Sam Hirst
Ph.D. Student
hirstsj@sas.upenn.edu
Education
B.A., Washington University in St. Louis (2004); Bilkent University, Turkey; European University in St. Petersburg, Russia; Cornell University
Research Interests
The Russian Empire; the Soviet Union; Russians and non-Russians in Eurasia; Nationalism; Socialism; Social history of ideology and politics
Working Dissertation Title
"Mobilizing the Nations: Soviet Ideology in Tatarstan, 1941-1945"
Personal Statement
Since my arrival at the Penn Department of History in 2006, I have narrowed the scope of my current project to a study of the Autonomous Socialist Republic of Tatarstan. While my broader interests remain the same—multinational polities, particularly at the level of the individual—my dissertation addresses the engagement of Soviet individuals with the ideology in which they lived. I ask what it meant to be a member of one of many national communities in a context that stressed supranational citizenship based on class identity.
