Juliane Fürst

An in-depth study of late Stalinist youth and youth culture, this book illuminates the complex relationship between the Soviet state and its youth and provides a new framework for understanding late Stalinism and its impact on the future development of the Soviet system.

With fresh research and contributions from scholars, this book explores the late Stalinist period. It focuses on the experience of the Soviet people and their interaction with ideology, state policy, and national and international politics.

This book offers a collection of innovative methodological approaches to Memory Studies in Russia and Eastern Europe. Providing insights into the relationship between memory and identity, the twelve chapters provide multidisciplinary analysis of how history is used to reinforce, remould, and reinvent national and group identities. This analysis includes a strong emphasis on interrogating the role of the researcher and the impact of methodology, exploring the field’s most pressing challenges, such as the subjectivity of remembrance, reception versus production of discourse, and the inclusion of marginal perspectives. By focussing on countries in which the past is highly politicised, including Serbia, Ukraine, Poland, Russia and the Baltic States, the volume also analyses the diverse – and often conflicting – ways in which historical narratives emerge from these states’ efforts to create new pasts that shape their respective visions of the future, with pressing ramifications across this region and beyond.