The aim of this conference is to explore how a turn towards materiality can enrich our understanding of the Soviet cultural landscape. We invite proposals that consider material and objects, their journeys through time and space, their processes of making and re-making, and how those perspectives might uncover alternative modernisms, defamiliarise Sovietness, and explore the diversity of Soviet experiences and identities.

​We expect that this theme will stimulate conversations between scholars working in a variety of different disciplines — including history, literary studies, the history of art and architecture, and anthropology — making this an interdisciplinary and methodologically-focused conference.

While there has been substantial interest in Soviet material culture over the last 20 years, there is, to-date, no coherent handbook on the material turn in Soviet studies. There remains much to be done in terms of analysing how materials powerfully shaped Soviet subjectivities and activities. What theoretical thinking around materials emerged from the ideological context of “actually existing socialism”? How might these theories echo or diverge from Western or capitalist traditions of matter and objecthood? Soviet Materialities conference will serve as the starting point for compiling an edited volume on this topic.

MONDAY 11 APRIL

From 8.30 Registration

9.00  Introduction

9.30  Panel 1

  • Lidia Tripiccione, ‘Formalists-Materialists’
  • Rolf Hellebust, ‘On the Tangible Sacred in Early Soviet Culture’
  • Anne Eakin Moss, ‘The Object of Soviet Cinema, 1932–38’

Discussant: Emma Widdis
Chair: Tadeusz Wojtych

11.00  Coffee break

11.30  Panel 2

  • Markus Lahteenmaki, ‘Granite Revisited: Materialities and the Sovietization of Urban Landscapes’
  • Nastia Volynova, 'Reading the Flow as Reading History: Towards a Water-Based Archive of the Moscow Canal'
  • Masha Panteleyeva, ‘Embodied Landscapes: Nature as Architecture during the Thaw’

Discussant: Serguei Oushakine
Chair: Dmitrii Blyshko

13.00 Lunch

14.00   Panel 3

  • Katerina Pavlidi, ‘Texts as Objects: The Materiality of Soviet Texts and Affective Response through Moscow Conceptualism'
  • Olga Voronina, ‘Dead Poets’ “Hand” on Display: Soviet Literary Museums as Curators of Sacral Materiality'
  • Kamila Kocialkowska, ‘Invisible Ink: A Material History of Hidden Meanings in Postal Censorship and Poetry’

Discussant: Maria Mileeva
Chair: Mollie Arbuthnot

15.30 Coffee break

16.00 –  Keynote roundtable: Serguei Oushakine, Christina Kiaer, and Alexey Golubev

TUESDAY 12 APRIL

9.00  Panel 4

  • Victoria Smolkin, ‘The Remains of a More Developed Civilization: On the Visual, Material, and Memorial Culture of Soviet Cosmic Utopianism
  • Alyona Sokolnikova, ‘Intangible Objects: rediscovering forgotten projects of the Soviet design’
  • Yulia Karpova and Kristian Handberg, ‘Danish materialisations in Moscow: the design exhibition as a material event, 1969–70’
  • Natacha Milovzorova, (Title tbc)

Discussant: Christina Kiaer
Chair: Christianna Bonin

10.30  Coffee break

11.00  Panel 5

  • Meghanne Barker, ‘Soviet Puppetry and the Political Materiality of Play, Performance, and Pedagogy’
  • Ekaterina Vikulina, (Title tbc)
  • Jamie Phillips, ‘The Vanishing Brains of the Soviet Pantheon, and the Vexing Question of the Materiality of Soviet Subjects’
  • Juliane Fürst, ‘Mak, Vint, and Plan: The Materiality of Soviet Narcotics’

Discussant: Alexey Golubev
Chair: Samuel Goff

12.30 Lunch

13.30   Panel 6

  • Sudha Rajagopalan, ‘Incidental Soviet objects: geopolitical liminality in India during the Cold War’
  • John Kennedy, ‘The Soviet self-making auto-constructors’ movement: a Latourian knot lying within the cracks of the Soviet state’
  • Diane Koenker, ‘“Made well, marketed well”: how Soviet retail trade put quality goods in the hands of consumers’
  • Ksenia Papazova, ‘Life and Death in “the Repair Society”: People, Things, and the Vintage Identity’

Discussant: Susan E. Reid
Chair: Gabriella A. Ferrari

15.00 Special presentation: Fabrika Kukhnya

This will be a hybrid event and we will provide remote, free access to the conference proceedings. We look forward to welcoming speakers and audience members, online or in person, in April.