ONLINE: Perestroika's Dark Side: Nationalism, Racism and Crisis on Moscow Streets at the End of the Soviet Union

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press release: CREECA's weekly lecture series takes place on Zoom during fall 2020. Lecture by Jeff Sahadeo, Professor at the Institute of European, Russia and Eurasian Studies and the Department of Political Science at Carleton University 

Migration from the Soviet South to the capital, Moscow, dramatically increased in the 1980s. Newcomers sought to take advantage of top-quality education and professional opportunities as their homelands' economic conditions grew more challenging. Mikhail Gorbachev’s efforts to bring openness (glasnost) and economic restructuring (perestroika) to the USSR brought initial enthusiasm to Soviet citizens. However, as prices rose and shortages appeared in the planned economy, the goods and services provided by these Soviet southerners became at once more important and more resented by Moscow’s Slavic majority. Nationalist and racist ideas, percolating under the surface alongside increased south-north movement, burst into the open in the late 1980s. Based on oral histories of the time, this presentation reveals connections between mobility, nationalism and racism in Moscow and across the USSR.