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Joseph Kellner, historian of Russia and the Soviet Union at the University of Georgia, presents his recently-published book, The Spirit of Socialism: Culture and Belief at the Soviet Collapse. It is a new—and perhaps the first--cultural history of the Soviet collapse and transition, which examines the highly visible flourishing of new worldviews that attended the period’s cascading crises. Amidst profound disorientation, millions of former-Soviet people, mostly of the educated urban middle class, sought new direction in their horoscopes, or behind gurus in saffron robes or apocalyptic preachers, or by turning from the most basic premises of official science and history to orient themselves anew. From this spirited search for meaning, the book appraises both the nature of late Soviet culture and ideology, and its legacy in the newborn Russian Federation.
