May 14-16, 2027
Yerevan State University | Yerevan, Armenia
The conference will examine everyday life and sociocultural processes in Soviet industrialized peripheries and how they have evolved in the post-Soviet period to the present.
️ Conference Scope
There is substantial anthropological and sociological scholarship on Soviet industrial modernity and its post-Soviet legacies and transformations. However, these studies rarely conceptualize the distinctions and relationships between “center and periphery” and the corresponding differences that have followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. The highly centralized Soviet political and socioeconomic model created striking differences between the “centers” – usually regional administrative, economic, and intellectual centers or capital cities – and the peripheries, including those in national republics and Russia proper. The terms “center” and “periphery” were in active use during the Soviet era, defining not just perceptions of space but also hierarchies and power asymmetries. These differences affected nearly all spheres of life, including administration, infrastructure, economy, education, healthcare, ecology, living standards, etc., and were expressed through distinctive modes of life, social practices, identities, narratives, and forms of spatial symbolism. In a way, the Soviet industrial periphery can be conceptualized as an alternative mirror of the Soviet civilization. The “afterlife” of these industrial peripheries, after the end of the Soviet Union, can also be approached as a specific set of continuities, transformations, and memories.
️ Central Conference Topics
This conference seeks to answer the following questions:
– What were “center” and “periphery/province” in the Soviet spatial, administrative, political, and sociocultural usage?
– How has the center-periphery correlation evolved during Soviet history?
– How can these concepts be articulated in imperial/colonial perspectives?
– How do these administrative and spatial divisions affect the social, cultural, and other identities and modes of life of inhabitants in the industrial periphery?
– How did small industrial cities shape their local history, memory and urban culture in contrast/opposition to the formal or imagined “centers”?
– What were the post-Soviet trajectories of the industrial peripheries and the related social experiences and cultural memories in these places?
– How did the concept of Center transform or shift in the post-Soviet period?
How to Submit Proposals
Please send your paper proposals to sovietcities@gmail.com
Submission deadline: October 15, 2026
For questions and inquiries, write to yuliaantonyan@ysu.am