In this talk, Sudha Rajagopalan will speak about how Soviet objects, which were imported, acquired on the flea market, or otherwise gifted during the Cold War, are remembered today in Cuba and India. Objects produced in the Soviet Union were meant to convey ideas of socialist modernization to postcolonial societies. Yet, once acquired, they could become disobedient, in that they were consumed, read, and remembered in ways that did not necessarily adhere to the objects’ original meanings. Memories of these objects (now often replaced or given away) turn the Cold War from a field of ideological certitude into one of personal and affective everyday experience. Using oral history accounts, Rajagopalan will demonstrate how Soviet things also came to cohabit spaces with other things from around the world, allowing interlocutors to undercut simple geopolitical binaries that pitted Soviet against American technopolitics.

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Sudha Rajagopalan teaches and researches in the Department of European Studies, within its East European Studies cluster, at the University of Amsterdam. Her first book, Indian Films in Soviet Cinemas: The Culture of Movie-Going after Stalin (2009), draws on archival research and oral history methods and is considered a pioneering ethnohistory of Soviet moviegoing. Her most recent book, Journeys of Soviet Things: Cold War as Lived Experience in Cuba and India (2023), is an oral history of socialist globalization constructed around the journeys of Cold War–era Soviet objects, such as household appliances, decorative artifacts, and books. A Russian-language translation was published in 2024. Rajagopalan has also published about Russian digital cultures on issues ranging from memory work to celebrity, fandom, and post-feminism.

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Object Labs

At Bard Graduate Center, we use an object-centered approach to advance the study of the decorative arts, design history, and material culture. Join our student educators before select Fall 2026 public events to learn about some of the objects in BGC’s Study Collection. Each week we will showcase three objects carefully selected from the collection, which includes more than five thousand objects in a variety of media. Drop in anytime between 5 and 6 pm; the experience takes roughly ten minutes.

October 7, 14, and 21
November 4, 11, and 18

38 West 86th Street, New York
5–6 pm

Founded in 2011, the BGC Study Collection supports student research by providing opportunities for hands-on close examination of objects. Learn more about the BGC Study Collection here.