Work group
Economy
Dr. Anton Liavitski is a historian specializing in the intellectual and political history of Belarus and Soviet Union, with a focus on the post-socialist transformation. He earned his PhD from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 2022. He has since held research fellowships at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, the Central European University in Budapest, and the University of St. Gallen. His research, published in journals such as Archiv für Sozialgeschichte and Kritika, examines political transformation and nation-building in post-socialist Eastern Europe.
Research Project
Globalists: The End of the Cold War and the Birth of the Post-Socialist Middle Class
This project offers a new analysis of the Soviet collapse by linking the political ideologies of globalization to the reconfiguration of material interests and class relations. Focusing on Minsk and Kyiv, it examines how material transformations in post-socialist cities—privatization, new property relations, and the rise of consumer culture—were entangled with shifting ideas about class, globalization, and the West. As the Soviet middle class was reshaped under a market economy, it emerged as a key social base for democratic and reformist movements across the former USSR. Central to this process was the aspiration to integrate post-Soviet economies into global supply chains and a broader cultural space, a goal celebrated by reformers and attacked by their conservative opponents. By connecting economic transformation with ideological change, the project explains how globalization became both a social project and a political worldview in the late Soviet and early post-Soviet era.