Reimagining Soviet Georgia

On today’s episode we discuss internal border delimitation in the early Soviet Union. Our discussion covers a wide geography - from Central Asia to the South Caucasus to the Ukrainian-Russia borderlands. How did internal borders get delimited after the establishment of Soviet power in the 1920s and 30s? What role did borders play in nation building? And how do economic factors shape the border delimitation process?Our guest today is Stephan Rindlisbacher author of the book Borders in Red: Managing Diversity in the Early Soviet Unionhttps://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501780585/borders-in-red/Stephan Rindlisbacher (European University Viadrina Frankfurt, Oder) is a researcher specializing in Eurasian history. In his ongoing projects, he focuses on the early Soviet state’s national policies and their regional implementation. This includes Ukraine, the South Caucasus and Central Asia.

On today's episode we discuss Afghan communism and the consequences of the 1978 Saur Revolution in the context of a longer story of Afghan anti-imperial modernity and Soviet-Afghan relations.How and why was the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan different from interventions by other powers in the country? How do analyses of the 1979 Soviet invasion that center the “empire” framework limit our understanding of the history of Afghan anti-imperial modernity, Soviet-Afghan relations and Afghanistan’s place in the world?Our guest is Adam Alimi and we use his article ”Beyond Empire: Why the Soviet invasion (and withdrawal) of Afghanistan was different” as the basis for the conversation.Article summary and link:The Taliban’s return to power in August 2021 set off the usual literatures of failure in studies on Afghanistan. These accounts – graveyard of empires, tribalism, Islam – helped temper the hubris of US foreign policy in its so-called ‘longest war’. Naturally, unforgiving Afghanistan was doomed to remain in the Stone Age, as the British and Soviets had discovered before. Still, the Soviet comparison as an account of the broader failure in Afghanistan is wanting. By drawing on newer global histories of Afghanistan, the periodization of modernity-failure is recast in more interesting ways. Specifically, this article advances the argument that the Soviet connection in Afghanistan, understood here in the long term and not just as the invasion in 1979, cohered with the winds of modernity and anti-imperialism animating the region in the twentieth century. Markers of Afghan modernity, such as late modernization (state-building), political economy (rural social property relations), and revolution (communism), are explored. The US occupation after 2001 is also used as a point of comparison to refocus the history of Afghanistan beyond empire.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19436149.2025.2499294Adam Alimi is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics at York University, Toronto Canada. His research focuses on Marxist theories of development in the Global South.

On today’s episode we explore the role of the historical Ukrainian far-right, specifically the Nazi-collaborationist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, in the development of post-Soviet Ukraine’s national memory regime. In particular we address a paradox - how did these far right political formations and their historical narratives, despite limited and regionally specific popularity, assume disproportionate influence on Ukraine’s post-Soviet national-memory regime since 1991? What role did the far right nationalist diaspora play? And how do the Russia-Ukraine War as well as the broader normalization of ethno-nationalism in politics and academia reinforce far right memory politics?Our guest today is historian Per Rudling. As a basis for discussion we read his recent article“Repatriating An Edifying Past: The Diaspora Ukrainian Authoritarian Right and Power Over Memory, 1991–2021”Article description:The recent history of the Ukrainian authoritarian far right is one of paradoxes. If one looks at the polls, it has performed poorly; its modest successes have been regional and short-lived. On the other hand, it has been highly successful in terms of shaping memory politics in the country. It has had a disproportional influence on history writing, having invested significant efforts into building an effective structure in the field of memory management. Radical nationalists have also come to staff senior positions as deans and vice chancellors at Ukraine’s top universities, the ministry of education, the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory (UINP), and the archives of the Ukrainian Security Service (HDA SBU). The hard right has gained a disproportionate influence on “soft issues” of identity and the shaping of “national memory” – not only by running the governmental memory institutes, but also by hands-on drafting of memory laws outlawing “disrespect” for the OUN, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), and other historical far-right groups. This study seeks to trace and contextualize the repatriation of the ethnonationalist hard right from emigration and its role in shaping an infrastructure of memory production – in particular, under presidents Yushchenko (2005–2010) and Poroshenko (2014–2019).Per Rudling is associate professor of History at Lund University and author of Tarnished Heroes: The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in the Memory Politics of Post-Soviet Ukraine (2024) and The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism 1906-1931 (2014)

During the 1950s and 1960s, the Soviet Union began a new era of political engagement with the global south. One feature was development assistance. The Soviet Union embodied, offered and inspired an alternative approach to development, industrialization and modernization across the global south. Countries such as Ghana, Guinea and Mali in the 1950s-60s were governed by nationalists, not Marxists or Communists, and were newly independent from European imperial-colonial control.Soviet specialists assessed the difficult conditions of these post-colonial countries as opening a path for “non-capitalist” development: state led modernization. As opposed to a Western promoted primacy of markets and individuals, “non-capitalist” development would ensure sovereignty and economic growth by shielding against French or British neo-colonial exploitation, improving living standards, empowering the state and strengthening political ties with the socialist world.To discuss all this and more, we welcome historian Alessandro Iandolo, author of the book Arrested Development: The Soviet Union in Ghana, Guinea and Mali 1955-1968Book description:In Arrested Development, Alessandro Iandolo examines the USSR’s role in West Africa during the 1950s and 1960s as an aid donor, trade partner, and political model for newly independent Ghana, Guinea, and Mali.With a strong economy in the 1950s, the USSR expanded its global outreach, supporting economic development in post-colonial Africa and Asia. Many nations saw the Soviet model as a path to political and economic independence. Drawing on extensive Russian and West African archival research, Iandolo explores Soviet ideas, sponsored projects, and their lasting impact.Soviet specialists worked alongside West African colleagues to design ambitious development plans, build infrastructure, establish collective farms, survey mineral resources, and manage banking and trade. These collaborations—and the tensions they created—shed light on how Soviet and West African visions of development intersected. Arrested Development positions the USSR as a key player in twentieth-century economic history, reshaping global approaches to modernization.Alessandro Iandolo is Lecturer in Soviet and Post-Soviet History at University College London.The episode art is a 1960 poster from the Georgian SSR by Giorgi Pirtskhalava that reads: კოლონიზატორებო გაეთრიეთ! - Colonizers, get out!

In the 1950s, the Soviet Red Cross gained positions in the governing bodies of the International League of the Red Cross, supported by newly established Red Cross and Red Crescent societies in the decolonizing world. Seeking to shape public opinion abroad, it established medical and research facilities in Algeria, Ethiopia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, and Cambodia. The Soviet Red Cross also had a presence in India, where Soviet doctors practiced medicine, published research in Indian journals, and trained future Indian doctors. Notably, most Soviet doctors were women, an unprecedented phenomenon in the 1950s. The USSR sought to redefine humanitarianism, shifting it from a Western concept of philanthropy to socialist development aid, effectively equating humanitarianism with socialism.On today’s episode we discuss the ins and outs of the Soviet Red Cross, its mission in India between 1953-1964, and the relationship between socialist humanitarianism and medicine in the Cold War with Severyan Dyakonov.Check out Severyan’s article - “Resilience, Perseverance, and Sense of Diplomacy:” The Soviet Red Cross in India, 1954–1963https://www.academia.edu/130335796/The_Soviet_Red_Cross_in_India_1954_1963_DYAKONOVSeveryanSeveryan Dyakonov is a historian specializing in Soviet foreign policy and socialist internationalism in the decolonizing world. His research explores the influence of socialist ideology on development programs in Asia and Africa, and its long-term legacies—many of which remain underacknowledged due to Cold War-era narratives. He is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada), currently investigating the international activities of the Soviet Red Cross and also serves as an Associate at the Center for Digital Humanities at the Geneva Graduate Institute, contributing to the mapping and digitization of Red Cross–related archival materials.