Oksana Klymenko, Senior Lecturer, History Department, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
In-Person Event (this event will not be recorded or live-streamed)
Oksana Klymenko will discuss the 1930s campaign aimed at writing the history of the Dnipro Hydroelectric Station (DniproHES). She will focus on workers’ memories collected during the “evenings of memoirs,” which was one of the ways to educate the New Soviet Man. Significantly, the speeches at these public meetings convey not just the chronology and technical details of the construction but also changes in self-representation, since the workers had to talk about DniproHES and themselves in a new way, “like the Bolsheviks,” using formalized language. Klymenko will consider several characteristic features represented by the workers’ stories: fascination with the DniproHES as a major construction project; the militarization of the workers’ stories; labor glorification; and “we-they” opposition. “We” meant Soviet workers, and “they” (“others”) included foreigners, “pests,” and “makhnovtsi.” Klymenko will also describe how and why the workers spoke about the Americans involved in DniproHES construction and their attitude towards the USSR. Finally, she will talk about the women’s “evenings of memoirs,” particularly how female meetings differed from other events of the same format, what features a “new Soviet woman” should obtain, what difficulties in mastering “male professions” women faced, and the participation of women in the re-education of “others,” especially those with deviant behavior. This research reveals nuances about the early Soviet period and extends knowledge about the New Soviet Men with a new identity, language, and attitude to the state, team, and work.
| | Oksana Klymenko is a Senior Lecturer in the History Department at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. She also serves as Technical Secretory of the journal NaUKMA Research Papers: History. She completed her kandidat nauk in 2019, supported by scholarships from the University of Giessen and the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the US. She has also received a Junior Visiting Fellowship at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna (Austria). In addition to teaching courses on the history of Ukraine, she participates in international conferences and organizes scholarly events and seminars. |
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LOCATION:OPML Library, 34 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20221128T170000Z DTEND:20221128T183000Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR