Russia's Sputnik Generation: Soviet Baby Boomers Talk About Their Lives (Indiana-Michigan Series in Russian and East European Studies)

321 Pages·2006·2.95 MB·English

by  Donald J. Raleigh

History / Russia
Russia’s Sputnik Generation presents in their RALEIGH
own words the life stories of eight 1967 grad-
“A fascinating set uates of School No. 42 in the city of Saratov.
Born in 1949/50, these four men and four wo-
of oral histories that men belong to the frst generation conceived
give new insights during the Soviet Union’s return to “normality”
following World War II. Well educated, articulate,
into the experiences and loosely networked even today, they were frst
of Russia’s ‘Sputnik graders the year the USSR launched Sputnik, and
grew up in a country that increasingly distanced
Generation’—those itself from the excesses of Stalinism. Reaching
who were young middle age during the Gorbachev Revolution,
they negotiated the transition to a Russian-style
in the 1950s and market economy and remain active, productive
members of society in Russia and the diaspora.
’60s—and how they
Russia’s
now look back on In candid interviews with Donald J. Raleigh,
these Soviet “baby boomers” talk about the his-
their Soviet pasts.
torical times in which they grew up, but also
Donald Raleigh, about their everyday experiences—their family Sputnik
backgrounds, childhood pastimes, favorite
a distinguished
books, movies, and music, cultural trends, and
historian of the infuential people in their lives. These personal
testimonies shed valuable light on Soviet child- Generation
Soviet Union, is hood and adolescence, on the reasons and course
an empathetic and of perestroika, and on the wrenching transition Soviet Baby Boomers
that has taken place since the collapse of the
knowledgeable Soviet Union in 1991.
Talk about Their Lives
interviewer.”
DONALD J. RALEIGH is Jay Richard Judson
Translated and edited by Donald J. Raleigh
Distinguished Professor of History at the Uni-
—SHEILA FITZPATRICK
versity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is
author, editor, or translator of numerous books,
most recently Experiencing Russia’s Civil War: Politics,
Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917–1922.
INDIANA-MICHIGAN SERIES IN RUSSIAN
AND EAST EUROPEAN STUDIES
Alexander Rabinowitch & William G. Rosenberg,
GENERAL EDITORS
http://iupress.indiana.edu
1-800-842-6796
Cover photos: top, School No. 42, Saratov, Group B in 1965, courtesy INDIANA
of A. A. Konstantinov; bottom, Group B reunion in 2004, courtesy of
A. O. Darchenko.
Russia’s Sputnik Generation
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