Making Sense of Suffering, Soviet Politics, and the Human Condition

Abstract

Providing the answers to the remarks of the roundtable, author also discusses the nature of power and governance in times of crisis, using the Blockade as an example of resilience in the face of extreme duress. The author suggests that studying how institutions function in moments of crisis can help us better understand how and why they persist. The article calls for the use of frameworks from theorists such as Foucault and Bourdieu to explore these issues. The author also discusses the concept of resilience, suggesting that it is facilitated when elites allow for greater autonomy in material fields while maintaining symbolic limits. The author argues that studying the Blockade can provide important lessons for dealing with crises such as climate change and pandemics. The Blockade of Leningrad was a significant historical event, not only in its own right, and not only in the context of Soviet/Russia history. The Blockade is a story of human suffering and survival, innovation and resistance. It is our story and has lessons for us, across space and time. Area scholars in whatever discipline are obliged to learn from scholars of other places and topics so as to gain tools to make sense of what happened in the Blockade; but those other others are obliged to learn about the Blockade to learn not only more empirical data, but also new explanations that will enrich their accounts of human practices and the human condition.