From Subjectivity to the History of Society? Igal Halfin and the making of "Soviet Subjectivity" studies in the Western Historiography of Soviet Russia
Abstract
The study of so-called Soviet Subjectivity belongs to the most visible versions of the linguistic or cultural turn in the Anglophone historiography of Soviet studies, especially during its growth between the mid-1990s and the end of the 2010s. This current of historical research is introduced on the background of new cultural history, the influence of poststructuralism and the writings of the late Michel Foucault.
The depicting of the process "subjectivation", and so-called productive subject in the early works of the leading representatives of the genre - Jochen Hellbeck, Igal Halfin and Oleg V. Kharkhordin, is the way out to the critical debate of the central premises of two subsequent Halfin's books, Intimate Enemies (2007) and Stalinist Confessions (2009).
I do not object to his poststructuralist epistemology but his discursive overdetermination, and his explication of the period of the 1920s and 1930s solely through the lenses of the "communist eschatology". I point out as well that he does not persuasively expound the pivotal category of confession, mainly because he does not comply with the principles adhered by Foucault.