Suchergebnisse

"This book focuses on those peoples of the Caucasus and Central Asia, who were making the streets of the Soviet Union's "two capitals" their own. Hundreds of thousands of Uzbeks, Tajiks, Georgians, Azerbaijanis and others arrived in the last Soviet era, seeking opportunity at the privileged heart of the USSR. Using extensive oral histories as well as published and archival sources, this book shows how their energy transformed their own and their family's life chances and created inter-republican networks, altering life in the center and periphery alike. Citizens of the Soviet Union but often lacking residence papers required for their stay; denigrated as "Blacks" by some in the local population but accepted by others for their knowledge and goods; excited by their status as residents of the capital, but torn over attachments to an ethnic identity and home: these newcomers exemplify the ambiguities of the Soviet modernization and multinational project. This book connects Leningrad and Moscow to transnational trends of core-periphery movement and marks them as global cities. It examines Soviet concepts, such as the "friendship of peoples," alongside ethnic and national difference, which became racialized. It reveals the Brezhnev era as a time of dynamism and opportunity, and Leningrad and Moscow not as isolated outposts of privilege, but at the heart of any number of systems that linked the Soviet Union. In the 1980s, the Soviet Union crumbled from the outside in, and increased migration presaged perestroika-era tensions and shortages and, eventually, the USSR's collapse. These migrants were the forbears of the million-plus Muslims from the former Soviet spaces now in Leningrad and Moscow, who have confronted rampant racism in the 2000s"--

Sahadeo's article examines Julian Go's Patterns of Empire from the viewpoint of a historian of Russia's southern borderlands of the Caucasus and Central Asia. Go offers a pathway for scholars of other expansionist regimes, including the tsarist state and the Soviet Union, to break down exclusivist mythologies and think beyond the nation. In turn, Sahadeo's article examines steps toward a transnational history of empire that builds on Go's peripheral model.

Movement from the USSR's margins to Leningrad and Moscow, among groups ranging from traders to professionals, intensified in the late Soviet period. Using oral histories, Jeff Sahadeo analyzes the migration and place-making experiences of migrants from Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Asian RSFSR, all of whom were often referred to then as well as now by the Soviet host population as "Blacks." Sahadeo argues that the "two capitals," despite being closed cities, became critical to advancement strategies for citizens unionwide, inextricably binding Soviet periphery and center. Sahadeo explores how race emerged as an important factor in place making but argues that this can only be understood through its interplay with class, gender, professional status, and other categories of identity. Soviet "Blacks" externalized experiences of difference as they sought incorporation into host societies while maintaining links between their adopted and native homes. Place-making strategies led them to see Leningrad and Moscow, not as Russian-dominated cities, but as modern spaces of Soviet progress.