The Post-Soviet Public Sphere: Multimedia Sourcebook of the 1990s

FAIN: RZ-266168-19

New York University (New York, NY 10012-1019)
Maya Vinokour (Project Director: December 2018 to present)

Preparation of a digital collection of bilingual scholarly essays and an open access website with 500 Russian-language multimedia artifacts created just before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, between 1986 and 2000. (36 months)

Many features of the present geopolitical moment - from international election hacking to the proliferation of "fake news" and "alternative facts" on social media - trace their roots to the media landscape of the post-Soviet 1990s. A group of seven collaborators headed by the project director seeks NEH funding to improve and expand an existing digital project entitled "The Post-Soviet Public Sphere: Multimedia Sourcebook of the 1990s" (http://www.postsoviet90s.com). The proposed sourcebook will consist of a digital collected volume networked with 500 Russian-language print media, television, Web and radio artifacts dating to the "long 1990s," which began in 1986 with Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of "openness [glasnost]" and ended with the election of President Vladimir Putin in 2000. By investigating the rise and fall of Russia's only public sphere to date, our sourcebook will offer insight into the period's ongoing impact on global media and political history.