Dr. David Ransel, director of Indiana University's Russian and East European Institute, in REEIfication, December, 1997:

A conference, "Inventing the Soviet Union: Language, Power, and Representation, 1917-1945," was held November 7-9 at REEI. The conference was built on an original proposal by a recent IU history Ph.D., Choitali Chatterjee, who is now teaching at Cal State University, Los Angeles. Choi (as everyone here knows her) got help in directing the project from Karen Petrone, a young Russian History professor at the University of Kentucky. REEI mobilized funding from IREX and the Kennan Institute, plus added some resources of our own.

Twenty scholars from throughout the United States and Canada contributed papers that laid the groundwork for an intense and two and a half day series of discussions on the formation of the Bolshevik culture and identity. Topics covered a wide spectrum, beginning Fran Bernstein's "Making Sex Soviet," which discussed health workers' notions of proper Soviet hygiene and eugenics, and Paula Michaels' exploration of the cultural mission that accompanied health delivery to non-Russian nationalities....

Several contributors chose as their subject literary and photographic representations of the "Soviet body." A central issue for the builders of Soviet culture was the proper communist expression of the body in sport. Should the body be deployed in peaceful, collective activities or in competitive sports? Should the USSR compete with the Western world in international sporting contests or stay clear of them and promote a different ethic? There were problems addressed by Barbara Keys. Anna Krylova analyzed representation of the Soviet (male) body mutilated by war and the effect that this had on identity/personality both for the mutilated person and those who loved him.

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