Lyudmila Kuznetsova

Scholar of the IRTG from April 2018 till July 2018

Dissertation project

The project “The Phenomenon of the Soviet Resort (1920th – 1950th)” explores the formation of the leisure industry in the Soviet Union with a focus on the resort system and seeks to contribute to the discussion on multiple modernities. Growing interest in organization of workers’ free time in the interwar period was a European and even a worldwide tendency. In the Soviet Union, political and social transformations led to reimagining resort vacation as an important part of Soviet culture and ideology.

Leisure at this research is understood mostly as a resource. Soviet authorities used this resource to control, discipline, educate citizens and entice them. On the other hand, resort leisure had an inner potential for resistance. Leisure as resource for resistance is refers to understanding resorts as a space of freedom. USSR is described as an authoritarian state, but Soviet resort was an example of resistance to Soviet ideas about organization of free time.

European / world context of the changes in the Soviet ideas about leisure during her time in Freiburg. Lyudmila Kuznetsova is doing her PhD in History at the European University at St. Petersburg (thesis supervisor Prof. Dr. Boris Kolonitskii).

Her research centres on different contexts (political, social, economic, cultural) in which there were a leisure industry and leisure practices in the USSR.