Research Colloquium | 25 April, 16:15 | Alissa Klots (Pittsburgh) | The Restless Generation: Soviet Retirees and the Meanings of Active Old Age, 1950s–1970s
When? Thursday, 25 April 2024, 16:15
Where? Room 319, Altes Finanzamt, Landshuter Str. 4
We are delighted to welcome Allisa Klots to our Regensburg Research Colloquium together with the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies. She will give a lecture on "The Restless Generation: Soviet Retirees and the Meanings of Active Old Age, 1950s–1970s". The lecture will be held in English.
Abstract:
Between 1956 and 1964 Nikita Khrushchev introduced a universal pension system that created the first massgeneration of Soviet retirees. While the state hailed the reform as a major achievement, the loss of millions of citizens to the non-productive and apolitical domestic sphere presented a problem for the regime that was built on political and labor mobilization. To encourage pensioners’ continuous engagement with the socialist project, the official discourse offered them a new, socialist vision of old age. A model Soviet retiree was not to rest, but to volunteer as a member of one of the numerous public organizations. This presentation will explore this vision of restless old age and the ways Soviet retirees engaged with it.
Alissa Klots:
She is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. Her first book "Domestic Service inthe Soviet Union: Women’s Emancipation and the Gendered Hierarchy of Labor" (Cambridge University Press, May 2024) is the first study of paid domestic labor in the Soviet Union. Her current project "The Restless Generation: Soviet Retirees and the Meanings of Active Old Age, 1950s–1970s" explores the meanings of old age and retirement for the first generation of builders of communism and their role in the development of late socialism. Her work has been published in "The Journal of Social History, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, and Soviet and Post-Soviet Review" among others. Her work has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Dan David Foundation, and the Humboldt Foundation.
