Journeys of Soviet Things

Journeys of Soviet Things is an oral history of the Cold War, in which Indians and Cubans use Soviet objects such as cars, washing machines, cameras, books and nesting dolls to narrate about Soviet friendship during the Cold War as personal, affective and everyday experience.

Sudha Rajagopalan is Senior Lecturer in East European Studies at the University of Amsterdam. A historian and contemporary media scholar, her book Indian Films in Soviet Cinemas: the Culture of Moviegoing after Stalin (2009) was a pioneering, ethnohistorical study of Soviet movie reception. Her publications on the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia since then have engaged with television audiences, celebrity cultures, and post-socialist memory. Her work is underpinned by an abiding interest in everyday life and consumption, both historical and contemporary.

Journeys of Soviet Things: An Introduction / 1. Geopolitics. Lived Experience. Affect. Objects / 2. Cuba's 'Soviet period' / 3. Soviet modcons: solidarity and gratitude as geopolitical sentiment / 4. Gifts and souvenirs: conviviality and sociality in everyday diplomacy / 5. India in a time of Soviet 'friendship' / 6. Soviet books: affective, transnational solidarities / 7. Soviet domestic artefacts: sociality and access / 8. Alternative cosmopolitanism. Eclectic Solidarities