HIST 4201B: Everyday Life in the Soviet Union

HIST 4201B & EURR 4202/5202: Everyday Life in the Soviet Union
Winter 2026

Soviet era groceries — *Assortment of Soviet groceries, c. 1970s*

In Soviet ideology, the isolation, complacency, or ennui of the oppressed proletarian’s everyday life was supposed to have been conquered by the new access all workers had to a meaningful revolutionary community. This utopian vision sounded good, but how did people actually live? How did they negotiate their daily lives and personal spaces under such ideological and state control? We will examine the blurred boundaries between public and private, and the collective and the individual, over the course of the 20th century and at different moments in Soviet history. We will also discuss the parameters of choice in Soviet life, challenging the totalitarianism narrative that persists in western minds that Soviet citizens could live only how they were told to live.

Topics will include: city life and rural life (housing, transportation, work, childcare, leisure), life in the non-Russian republics, soldier life and the home front in World War II, prison life in the Gulag, religious life in an atheist state, shopping and bartering in a command economy, disability and ableism in a state founded to privilege physical labour, and courtship and sex in a progressive society turned puritan. Overall, we will consider the broad themes of everyday resistance, everyday violence, and everyday hope.

Format
The course will consist of one 3-hour seminar per week, which will primarily involve student-led discussions of the assigned readings (normally 3-4 academic journal articles or book chapters per week). In the second half of the semester, we will also workshop your research projects and focus on developing best practices for tasks such as compiling bibliographies, writing an introduction, and working out your main argument. Attendance is mandatory for success in this class. The course requirements will be more rigorous for graduate students.

Assignments
Discussion participation, one presentation (in groups), 3-4 reading response papers, and a final research essay on a topic of the student’s choice that includes a peer-review component.

Texts
Readings will consist of journal articles available electronically through the library catalogue or other resources available for free online.

Prerequisites

A previous course in Russian or Soviet history or politics, or the history of another communist state, is strongly recommended. My section of HIST 3820 is also very good background for this course (Explorations in Historical Theory: The Russian Revolution).

Questions about this class? Feel free to email me at erica.fraser@carleton.ca