«The Concept of the “Second World” at the Crossroads of Social Sciences and Imperial History»: Ab Imperio 2011 annual theme*

Ab Imperio: International Quarterly on the Studies of New Imperial History and Nationalism in the Post-Soviet Space announces 2011 annual theme:

The concept of the Second World underlies a range of theories that explain the emergence and spread of Communism and objectify political divisions during the Cold War. This concept formed part of modernization theories as an attempt to understand the specifics of modernization processes triggered by socialist revolutions. In theories of convergence, the concept of the Second World helped distinguish the vector of development and the hierarchy of historical experience from the Third World to the First. However, the end of “really existing socialism” and decline in popularity of modernization theory in recent decades have drastically reduced use of the Second World concept.

The editors of Ab Imperio suggest that the concept of the Second World, when freed from its geopolitical connotations, can be productive today to describe historical and social experience that does not fit the framework of classical colonial theory or normative theories of modernity. Maybe by using this category we can also use research instruments and models developed by new imperial history to study modern, mass and composite societies of the twentieth century. Potentially, the Second World can be used as a rhetorical device, a metaphor, or an analytical category. The editors of Ab Imperio invite scholars of imperial history to reflect upon the potential of the category of the Second World.

Our turn to this concept in the context of new imperial history allows us to raise a number of interesting and important questions. Can the concept of the Second World be used in working with theoretical models and newly formed fields (such as Central European or Central Asian studies) instead of the culturally and geopolitically determined “Eurasia?” Could the Second World be useful in discussions of “peripheral” imperial formations, that is, in discussions of imperial experiences that do not entirely fit in with the experiences of bourgeois colonial empires? Scholars working in the fields of continental empires of Europe and Asia often face the problem of difference in processes that seem structurally similar in colonial overseas and continental empires. Historians of the Russian Empire have long debated the applicability of categories developed in studies of the British or French Empires. Yet, we also need to think about how the experience of the continental Russian Empire can complicate our understanding of the past of bourgeois colonial empires. Likewise, can the Second World change the mainstream ways of thinking about postcolonial phenomena such as hybridity, multiple identities and subjectivities, which emerge as constitutive elements of the history of the Second World itself? By opening this discussion about the Second World, Ab Imperio seeks to explore the prospects of this largely forgotten but potentially rich way of thinking about the post-Soviet historical regions and its place on the map of scholarly knowledge.

Within the framework of this discussion we propose to revisit such traditional dichotomies as “center vs. periphery,” “modern overseas vs. premodern territorially contiguous empires,” “colonizers vs. colonized,” but with special attention to the specifics of the modern and most recent periods. In regard to the territorially contiguous empires one can recall the discussion on the “colonial” nature of Soviet expansion in Central Asia and Central Europe; the contradictory and ambitious attempt to apply the frame of decolonization to the post-Soviet period; the specifics of the postsocialist “transition”; theories of “failed state”; and so on. In historical articles for this year we seek to use the concept of the Second World to review the gaps between normative categories of analysis and the richness and diversity of the historical material in the experience of the post-Soviet space. We are especially interested in the applicability to the Soviet period of new imperial history with its characteristic attention to diversity and dynamics. On the other hand, we are interested in possibilities to enrich our understanding of the imperial period using analytical categories developed by scholars of the USSR and socialism.

Besides the main theme of the Second World, Ab Imperio plans to continue its regular rubrics and fora: “Discussions with Authors” (series of interviews with scholars who have influenced the development of new imperial history); “Empire of Archives” (a series that views archives as centers of the production of knowledge and power in a culturally divided space); “The Art of History Writing in Empire and Nation” (translation and publication of classical works); and “Battles for History” (a series focusing on the current politics of history and memory).


Tentative contents of the issues in 2011:


No. 1/2011 “The Diversity of Otherness: Studies of the Second World and New Historical Paradigms”

Historical experience in identifying “norm” and “otherness” beyond linear hierarchies ● attempts to define the Second World in positive terms (its special contribution to the world intellectual legacy, the reengineering of society, uses of nature) ● the Russian intellectual tradition of the second half of the nineteenth century: projects of the Second World and their critics ● the history of critiques of normative theories of empire and colonialism ● critiques of postcolonial theory ● apology and nostalgia for historical empires: the British Empire as a forerunner of globalization, the Habsburg Empire as an ideal of liberal multinational polity ● nostalgia for Yugoslavia, the USSR, and East Germany ● the prefix “neo” in “post” situations: the problem of fluidity of traditional political contrapositions (e.g., liberalism and conservatism in the postmodern era and afterward) ● analytical models of the Second World as an attempt to translate approaches of new imperial history for the study of composite societies of the twentieth century ● Marxism in the Second World ● formalism and structuralism in the Second World ● contemporary nationalism and the Second World.

No. 2/2011 “The Second World Beyond Geopolitics: Political Trajectories and Spatial Configurations”

Critiques of geopolitical conceptions ● what is the “Second World,” a location or an idea? ● constructions of the “gradient of backwardness” and attempts to localize the “true West” ● the dual meaning of “chronotop”: an instrument of historization of research as well as a mechanism for ascribing the structural characteristics of “epoch” to territory and its inhabitants ● how stable are regional historical boundaries? ● does a region have a “historical destiny?” ● ascribing identity to a region (Islamic Republic, Cossack region, “historical center”) ● problematizing the region: how is the production of “Russian culture” connected to territory/region ● from social engineering to political technologies: the era of simulacra ● compensatory reactions in the era of globalism: the concepts of “Russia island,” “Fifth Empire,” “sovereign democracy” ● gender regimes of socialist societies and post-Soviet transformations.

No. 3/2011 “Time of the Second World: Imperial Revolutions and Counterrevolutions”

The breakup of the USSR: the process of transition from informal to formal sovereignty ● post-Soviet history of the former republics ● the breakup of the USSR revisited by historians: twenty years later ● the anthropology of postsocialist transformations: lessons for understanding the disintegration of the USSR? ● USSR: scenarios of power – scenarios of disintegration ● comparative context of the Soviet breakup ● perestroika: revolution as normalization? ● decolonization as an interpretative resource for analyzing the Soviet breakup: problems and challenges ● world order after the Cold War ● imperial disintegrations and fascism ● the disintegration of empires and the October revolution ● global crisis of the leftist ideology as a result of Second World disintegration.

No. 4/2011 “The Second World Between Comparative and Global Histories”

Self-representations of “empires” of the Second World as a synthesis of the First and the Third Worlds: between colonies and metropoles ● the place of the Second World in the schemes of world (global) history ● the Second World as a trope of self-perception and self-description of “noncanonical” modernity ● the Second World between “multiple modernities” and normative “Western modernity” ● peripheral and “nonclassical” empires of the modern period ● revisiting comparative approaches to totalitarianism and communism ● rethinking the Second World in the twentieth century: a history of totalitarianism or a comparative history of colonialism? ● whether the world is one: writing the history of globalization ● history of the environment as a frame for universal history ● relativization of the concept of the First World and normative modernity in new narratives of comparative and global history.


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