Nostalgia, the Specter of Ideals, and the Fall of the USSR: A View from the United States
Date
2014
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Haverford College. Department of Anthropology
Bryn Mawr College. Department of Russian
Bryn Mawr College. Department of Russian
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Thesis
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Award
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eng
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Haverford users only
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Abstract
This thesis attempts to interrogate questions of nostalgia, asking how former citizens of the USSR remember the collapse of the Soviet Union as well as state discourse put forth by the Soviet regime. I ask how people perceive this discourse "which was intended to describe the socio-political reality of the Soviet Union and justify the actions of the state" as well as how they perceive the ideals that stand behind this discourse. Finally, I consider what these perceptions can reveal about the presence or absence of nostalgia for the Soviet period. In order to investigate these questions, I conducted interviews with a number of people who were born in the USSR and who moved to the United States at some point in the '90s, focusing on memories of the school system as well as of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. My thesis concludes that those whom I interviewed are relatively unnostalgic for this period of their lives, in some cases being quite glad to be rid of it, in other cases accepting the bad with the good and moving on.