Russia's Cold War Generation and the End of the Soviet Dream: Soviet Baby Boomers Talk About Their Lives

In this presentation, Donald J. Raleigh provides an overview of his book, Soviet Baby Boomers (which will be published in Russian this year by Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie), with a focus on the role Soviet families played in shaping the Baby Boomers’ worldviews; the opening up of the Soviet Union and spread of information; and the socialist system’s not living up to expectations that it created in articulating the Soviet dream.

A native of Chicago, Donald J. Raleigh graduated from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, and completed his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at Indiana University, Bloomington.  He began his teaching career at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, before accepting an appointment in 1988 at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he is the Jay Richard Judson Distinguished Professor of Russian History.  He has authored, translated, and edited numerous books on modern Russian history including Revolution on the Volga (1986), Experiencing Russia’s Civil War (2002), and Soviet Baby Boomers (2012), which was short listed for the Pushkin House Prize in Great Britain.  In collaboration with three Russian colleagues, he currently is editing Soviet leader Leonid Ilich Brezhnev’s diaries and working notebooks for publication and is working on a biography of Brezhnev.