The main aim of this project is to provide a new perspective on the reasons behind the Soviet collapse by highlighting the role that increasingly intensive debates about the past during perestroika years (1986-1991) played in the destabilisation of the Soviet power. In the context of perestroika and glasnost, the previously marginalized memory communities gained access to the public space to contest the official versions of Soviet history. I argue that by challenging the hegemony of official history, these actors questioned the Union's legitimacy and thus became one of the driving forces of the Soviet disintegration. While the Soviet disintegration has always been narrated as a centrifugal process, this project sheds light on the increase of exchanges, connections and solidarities between various Soviet memory activists that challenged and transformed the existing Soviet power relations previously shaped by Soviet centralism.

2022

2027