The Five Worlds of Teodor Shanin

Combining eyewitness testimony with historical and sociological analysis, this presentation by the Russian-Israeli sociologist Victor Vakhshtayn seeks to paint a vivid portrait of Teodor Shanin (1930-2020), distinguished sociologist and founding father of the Moscow School for Social and Economic Studies (“Shaninka”). Vakhshtayn first met Teodor Shanin in 2000, at the time still an undergraduate student. Visiting friends in Moscow, Vakhshtayn entered the library where an elderly man in a sweatshirt approached him and inquired what exactly he was reading. That brief conversation changed the course of Vakhshtayn’s life. He moved to Moscow, entered the master’s program at Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, and years later became a dean there.

When recounting his rich and turbulent biography, Teodor Shanin always insisted on drawing clear lines between different periods of his life. His stories of prewar Vilna invariably included vivid accounts of the conflicts between Jewish and Polish populations; between affluent, Polish-speaking Jews and the poorer, Yiddish-speaking ones; between Misnagedim and Hasidim. His recollections of Soviet exile centered on the “informal economy” that enabled Lithuanian Jews to survive hunger in Siberia. His narratives of serving in the Palmach, beyond the tactical details of military operations, sketched a political map of the competing factions in the newly established state of Israel. His reflections on work in British universities offered an analysis of the tensions between Marxists and Wittgensteinians, between those who demanded that student protests be suppressed and those who chose to join them.

Finally, his stories about post-Soviet Russia were always bound to an analysis of the legacies of totalitarianism and the possible scenarios of its return. It is around these conversations that Victor Vakhshtayn will structure his fascinating presentation to show how the contours of an epoch are refracted through the biography of a single great individual.

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