewed era of great power competition
The year 1989 heralded a unique prospect for an enduring global peace as harsh ideological divisions and conflicts began to be resolved. Now, three decades on, that peace has been lost. With war in Ukraine and increasing tensions between China, Russia, and the West, great power politics once again dominates the world stage. But could it have been different?
Richard Sakwa shows how the years before the first mass invasion of Ukraine represented a hiatus in conflict rather than a lasting accord—and how, since then, we have been in a “Second Cold War.” Tracing the mistakes on both sides that led to the current crisis, Sakwa considers the resurgence of China and Russia and the disruptions and ambitions of the liberal order that opened up catastrophic new lines of conflict.
This is a vital, strongly argued account of how the world lost its chance at peace, and instead saw the return of war in Europe, global rivalries, and nuclear brinksmanship. - Visa fler
