Is Soviet History worth doing and why?

Abstract

This text-reflection is about the appropriateness and importance of studying Soviet history, the impetus for writing which was the work on the conference volume “Soviet ‘I’ and Soviet ‘We’ between Ideology and Reality.”The author shares the reservations that arose in her, as well as in other Soviet researchers, with the beginning of the full-scale Russo-Ukrainian war; she writes about the challenges they faced. A look back at the history of the emergence and development of Sovietology in the West and an analysis of the “lessons of the past” lead her to the conclusion that it is worth studying Soviet history. She moreover concludes that Ukrainian academia has currently a unique opportunity to overcome the Russian-centrism of Soviet studies and finally offer a “different” — Ukrainian — perspective of seeing Soviet history for its own as well as international audience.