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Research Project

After the “End of History”: Reassessing the Communist Collapse

Project Team:

2020 – 2021
Lenin heads in the trunk of a car.

Courtesy of Niels Ackermann / Lundi13 & Sébastien Gobert / Daleko-Blisko

Project Summary

This project catalyzed an interdisciplinary dialogue about the period of profound transformation following the collapse of Europe’s Communist regimes and helped forge a new narrative of its meaning.

Research Team

Faith Hillis

Faith Hillis

Professor of Russian History and the College

University of Chicago

Faith Hillis is an historian of modern Russia, with a special interest in nineteenth- and twentieth-century politics, culture, and ideas. Her work explores how Russia's peculiar political institutions – and its status as a multiethnic empire – shaped public opinion and political cultures. It...

Leah Feldman

Leah Feldman

Associate Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and in the College

University of Chicago

Leah Feldman’s research focuses on empire, nationalism, and critical approaches to ethnicity, gender and sexuality from the vantage point of the Caucasus and Central Asia. Her first book, On the Threshold of Eurasia: Orientalism and Revolutionary Aesthetics in the Caucasus (Cornell...

Project Narrative

Reading List

Mark Bassin

The Gumilev Mystique: Biopolitics, Eurasianism and the Construction of Community in Modern Russia Read

Eliot Borenstein

Plots against Russia: Conspiracy and Fantasy after Socialism Read

Kate Brown

Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future Read

Susan Buck-Morss

Dreamworld and Catastrophe. The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West Read

Charles Clover

Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism Read

Caroline Humphrey

The Unmaking of Soviet Life: Everyday Economies after Socialism Read

Kristen Ghodsee

Lost in Transition: Ethnographies of Everyday Life after Communism Read

Tamta Khalvashi

"Peripheral Affects: Shame, Publics, and Performance on the Margins of the Republic of Georgia" Read

Serguei Alex Oushakine

The Patriotism of Despair: Nation, War, and Loss in Russia Read

Philipp Ther

Europe Since 1989 Read

Alexei Yurchak

Everything was Forever Until It was No More Read

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