The Making and Unmaking of the Soviet People

This lecture is co-sponsored by the Alice D. Mortenson/Petrovich Distinguished Chair of Russian History. About the Lecture: After the October Revolution, Bolshevik leaders inherited a vast geographic expanse that was home to some 200 different ethnicities—some 130 million people who needed to be integrated into the new Soviet order. To reverse prior oppression, Bolsheviks organized their polity as an ethno-territorial federation and promoted minorities in politics, the economy, and culture. Alongside this embrace of diversity, however, a larger challenge remained. How could leaders forge cultural unity among an extraordinarily diverse citizenry? This talk investigates the dual promotion of unity and diversity in the Soviet Union through the lens of citizenship and identity, demonstrating that political and cultural elites promoted a civic identity built on active participation in public life that citizens embraced across a wide geographic and cultural spectrum. At the same time, the official rhetoric of equality, inclusion, and multiethnic representation coexisted with systemic inequalities that shaped lived experience and ultimately undermined the Soviet state. Drawing on a range of multilingual materials collected from across the former Soviet Union, this talk offers fresh perspectives on both the forging of Soviet unity and its long-term unmaking. The talk opens by describing new ways of conceiving civic identity after the revolution and the evolution of this identity under Stalin and his successors—in short, the making of the Soviet people—before detailing the fracturing of this civic identity in the 1980s. Combining the voices of both elites and ordinary citizens from across the country, the talk considers how ideas of equality and experiences of inequality profoundly shaped the rise and fall of Soviet citizenship. About the Speaker: Anna Whittington is an assistant professor of history at the University of Michigan, where she focuses on citizenship and inequality across Soviet Eurasia. Her in-progress book manuscript, "Repertoires of Citizenship: Inclusion, Inequality, and the Making of the Soviet People," traces the discourses and practices of Soviet citizenship from the October Revolution to the Soviet collapse, based on multilingual research conducted across the former Soviet Union. Future projects include a history of perestroika from below and a history of enumeration in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union.