Courses

This course examines the experience of people living in the Soviet Union via things. Objects under socialist regimes were supposed to be transformative, turning yesterday’s backwards peasants into new communist men and women. Communism promised unheard of abundance, but those who lived under it often suffered from severe shortages. Things from outside of the communist world often took on an aura of forbidden fruit. People learned a variety of tricks to survive, and today are even nostalgic for many of its trappings.