Rowman and Littlefield. - Soviet Society in the Era of Late Socialism, 1964-1985

Dominic Boyer is associate professor of anthropology at Rice University. He previously taught at Cornell University and at the University of Chicago and has held visiting positions at the EHESS-Paris and at the University of Frankfurt. He is a Fellow of the Digital Anthropology MA program at University College London. He is the author of Spirit and System: Media, Intellectuals, and the Dialectic in Modern German Culture (Chicago, 2005) and Understanding Media: A Popular Philosophy (Prickly Paradigm, 2007) and has recently edited special issues of the journals Critique of Anthropology , Ethnos , and Ethnography . Beyond this, he has published many essays in leading scholarly journals based on his research on media and knowledge in German intellectual culture. He has received major research grants from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Fulbright-IIE, SSRC, and from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. He is currently writing a book, The Life Informatic , which explores how digital media and information technology is transforming the practice and professional expertise of news journalists in Germany and the United States.

Kate Brown is associate professor in the Department of History at University of Maryland (Baltimore). Prof. Brown studies and teaches Russian and Eastern European History, focusing on ethnicity and nationalism. Professor Browns article, Gridded Lives: Why Kazakhstan and Montana are Nearly the Same Place appeared in the February 2001 issue of American Historical Review . Her book, A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland (Harvard University Press, 2005) won the American Historical Associations prestigious George Louis Beer Prize, given for outstanding historical writing on any phase of European international history since 1895. Her new book, Plutopia , will be published by Oxford in 2013. Previously Professor Browns book won the Heldt Prize awarded by the American Women for Slavic Studies. She has received numerous fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Social Science Research Center, among others, as well as a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship for 20092010.

Robert Edelman is professor of Russian history and the history of sports at the University of California, San Diego. He has published numerous books, with the most recent Spartak Moscow: A History of a Peoples Team in the Workers State (Cornell University Press, 2009) and many articles, appearing in the Russian Review , Slavic Review , Journal of Modern History , American Historical Review , and others.

Larisa Honey (assistant professor of anthropology, Department of Social Sciences, Queensborough Community College, CUNY). Her research interests include cultural anthropology with a focus on the former Soviet Union, gender, medical anthropology, religion, and globalization. She has received funding for her research from IREX and PSC-CUNY. She is currently finishing a book on the transformative role of womens spiritual-health practices in contemporary Moscow and also writes on the themes of nationalism, identity, and media representations of Russian women. Her current research explores the role of media and technology in the realm of transnational activism, with a focus on the interconnections between Moscow and New York City.

Neringa Klumbyt is an assistant professor at Miami University (Ohio). She has published on a variety of topics, including ethnicity and nationalism; power, laughter, and political intimacy; memory and nostalgia for Soviet times; Europeanization and symbolic geopolitics in Europe; and political branding in food markets. Her recent articles include Soviet Sausage Renaissance ( American Anthropologist , 2010), Europe and Its Fragments: Europeanization, Nationalism, and the Geopolitics of Provinciality in Lithuania ( Slavic Review , 2011), and Political Intimacy : Power, Laughter, and Coexistence in Late Soviet Lithuania ( East European Politics and Societies , 2011). Currently, she is finishing a monograph on nationalism and citizenship in Lithuania.

Olga Livshin is a term assistant professor of Russian at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. She received her PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Northwestern University in 2010, and she is a specialist in contemporary Russian literature and performance. Her dissertation, which she is revising for publication, is the first book-length study of masculinity in late-Soviet non-conformist literature.

Anna Paretskaya is a sociologist who studies, among other things, varieties of origins, pathways, and outcomes of the political and economic liberalizations that happened in Europe and Eurasia in the late twentieth century. She has published in Sociological Theory and Constellations . Her work has won awards from the American Sociological Associations sections on theory, comparative-historical sociology, and the sociology of culture. Her current research focuses on cultural aspects of political protest movements in Russia and Wisconsin.

Gulnaz Sharafutdinova is an associate professor of political science and international studies at Miami University (Ohio). Her research focuses on the political economy of post-communist transformation, the evolution of Russian federalism, and Russian domestic politics. She is an author of Political Consequences of Crony Capitalism Inside Russia (University of Notre Dame Press, 2010). She has published articles in Comparative Politics , Publius: The Journal of Federalism , Problems of Post-Communism , and other journals.

Benjamin M. Sutcliffe is associate professor of Russian at Miami University (Ohio). He received his PhD in 2004 from the University of Pittsburgh in Slavic Languages and Literatures. Sutcliffe is the author of The Prose of Life: Russian Women Writers from Khrushchev to Putin (University of Wisconsin Press, 2009). He has published articles on Russian womens writing and culture in Russian Review , Slavic and East European Journal , Filologicheskie nauki, and other journals. Along with Elizabeth Skomp (University of the South), he is currently working on the first book-length study of Liudmila Ulitskaia.

Sergei I. Zhuk is associate professor of Russian and East European history at Ball State University. He is an author of Rock and Roll in the Rocket City: The West, Identity, and Ideology in Soviet Dniepropetrovsk (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010) and Russias Lost Reformation: Peasants, Millennialism, and Radical Sects in Southern Russia and Ukraine, 18301917 (Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2004) as well as three books in Russian and numerous articles. Formerly a Professor of American History at Dnepropetrovsk University in Ukraine, he completed a PhD in Russian History at the Johns Hopkins University in 2002. He is currently working on two research projects, one on cultural politics and identity contestation in Russia and Ukraine from 1960s to present; and the second on a non-official history of U.S.-Russia relations.

We would like to express our gratitude to many individuals and institutions that helped us with this volume.

Our deep gratitude goes to Karen Dawisha, Director of the Havighurst Center, for enduring support, helpful guidance, and enthusiastic belief in this project, which started as a Young Researchers Conference in 2007 and crystallized into the book project. We thank the Havighurst Center for very generous assistance with this volume throughout the years and the Havighurst faculty associates, our friends and colleagues, Vitaly Chernetsky, Venelin Ganev, Brigid OKeeffe, Scott Kenworthy, Stephen Norris, Benjamin M. Sutcliffe, and Daniel Prior, for their comments and suggestions on the Introduction. Our work is unimaginable without their critical reading and spirited engagement.

We also owe a special debt of gratitude to our home institutions, the Department of Anthropology, the Department of Political Science, and the International Studies Program for their support. Our appreciation goes to Linda Marchant, Chair of the Department of Anthropology, for unwavering support, enthusiastic interest, and intellectual guidance and Stephen DeLue, chair of the Political Science Department, for his support and encouragement. The Office for the Advancement of Research at Miami University assisted us with financial support.