Cultures of Secrecy in Soviet Life

Mittwoch, 25. Januar 2017, 09:00 Uhr bis Freitag, 27. Januar 2017, 13:30 Uhr One of the central issues of Soviet history, and especially of late Soviet society – the main focus of this workshop – is the quality of societal fabric, that is, of social cohesion and disintegration. The conference will address this central issue by focusing on integrative and segregative functions of secret knowledge (Georg Simmel). By introducing significant limits on information circulation, Soviet authorities structured and governed society from the very beginning, balancing loyalty and privilege in ideal and material terms. The governmental and party practice of “total secrecy” (Arlen Blium) became one of the main levers not only of Soviet political life, but touched upon nearly all aspects of everyday life. Regimes, rituals, and practices of secrecy that evolved from these politics became an integral part of social interaction that can be conceptualised as a Soviet “cult of secrecy”: a set of practices, discursive frames and institutional structures that could develop its own dynamics. It is not only state politics, propaganda, and censorship that have constituted Soviet society but the ways of appropriation and re-definition of those structural and discursive frames by individuals and groups that have contributed to a unique fabric of simultaneous cohesion and segregation by reproducing loyalty to the state, to the local community or friends and family via access, possession, imagination, and communication of sensitive information. In a broader sense, it is an issue of balancing agency and submission and the ways of performing the “Soviet way of life”. Important questions will be raised with a debate on Soviet secrecy about continuities of Soviet practices and stability of the post-Soviet society. With contributions by Tarik Cyril Amar (Columbia U), Silvia Berger (U of Zurich), Nada Boškovska (U of Zurich), Philipp Casula (U of Zurich), Ekaterina Emeliantseva (U of Zurich), Slava Gerovitch (MIT), Stefan Guth (U of Bern), Steven Harris (U of Mary Washington), Mark Harrison (U of Warwick), Andrew Jenks (California State U), Paul Josephson (Colby College), Roman Khandozhko (RANEPA, Moscow), Isabel Lane (Yale U), Fabian Lüscher (U of Bern), Alexandr Markin (U of Zurich), Galina Orlova (EHU Vilnius/ SFEDU Rostov-on-Don), Jeronim Perovic (U of Zurich), Julia Richers (U of Bern), Carmen Scheide (U of Bern), Ulrich Schmid (U of St. Gallen), Laura Sembritzki (U of Heildelberg), Asif Siddiqi (Fordham U), Xenia Vytuleva (Columbia U), Sergei Zhuk (Ball State U).