The Thaw: Soviet Society and Culture During the 1950s and 1960s

FAIN: RZ-50299-04

University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, CA 94704-5940)
Yuri Slezkine (Project Director: November 2003 to September 2006)

A three-day conference hosted by the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley in the spring of 2005.

The first international conference on the social and cultural significance of the Thaw will consider the 1950s and 1960s as formative for the late Soviet period. We propose a discussion of cultural authority, social agency, and shifting identities during these decades of evolutionary change when the dismantling of the Soviet system began from within. Participants will examine the ways in which new research on the Thaw develops our understanding of the Soviet experience. Our conference seeks to initiate discussion on the Thaw between several generations of scholars, between researchers working in Russia and in the West, and across disciplines. The conference will gather about 50 sociologists, literary and film scholars, art historians, anthropologists, musicologists, and historians from leading academic institutions in North America, Russia, and Europe.