St. Petersburg Institute of History, Russian Academy of Sciences
European University at St. PetersburgRutgers University
Russian State Scientific Foundation

History and Subjectivity in Russia(late 19th – 20th Centuries)

International Colloquium, St. Petersburg, June 7-10, 2010
The International St. Petersburg colloquium in Russian history, organized by historians
from Russia, the United States, and Western Europe, is held every three years. The goalof the 2010 conference is to engage with historical processes through the analytical lensof the self. It will examine presuppositions about human behavior and ideals of“personality” and humanity on the part of state and cultural authorities from the late
Imperial period to the breakup of the Soviet Union; it will follow how these notions
were set into motion over the course of a long century of war and revolution; and it
will study their effects on the lives, personal horizons, and self-understandings ofindividuals.
These questions have not yet been investigated in any sustained or comprehensive
fashion. The conference sets out to do this, using insights from historians,
anthropologists, literary scholars, philosophers, political scientists, and art historians.
Beyond its scholarly goals, the proposed collective inquiry into the standing of the"personality" in modern Russian history carries obvious significance for an understandingof political and cultural processes in Russia today.
The conference program was created from a pool of nearly 200 submissions received
from Russian, European, and American Scholars in response to an earlier call for papers.
Organizers: Jochen Hellbeck (Rutgers University), Nikolay Mikhailov (St. Petersburg
Institute of History, Russian Academy of Sciences)	  	  Program
Monday, 7 June
9.30 – 10.15 Registration
10.15 – 10.45 Welcoming Remarks
10:45 – 13.30 Morning session (break from 12.00 – 12.15):
Concepts of the Individual and the Self (lichnost') in Russian History
Chair: Nikolay Smirnov (St. Petersburg Institute of History, RAN)
Grigory Pomerants (Moscow), My Life and Engagement with 20th Century Notions ofSelfhood (Keynote Address)
Nikolay Plotnikov (University of Bochum, Germany), A Russian Begriffsgeschichte of theState and the Self
Alexander Senyavsky (Institute of Russian History, RAN Moscow), Models of Personal
Behavior amidst the Transformations of Russian Society (late 19th-20th centuries)
Rainer Goldt (University of Mainz, Germany), The Self and the Ethos of Science in the LateSoviet Union
Commentators: Jochen Hellbeck (Rutgers University), Oleg Kharkhordin (EuropeanUniversity at St. Petersburg)
13.30 – 14.30 Lunch
14.30 – 17.30 Afternoon session (break from 16.00 – 16.15):
Political Revolutions and Individual Self-Definition (Late 19th Century-1920s)
Chair: Gennady Sobolev (St. Petersburg State University)
Alexander Polunov (Moscow State University), The Personality Against the Foil of Empire:
Konstantin Pobedonostsev in the Eyes of the Contemporary Russian Intelligentsia
Konstantin Morozov (Memorial Society, Moscow), Self-Practices of the Revolutionary
Subculture in the early 20th CenturyЕlena Levkievskaya (Institute of Slavonic Studies, RAN, Moscow), The Child and theRevolution: Personality Formation in an Era of Political Crisis
Vladimir Buldakov (Institute of Russian History, RAN, Moscow), The Destruction of theRevolutionary Self, 1924-1926
Maria Ferretti (University of Viterbo, Italy), Vasily Lyulin, Worker from Yaroslavl: aMicrohistory of the Genesis of Stalinism
Commentators: Vladimir Cherniaev (St. Petersburg Institute of History, RAN), DanielOrlovsky (Southern Methodist University)
17.45 – 20.00: Reception	  2	  	  	  Tuesday, 8 June
10.00 – 13.00 Morning session (break from 11.30 – 11.45):
Social Contexts of Subjectivity (late 19th Century – 1920s)
Chair: William Rosenberg (University of Michigan)
Barbara Engel (University of Colorado), Married Women and the Rights of the Person
Mark Steinberg (University of Illinois), The Deformed and Decadent Modern Self: Public
Discourse on the Urban Self in Russia, 1906-1916
Boris Kolonitsky (St. Petersburg Institute of History, RAN), The Representation of Powerand its Social Perceptions during WW I and the Revolution
Oleg Usenko (Tver State University), Models of Selfhood in Russian Cinema, 1908-1919
Olga Velikanova (University of North Texas), The Formation of a Peasant Identity:
Modernizing Discourses during the 1920s
Commentators: Laura Engelstein (Yale University), Anatolii Ivanov (Institute of Russian
History, RAN, Moscow)
13.00 – 14.30 Lunch
14.30 – 17.30 Afternoon session (break from 16.00 – 16.15):
Self-Definition in the Face of an OtherChair: Natalya Lebina (St. Petersburg State University of Economics and Finance)
Laurie Manchester (Arizona State University), Bearers of Pre-Revolutionary Traditions
Become Soviet Citizens: the Self-fashioning of Postwar Returnees from China
Natalya Timofeeva (Central Branch of the Russian Academy of Jurisprudence; Centerfor Oral History, Voronezh), Exposed to Germany: the Self-Definition of Members of theSoviet Military Administration of Germany (1945-1949)
Alexander Chistikov (St. Petersburg Institute of History, RAN), Soviet Tourists Abroad inthe 1950s and 1960s
Dina Fainberg (Rutgers University), In Search of a Socialist Soul: Soviet International
Correspondents in the United States, 1950-1985
Commentators: Mikhail Khodiakov (St. Petersburg State University), Benjamin Nathans(University of Pennsylvania)	  3	  	  	  Wednesday, 9 June
10.00 – 13.00 Morning session (break from 11.30 – 11.45):
Constructing the Human Soul: The Stalin PeriodChair: Ziva Galili (Rutgers University)
Yves Cohen (EHESS Paris), Comparing Subjectivity Regimes in the Interwar Period: the Soviet
Union and France
Galina Orlova (Southern Federal University, Rostov-Don), Between Iron Will andIrresolution: The Discursive Production of Will during the Stalin Period
Andrei Shcherbenok (University of Sheffield), The Screened Self: Stalinist Cinema and Its
Implied Spectator
Franziska Thun-Hohenstein (Zentrum für Literaturforschung Berlin), Inside the Laboratoryof Soviet Biography: the "Lives of Extraordinary People" Book Series (1933-1941)
Anna Eremeeva (Krasnodar State University of Culture and the Arts), In the Genre of
Hagiography: Constructing the Biographies of Russian Scientists during Late Stalinism
Commentators: Igal Halfin (Tel Aviv University), Viktor Paneiakh (St. Petersburg Institute ofHistory, RAN)
13.00 – 14.30 Lunch
14.30 – 19.00 Excursion	  4	  	  	  Thursday, June 10
10.00 – 13.00 Morning session (break from 11.30 – 11.45):
Selfhood and War: 1914-1918, 1941-1945
Chair: Mark Steinberg (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
Alexandre Sumpf (University of Strasbourg, France), Political Mobilization and the Military
Demobilization of Russian WW I Veterans (1914-1921)
Emily Van Buskirk (Rutgers University), Lydia Ginzburg and the Post-Individualist Self
Alexis Peri (University of California, Berkeley), Identity under Siege: Reformulating andRecreating the Self inside the Leningrad Blockade
Polina Barskova (Hampshire College), Self-Portrait with Siege: A Study in Traumatic
Ekphrasis
Commentators: Nikita Lomagin (European University at St. Petersburg), Irena Saleniece(Daugavpils University, Latvia)
13.00 – 14.30 Lunch
14.30 – 17.30 Afternoon session (break from 16.00 – 16.15):
The Revival and Decline of the Socialist Personality – from the Thaw
to Perestroika and BeyondChair: Vladimir Noskov (St. Petersburg Institute of History, RAN)
Mikhail Rozhansky (Center for Independent Social Research and Education, Irkutsk), The
Euphoria of Collectivism: "Shock-Work" Construction Brigades and their Tales
Anatoly Pinsky (Columbia University), The Conscience of a Communist: The Making ofFedor Abramov, 1953-1958
Nikolay Mitrokhin (University of Bremen), Soviet Religious Scholars, Atheism, and theCommunist Central Committee Apparatus (1960s-1980-s)
Sergei Pankratov (Volgograd State University), The Transformation of the Imperial Self inthe Consciousness of My Generation, or: how the Generation of Today's Forty-year Olds Looks
Back at the 1980s and 1990s
Commentators: Serguei Oushakine (Princeton University), Alexandr Vakser (St. Petersburg
Institute of History, RAN)
17.45 – 18.30 Concluding Discussion
18.30 – 20.00 Farewell Reception	  5	  	  	  Conference location – European University at St. Petersburg, Aktovyi zal, Gagarin
Street 3 (Metro "Chernyshevskaya")ProtocolThe conference language is Russian. Papers will not be read at the conference;
participants are asked to read all papers ahead of time. They can be downloaded fromthe websites of the St. Petersburg Institute of History (http://www.spbiiran.nw.ru) andthe Rutgers University History Department (http://history.rutgers.edu)
Time limits for presentations, questions, and commentaries:
Panelists presenting their papers: 10 minutes each
Panelists responding to individual questions: 5 minutes
Commentators: 12 minutes
Other participants: 10 minutes
Please try to limit yourself to short questions and commentaries.
All panel discussions will be tape-recorded; the stenographic protocol of the discussion
will be included in the published conference volume. The Organizers ask all discussion
participants to step forward and speak into the microphone in the front of the room.	  

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