CREECA Lecture: Perestroika’s Dark Side: Nationalism, Racism and Crisis on Moscow Streets at the End of the Soviet Union

Migration from the Caucasus and Central Asia to Moscow dramatically increased during the 1980s. By the end of this decade, nationalist and racist ideas, percolating under the surface alongside increased south-north movement, burst into the open and changed life plans of many of these southern migrants. Using oral histories from this period, this presentation reveals connections between mobility, nationalism and racism across the USSR.