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Twenty Years On: Slavic Studies Since the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Editor’s Introduction

Throughout the year of 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed; in its wake the Cold War ended and fifteen new countries took their place on the world stage. At the time, no one would have questioned that a revolution of dramatic significance had occurred. Yet, in its May 2011 issue, the international Russian-language magazine Snob asked whether 1991 should be marked as a jubilee or simply noted as a regular anniversary.1 Of the three Slavic countries that emerged from the ruins of the USSR, only Ukraine officially celebrated twenty years of independence. In Russia, the great events of that year have gone largely unmarked - although, as we do the final work of assembling this issue, the largest crowds since 1991 are back in Russia's streets demanding political change, something no one would have foreseen in the summer when the anniversary of the failure of the August 1991 attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev passed without official commemoration. And the anniversary of Belarus's 25 August 1991 declaration of independence is not a national holiday; instead, "Independence Day" is marked on 3 July, the date of the Red Army's liberation of Belarus from Nazi occupation in 1944.If official celebrations have been limited and populations in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine remain ambivalent about the end of the Soviet Union, 1991 stands as a critical year in twentieth-century history and a milestone in the evolution of the field of Slavic studies. Anniversaries provide an opportunity to take stock, as well as to chart new directions for the future. With this in mind, we are pleased to present a special triple issue devoted to exploring the implications of the collapse of the USSR and the evolution of Slavic studies in the two decades since.The research presented here examines not so much the actual events of 1991 - although David Marples, who has written extensively on the late Soviet era, provides us with a helpful reconsideration of the causes of the collapse2 - as their long-term significance in post-Soviet politics, culture, and scholarly life and letters. Five articles, selected from many submitted following a call for papers, present new work that explores the collapse of the Soviet Union and post-Soviet transformations from the perspectives of political science, cultural studies, history, art history, and literary studies. They are followed by a series of commissioned review essays that survey the state of various important subfields of Slavic studies twenty years on. Slavic studies encompass, of course, the history, politics, and culture of the eastern, western, and southern Slavs; nevertheless, I am convinced that these articles centred on the Slavs of the former USSR will provide the opportunity to learn about developments across our disciplines as a whole and offer material for fruitful comparison. It has been suggested that "the collapse" has been fetishized - that scholars have made too much of the transformative effect on their research of the manner in which the USSR dissolved and the new intellectual playing field that dissolution opened up. …