The First Workers’ State: Labor in the Soviet Union

Catalog description

The Soviet Union was the first state in the world that claimed to represent workers’ interest. What did this mean in practice? In this writing seminar, students will explore how this was reflected in Soviet labor relations, social structures, and governance, and consider the extent to which they differed from those under capitalism. Topics in Soviet labor history include rapid industrialization and collectivized agriculture, the role of gender and ethnicity in the workplace, shifting boundaries between forced and wage labor, and the emergence of a modern service society. Students will work with a variety of sources from newspaper articles and memoirs to films and novellas to gain experience navigating constraints on public discourse in their research.