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Soviet Life As an Object of Historical Reconstruction

  • Special Issue of the Journal Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences Dedicated to the History of Russia
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Abstract—

“Soviet life” is examined as an integral model of a prospective study of the social history of Russia/Soviet Union during the Soviet period. The need for methodological and substantive synthesis in the study of the phenomenon of the Soviet is due to both the tasks of developing historical knowledge and the challenges of post-Soviet nostalgia and the collective memory of the Soviet past. What criteria can be used to structure/reconstruct “Soviet life”? How successful/unsuccessful was the past experience of creating integral models of Soviet social reality? How does it help assess the prospects for studying the Soviet project as a whole? This article is not only an attempt to answer these questions but also an invitation to discuss the prospects for the development of Russia’s social history.

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Correspondence to E. Yu. Zubkova.

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Translated by B. Alekseev

Elena Yur’evna Zubkova, Dr. Sci. (Hist.), is Chief Researcher at the Institute of Russian History (IRH) RAS.

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Zubkova, E.Y. Soviet Life As an Object of Historical Reconstruction. Her. Russ. Acad. Sci. 90, 559–566 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1019331620050093

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