WiP virtual session: The Soviet Institutional Legacy in Ukraine

CRRC, ARISC and American Councils are pleased to announce the 6th talk of the Fall 2022 Tbilisi Works-in-Progress series!
****This week’s WiP session will take place in virtual format only****
Zoom registration link: https://iliauni-edu-ge.zoom.us/…/tZEqf…

“The Soviet Institutional Legacy in Ukraine”

By Nataliya Kibita, University of Glasgow

Date: 9 November 2022, 18:30 Tbilisi time

Thirty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, Ukraine presents itself to the world today as a state fundamentally different from Russia. Despite its more than 300-year history as an integral part of the Russian empire, after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 Ukraine demonstrated persistent resistance to authoritarianism. How did Ukraine transform from what is commonly perceived as a monolithic Soviet republic under the conservative authoritarian rule of a First party secretary of an equally monolithic Communist Party of Ukraine into a post-Soviet state with pluralistic politics and a weak presidency? The answers to this question are often sought in the post-Soviet development of Ukraine. This talk will examine the institutional foundation upon which independent Ukraine was built and argues that this was a legacy of the Soviet system.

Nataliya Kibita received her PhD from the University of Geneva in 2008 and since then has taught at the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, and at the London School of Economics and Political Science. In June 2019, after a four-month scholarship at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, she re-joined the Department of History at the University of Edinburgh as a Visiting Research Fellow. Currently, she is Research Affiliate in Ukrainian Studies at the Department of Central and East European Studies at the University of Glasgow. Her first monograph, Soviet Economic Management under Khrushchev: The Sovnarkhoz Reform, was published by Routledge in 2013. She is currently preparing for publication her second monograph, entitled Moscow, Kyiv, and the Ukrainian Regions: Soviet Legacy in Ukraine.

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In observation of the spirit of the Chatham House Rule, the talk will not be recorded and we courteously request that the other participants refrain from recording and/or distributing it as well. The opinions expressed in WiP talks are those of the speakers alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of CRRC, ARISC or of American Councils.

WiP is an ongoing academic discussion series based in Tbilisi, Georgia, that normally takes place at the new office of CRRC at Liziko Kavtaradze St. 1. It is co-organized by the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC), the American Councils for International Education: ACTR/ACCELS, and the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC). All of the talks are free and open to the public.