Join CSEEES for our annual Graduate Choice Speaker Lecture. Each year CSEEES' MA students are invited to select a speaker and/or topic of their choice to add to CSEEES' lecture series. This year we will be joined by historian Dr. Lisa A. Kirschenbaum (West Chester U.).
Abstract
From the moment the siege of Leningrad began in 1941, individuals and the Soviet state undertook to commemorate it. The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad (Cambridge University Press 2006) tells the story of these commemorations. With a chronological frame of 1941 to 1995, the book ends by observing that the official story of heroic Leningrad appeared poised to outlast the state that promoted it and the people who had survived it. In this talk, I recount the experience of researching the book in the early years of Vladimir Putin’s presidency, before considering the evolution of the Soviet cult of the war in the last twenty years. With the passing of the war generation, who “remembers” the siege and how? How and with what consequences has the Putin administration adapted and instrumentalized Soviet commemorative symbols and practices?
Speaker Bio
Lisa A. Kirschenbaum is Professor Emerita of History at West Chester University. Her research explores how individuals navigated the traumas of the twentieth century. She is the author of four monographs including The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941-1995: Myth, Memories, and Monuments (Cambridge University Press 2006) and most recently Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists: Ilf and Petrov’s Road Trip (Cambridge University Press 2024). She edited and translated Daytime Stars, the memoirs of Leningrad poet Olga Berggolts (University of Wisconsin Press 2018) and is a co-author of Russia’s Long Twentieth Century (Routledge, 2nd ed., 2025).
