Soviet Objects in Indian and Cuban Homes: Emotions and Ambiguity in a 'Cold War' Era

Sudha Rajagopalan teaches and researches in the Department of European Studies, within its East European Studies cluster,  at the University of Amsterdam. Her first book, Indian Films in Soviet Cinemas: the Culture of Moviegoing after Stalin (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2009), drew on archival research and oral history methods, and is considered a pioneering ethnohistory of Soviet moviegoing. Her most recent book, Journeys of Soviet Things: Cold War as Lived Experience (published in the Routledge Global Cold War Cultures series in 2023),  is an oral history of socialist globalisation constructed around the journeys of Cold War era Soviet objects such as household appliances, decorative artefacts and books. A Russian-language translation has been published by BiblioRossica (St. Petersburg) / Academic Studies Press (Boston) in December 2024. Rajagopalan has also published about Russian digital cultures, on issues ranging from memory work to celebrity, fandom and post-feminism.