Events

The SCRSS organises a regular programme of lectures, film shows, exhibitions, seminars and other events at its premises in London. The Society is also involved in educational and commemorative events associated with the Soviet War Memorial in London. Events are open to both SCRSS members and non-members, unless otherwise stated.

Venue and Tickets

In 2022 we plan a mix of online and in-person events, bookable via Eventbrite. Standard ticket prices for talks are £3.00 (SCRSS members) and £5.00 (non-members). All other events or classes are priced as indicated. We continue our library openings for members every Tuesday, as well as the first Saturday of the month from February 2022.

2022 Events Diary

January 2022	July 2022
February 2022	August 2022
March 2022	September 2022
April 2022	October 2022
May 2022	November 2022
June 2022	December 2022

January 2022

Tuesday 11 January 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 18 January 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 25 January 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Thursday 27 January 2022, 11.00
Holocaust Memorial Day, Act of Remembrance at the Soviet War Memorial, London

Holocaust Memorial Day marks the date of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camps by the Soviet Red Army on 27 January 1945. The Soviet War Memorial Trust (SWMT) is organising a joint ceremony in co-operation with Southwark Council. Participants should gather in front of the main entrance to the Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Road, London SE1 6HZ by 10.45. From there they will process to the nearby Memorial. Those interested are welcome to come along on the day. However, if you intend to lay a wreath, or to bring the standard of your organisation, please email the SWMT on sovietwarmemorialtrust@gmail.com as soon as possible and before the day. Wreaths may be laid at either the Soviet War Memorial or Southwark Council's Holocaust Memorial Tree (adjacent to the Soviet War Memorial) or both. The ceremony is expected to last roughly 30 minutes. Please note that for this ceremony there will be no temporary seating at the Memorial. Given the numbers visiting the Imperial War Museum (IWM) on this day, we advise using public transport if at all possible. Following the ceremony, participants may wish to visit the new Holocaust galleries inside the IWM.

The Soviet War Memorial was unveiled in 1999 on the initiative of the SCRSS and the Society has been supporting the work of the SWMT since its foundation. The SWMT organises three main ceremonies at the Memorial each year to mark Holocaust Memorial Day (January); Victory Day (9 May) and Remembrance Sunday (November).

From Thursday 27 January 2022 for 10 weeks, 18.00 - 20.00
Zoom Online Evening Class: Russian Language for Intermediate Level

Rolling 10-week Zoom evening class, taught by Christine Barnard, former lecturer in Russian at Westminster University. The group is friendly, quite informal and strictly non-competitive. One hour conversation practice, one hour reading (preparation advised). The current book is 'Shapka' by Vladimir Voinovich (available online). Fee for 10 weeks: £40.00 (SCRSS members only). Current availability for 1-2 new members to join the class - for more information, email Christine Barnard direct on rtstrans1@gmail.com.

February 2022

Tuesday 1 February 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Saturday 5 February 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 8 February 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 15 February 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 15 February 2022, 19.00
Zoom Online Lecture: Andrew Jameson on Navigating Russian Conversations - The Devices We Use to Manage Conversations

Andrew Jameson continues his series of online talks on the Russian language. We don't notice the devices we use to manage our own English conversations, we use them automatically. But they are there, in English and in Russian. Andrew will look at ways of communicating more effectively in Russian, using the devices that Russians use, rather than using sentences awkwardly created on English models. This will include hesitation phenomena, filler sequences, interrupting, enquiring, self-correcting and much more. If time, Andrew will cover some of the common contractions used in everyday speech. A handout will be available to attendees, so that you don't lose this most important knowledge.

Booking: The talk will be held using the Zoom online conferencing tool. Please book in advance via Eventbrite. Normal ticket prices apply. To view the event online, you'll also need to have set up a free account with Eventbrite, using the same email address you use to book the event. If you don't have an Eventbrite account yet, you can set it up before or after booking this event. Once booked, you'll receive a confirmation email from Eventbrite about the events, and reminders with the link at two days, two hours and ten minutes before the event starts.

After studying Russian and radio technology at the Joint Service Language School, Andrew Jameson first worked in signals intelligence in Berlin. After Oxford, he taught Russian at Essex University, while also working as a sound recordist in Russia for the Nuffield-funded Russian Language Project, collecting samples of different styles of Russian and creating a sound archive of Russian recordings. He later taught Russian at Portsmouth Polytechnic and Lancaster University. Now retired, he works as a professional translator and gives regular talks on the history of the Russian language for the SCRSS.

Tuesday 22 February 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card. Other visitors by appointment only.

March 2022

Tuesday 1 March 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Saturday 5 March 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 8 March 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 15 March 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 15 March 2022, 19.00
Zoom Online Lecture: Andrew Jameson on Tall Tales about Russian Etymologies

Andrew Jameson continues his series of online talks on the Russian Language. Many and mysterious are the ways in which languages allocate or create names. Andrew has given one session on names already - about the names of people. This time Andrew will look at a selection of common names of everyday things, some living and some not. You'll be very surprised at the adventures words get up to. They come from strange places, they swap around and eventually settle down, like, for example an elephant becoming a camel. Seriously?

Booking: via Eventbrite. Normal ticket prices apply. To view the event online, you'll also need to have set up a free account with Eventbrite, using the same email address you use to book the event. If you don't have an Eventbrite account yet, you can set it up before or after booking this event. Once booked, you'll receive a confirmation email from Eventbrite about the events, and reminders with the link at two days, two hours and ten minutes before the event starts.

Tuesday 22 March 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 29 March 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

April 2022

Saturday 2 April 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 5 April 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 12 April 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 12 April 2022, 19.00
Zoom Online Lecture: Colin Turbett on Soviets in Space

Author Colin Turbett talks about his new book Soviets in Space: The People of the USSR and the Race to the Moon, published by Pen & Sword in November 2021. The book describes the period in the 1950s and 1960s when the USSR was leading the space race.

This was a time when it really seemed that Soviet achievements were showing the way to new worlds - literally and metaphorically. Soviets in Space is not a technical history, but a social one. It offers background, an insight into the lives of Soviet people in that era, and stories about the cosmonauts. As well as detailing the efforts to take socialism into space, one chapter discusses the unique attempts to build heaven on earth through the toil of ordinary citizens - the Virgin Lands Campaign of the 1950s and the Baikal-Amur Railway project of the 1970s.

Colin Turbett is a social work writer and campaigner, based in Scotland, who has long been fascinated by the USSR's social history. He is the author of Red Star at War: Victory at All Cost (2020) and The Anglo-Soviet Alliance: Comrades & Allies During WW2 (2021), both published by Pen & Sword Books.

Tuesday 19 April 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

From Thursday 21 April 2022 for 10 weeks, 18.00 - 20.00
Zoom Online Evening Class: Russian Language for Intermediate Level

Rolling 10-week Zoom evening class, taught by Christine Barnard, former lecturer in Russian at Westminster University. The group is friendly, quite informal and strictly non-competitive. One hour conversation practice, one hour reading (preparation advised). The current book is 'Shapka' by Vladimir Voinovich (available online). Fee for 10 weeks: £40.00 (SCRSS members only). Current availability for 1-2 new members to join the class - for more information, email Christine Barnard direct on rtstrans1@gmail.com.

Tuesday 26 April 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 26 April 2022, 19.00
Lecture: Matthias Neumann on Peace and Friendship: Overcoming the Cold War in the Artek Pioneer Camp

NB: This event takes place in person at the SCRSS centre in Brixton.

The famous Pioneer camp 'Artek' was used by the Soviet Union to showcase socialism to upcoming generations. It was an iconic space where each summer up to 5,000 children from over 60 nations met to promote transnational cooperation and Soviet-led world peace. The talk reconstructs the experience of American children who visited the famous Soviet Pioneer camp 'Artek'. It examines how the participants' encounters challenged and shaped perceptions of East and West, and how their action fed into the upsurgence of citizen diplomacy that played a crucial role in ending the Cold War.

Booking: Please book in advance via Eventbrite. Normal ticket prices apply.

Matthias Neumann is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of East Anglia, UK. He has published widely on the history of childhood and youth in revolutionary Russia, including a monograph on The Communist Youth League and the Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1917-1932 (Routledge 2011). His current research examines exchange programmes that enabled American children to visit the Soviet Union and the role of children in citizen diplomacy during the Cold War. The manuscript entitled American Peace Child: Bridging the Cold War Divide in a Soviet Youth Camp is under contract with University of Toronto Press.

May 2022

Tuesday 3 May 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Saturday 7 May 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 10 May 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Wednesday 11 May 2022, 19:00
Lecture: Dr David Lane on Russia: 30 Years of Transformation

NB: This event takes place in person at the SCRSS centre in Brixton.

The talk will review the progress of transition in Russia over the past thirty years and pose the question of what might follow. The unintended consequences of Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of perestroika led, in 1992, to the dismemberment of the USSR into fifteen independent states. Concurrently, communist ideology was renounced and Soviet institutions were dismantled. The new leadership in the Russian Federation under Boris Yeltsin had choices between ways to make the transition to a post-communist political and economic order. What ensued was 'chaotic capitalism' and a failed state. International politics have played a major role in defining the course and nature of the transformation. Consequently, President Putin has instituted a form of 'electoral collectivist authoritarianism'. While Gorbachev and Yeltsin were positively regarded by the Western powers, Putin's policies have led to confrontation and to a new Cold War. Dr Lane concludes the talk by outlining three possible future scenarios.

Booking: Book in advance via Eventbrite or tickets available on the door. Normal ticket prices apply.

Dr David Lane was educated at Birmingham and Oxford Universities. Currently, he is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and an Emeritus Fellow of Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge. He is a also a Vice-President of the SCRSS. He has written extensively on the USSR and post-socialism, Marxism and socialism, industrial societies and the world economy, elites and classes. Publications include: Changing Regional Alliances for China and the West (With G. Zhu) (2018); The Eurasian Project in Global Perspective (2016); (with V. Samokhvalov) The Eurasian Project and Europe (2015); Elites and Identity in the Transformation of State Socialism (2014); The Capitalist Transformation of State Socialism (2014). Recent articles have been published in Critical Sociology, The Third World Quarterly, International Critical Thought and Mir Rossii.

Tuesday 17 May 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Saturday 21 May 2022, 11.00
Event: SCRSS Annual General Meeting

The event takes place in person at the SCRSS centre. SCRSS members only.

Saturday 21 May 2022, 14.00
Lecture: Christine Lindey on Representation of Workers in Soviet Art
CANCELLED. Apologies for any inconvenience.

Tuesday 24 May 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 31 May 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

June 2022

Saturday 4 June 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 7 June 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 14 June 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 21 June 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening
Cancelled due to rail strike

Tuesday 28 June 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

July 2022

Saturday 2 July 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 5 July 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 12 July 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 19 July 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 26 July 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

August 2022

Tuesday 2 August 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Saturday 6 August 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 9 August 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 16 August 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 23 August 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 30 August 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

September 2022

Saturday 3 September 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 6 September 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 13 September 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 20 September 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

Tuesday 27 September 2022, 11.00 - 16.00
Event: SCRSS Library Opening

Library opening for SCRSS members - other visitors strictly by appointment only. Access the library collections and borrow books from the Literature and Quick Loan sections. Surplus book stock is also usually available for a small donation. Members may attend without prior notification - please bring your membership card.

October 2022

Thursday 13 October 2022, 19.00
Lecture: Dr David Lane on 100 Years Since the Founding of the USSR

Annual joint SCRSS / Marx Memorial Library (MML) event.

Hybrid event: either attend in person at the Marx Memorial Library premises at 37a Clerkenwell Green, London EC1R 0DU, or online.

David Lane discusses the trajectory of the Soviet state in three overlapping periods: its formation between 1917 and 1936, the epoch of modernisation and development from 1922 to 1986, and a final period of dismantlement from 1985 to 1991. This deserves attention because it was the first socialist state based on federative institutions claiming fraternal relations between geographically clustered nationalities, and a hegemonic Party building communism on the basis of a state plan and public property. The lecture outlines the success and shortcomings of the federative state system under centralised economic planning. It is contended that the dismantling of the Soviet Union was facilitated but not caused by the federative system, and was precipitated by the rise of political and economic elites who believed that a move to markets and private initiative would not only solve the problems of economic decline but would also further their own class interests.

Booking: Book in advance via the MML on Eventbrite.Tickets: £5.00 waged, £3.00 unwaged (either attending in person or online).

David Lane is currently a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, an Emeritus Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, a visiting Professor at Peking University and a Vice-President of the SCRSS. He has written extensively on socialism and post-socialism, capitalism and industrial societies, the world economy, elites and classes. Recent publications include: Changing Regional Alliances for China and the West (With G. Zhu) (2018), The Eurasian Project in Global Perspective (2016), and The Capitalist Transformation of State Socialism (2014) with a revised Russian edition published in 2022. His current work, Capitalism and its Rivals, will be published in 2023.

Tuesday 25 October 2022, 19.00
Lecture: Dr Tara Wilson on Shostakovich and Armenia

NB: This event takes place in person at the SCRSS centre in Brixton. It is jointly organised by the SCRSS and DSCH Journal.

The composer Dmitri Shostakovich made a number of visits to Armenia during the 1960s, staying not only in the capital city of Yerevan but also in the Soviet Composers' Resort in Dilijan, in the Tavush Province in Northern Armenia, where he was resident on several occasions. He attended musical premieres and made official engagements during these visits, including being present at the Armenian premiere (and first Russian language version) of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex. Shostakovich was also a regular guest at the home of the renowned Armenian artist Martiros Sarian (1880-1972), and was the subject of what is now an internationally acclaimed Sarian artwork, painted in 1963. Of particular note is the friendship and correspondence between Shostakovich and Sarian's son, Ghazaros (Russian: Lazar) Sarian (1920-98); Ghazaros had been Shostakovich's composition student at the Moscow Conservatoire in the 1940s. Writing in an easily recognisable Soviet-Armenian idiom, his style bears traces of Shostakovich's influence, and there are also a number of parallels between Shostakovich's later works and the more mature output of this Armenian composer.

Using a range of first and secondary sources, many of which are privately owned by the M. Sarian House-Museum in Yerevan, in her lecture Dr Wilson will seek to build a picture of Shostakovich's association with Armenia. In addition, following the 2020 centenary of Ghazaros Sarian's birth, it seeks to examine the influence of Shostakovich upon his compositional development.

Booking: Book in advance via Eventbrite (booking opens 4 August) or tickets available on the door. Normal ticket prices apply.

Dr Tara Wilson is a British musicologist, who completed her PhD on Russian minimalist music at the Centre for Russian Music, Goldsmiths, University of London in 2015. Her research specialisms include Russian and post-Soviet music, minimalist music, as well as theory and analysis, notably in relation to post-structuralist methods and music semiotics. She is the author of several publications in the UK, Europe and Russia.

November 2022

Tuesday 15 November 2022, 19.00
Lecture: Professor Geoffrey Roberts on Stalin's Library

NB: This event takes place in person at the SCRSS centre in Brixton.

Professor Roberts discusses his new book Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books, published by Yale University Press in February 2022. The book is primarily an intellectual portrait of Stalin through the prism of his personal library. It covers the books he collected, how he read them, his life as a reader, and analyses what this tells us about the workings of Stalin's mind and the impact of his reading on his dictatorship.

Booking: Book in advance via Eventbrite (link to follow) or tickets available on the door. Normal ticket prices apply.

Geoffrey Roberts is Emeritus Professor of History at University College Cork and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. He is an internationally recognised expert on Stalin, Soviet foreign policy and the history of the Cold War. His other publications include Stalin's General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov, Stalin's Wars: From World War to Cold War 1939-1953, and Churchill and Stalin: Comrades-in-Arms During the Second World War (co-authored with Martin Folly and Oleg Rzheshevsky).

December 2022

Events to be confirmed

SCRSS exhibition poster - Soviet Modernist Art and Design 1917 - 1991(copyright SCRSS)