A Fragile Stability: Reconsidering Late Soviet Financial and Social Order
Discussion with Dr. Isaac McKean Scarborough (Leiden University)
Thursday, Feb 19, 2026, 2:00-3:20 PM, Online
Zoom Registration: https://umich.zoom.us/meeting/register/nEpr4reORKK998Xr3KZSnw
Please join the Central Asian Studies RIW for an online discussion with Dr. Isaac McKean Scarborough on late Soviet finance and society from a Central Asian perspective. Dr. Scarborough is Assistant Professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies in the Institute for History at Leiden University. He works on post-war Soviet and post-Soviet economic and social development in Central Asia, Russia, and Ukraine, and is the author of Moscow's Heavy Shadow: The Violent Collapse of the USSR (Cornell University Press, 2023). The book challenges the view of Gorbachev’s perestroika as a “noble” failure—the last struggle to save a doomed system—by arguing that the reforms themselves precipitated economic recession, social upheaval, and political chaos, especially in Soviet peripheries such as Tajikistan, the book’s geographical focus.
Our discussion will focus on the “fragile but stable” financial and social order of late Soviet Tajikistan before perestroika and its broader implications for late Soviet finance, society, and the Soviet collapse. Dr. Scarborough will begin with brief remarks, followed by an open discussion. We expect this event to be of interest not only to those who study Central Asia and Soviet history, but also to anyone interested in economic history, socialism, and quantitative methods.
For a productive conversation, please read the Introduction and Chapters 1 and 2 of Moscow’s Heavy Shadow (45 pages), and Dr. Scarborough’s 2023 article, “Like Cooking Plov with Hoja Nasreddin: Recalculating Financial Transfers to Tajikistan, 1971–1989,” published in Europe-Asia Studies: https://doi-org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/10.1080/09668136.2023.2196383 (27 pages).
Moscow’s Heavy Shadow is available online through the UM Library: https://search.lib.umich.edu/catalog/record/99187832467506381. For more information about the book, please see: cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501771026/moscows-heavy-shadow/
Please register for the discussion using the Zoom registration link above. We hope to see you at this event!
For questions or more information, contact Yipeng Zhou (yipengzh@umich.edu), Coordinator of the CAS RIW.
