Voices from the Soviet Edge

Jeff Sahadeo reveals the complex and fascinating stories of migrant populations in Leningrad and Moscow. Voices from the Soviet Edge focuses on the hundreds of thousands of Uzbeks, Tajiks, Georgians, Azerbaijanis, and others who arrived toward the end of the Soviet era, seeking opportunity at the privileged heart of the USSR. Through the extensive oral histories Sahadeo has collected, he shows how the energy of these migrants, denigrated as "Blacks" by some Russians, transformed their families' lives and created inter-republican networks, altering society and community in both the center and the periphery of life in the "two capitals."

Voices from the Soviet Edge connects Leningrad and Moscow to transnational trends of core-periphery movement and marks them as global cities. In examining Soviet concepts such as "friendship of peoples" alongside ethnic and national differences, Sahadeo shows how those ideas became racialized but could also be deployed to advance migrant aspirations. He exposes the Brezhnev era as a time of dynamism and opportunity, and Leningrad and Moscow not as isolated outposts of privilege but at the heart of any number of systems that linked the disparate regions of the USSR into a whole. In the 1980s, as the Soviet Union crumbled, migration increased. These later migrants were the forbears of contemporary Muslims from former Soviet spaces who now confront significant discrimination in European Russia. As Sahadeo demonstrates, the two cities benefited from 1980s' migration but also became communities where racism and exclusion coexisted with citizenship and Soviet identity.

Jeff Sahadeo is Associate Professor at the Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at Carleton University. He is author of Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, 1865–1923 and co-editor of Everyday Life in Central Asia.

Voices from the Soviet Edge is carefully organized to balance the goals of providing historical and comparative context and allowing the migrants' voices to be heard. It is well-written throughout. I highly recommend Voices from the Soviet Edge for all who are interested in the Soviet Union. It is indeed a major contribution to rethinking the "nature" of that simultaneously familiar and strange world.

In virtually every chapter of the book, Sahadeo engages with theoretical and comparative literature on postcolonial migration and race. In addition, Sahadeo's oral history methodology offers a welcome corrective to state-centered views of Soviet society. Exploring these crucial themes through individuals' stories, Voices from the Soviet Edge should find a wide readership among historians, anthropologists, and other students of Soviet and post-Soviet societies.

Jeff Sahadeo's book Voices from the Soviet Edge provides a remarkable and empathic portrait of migrant life stories in the late Soviet Union and illustrates the highly mobile nature of the Soviet Union... the book is not only a profound contribution to historical scholarship that challenges the interpretation of the late Soviet era as purely stagnating by highlighting societal dynamism. It is also an insightful work for migration scholars that focus on the post-Soviet migration regime, providing them with a rich historical context of contemporary mobility flows.

Meredith L. Roman, The College at Brockport (SUNY):

Jeff Sahadeo's critically important study brings to life the experiences of a diverse array of migrants to Moscow and Leningrad from the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Asian Russia that challenge us to rethink late Soviet society as a society on the move...Sahadeo however rightfully cautions us against dismissing these memories simply as the products of nostalgia. He highlights how the consistent themes that migrants raised in their life narratives—many of which he beautifully weaves throughout the book's seven chapters—provide a window into complex late Soviet realities.

Meredith L. Roman, The College at Brockport (SUNY):

Jeff Sahadeo's critically important study brings to life the experiences of a diverse array of migrants to Moscow and Leningrad from the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Asian Russia that challenge us to rethink late Soviet society as a society on the move.

The study is well documented and includes an appendix of the interviews. The book is recommended for all university levels.

Bruce Grant, New York University, author of Captive and the Gift:

Race, little attended in Soviet Studies, returns in this rich body of stories, offering a finely tuned study of economic aspiration, political history, the lure of the city, broad social networks, and the shuttling of millions of men and women across a USSR that was once home to so many.

Adeeb Khalid, Carleton College, and author of award-winning Making Uzbekistan:

In this story of people on the move, Jeff Sahadeo puts people from the Soviet peripheries center stage and reveals the multinational Soviet Union in completely new light. He highlights the significance of the Soviet experience for discussions of postcolonialism, migration, and race relations.

Anne Gorsuch, University of British Columbia, and author of All This is Your World:

Voices from the Soviet Edge is an excellent book by an acknowledged expert on internal migration to Moscow and Leningrad. The use of oral interviews, with archival and published materials, makes Jeff Sahadeo's book a welcome example of how to do historical work on the late Soviet period.