Borders in Red. Managing Diversity in the Early Soviet Union
Center for Social Memory Research invites you to a seminar
Seminar with Stephan Rindlisbacher, chaired by Tomasz Rawski on the subject of “Borders in Red. Managing Diversity in the Early Soviet Union”.
The seminar will take place online, 25 March at 9:30am CET.
Please register in order to participate: https://uw-edu-
Abstract
“Borders in Red shows how Lenin and his Bolshevik leadership embraced the nationality question as a way of managing diversity and institutionalized it as a means of governance. Stephan Rindlisbacher uses the making of national borders as a lens through which to examine the Bolsheviks’ fundamental shift from proletarian internationalism to ethnonational federalism sui generis. Comparing how party and state managed issues of national diversity in the core regions of Soviet federalism—Ukraine, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia—Rindlisbacher provides insights into their policymaking and into the roots of current territorial conflicts.
President Putin has condemned Lenin’s nationality policy to be a historical mistake, and with its war against Ukraine, Russia has tried to revise borders that date back to the early days of the Soviet state. However, Borders in Red shows that the Soviet Republics were not arbitrarily divided by leaders like Stalin or Khrushchev. They were the result of long-lasting debates involving politicians, experts, and people from the border regions. The developing Soviet order was a product of trial and error.”
Dr Stephan Rindlisbacher works as a researcher at the Viadrina Center of Polish and Ukrainian Studies at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). Previously, he was research assistant at the Institute of History at the University of Bern. For his dissertation he studied the radical movement in the late Russian Empire. His book on Borders in Red. Managing Diversity in the Early Soviet Union will be published this April with Cornell University Press.