Materials and Materiality in Russia and the Soviet Union
The Russian Empire and its Soviet successor occupied a unique geographic and cultural space, hosting a complex culture of Orthodox and Islamic peoples. Before the Russian Revolution, the empire sat astride multiple trade routes across Eurasia, linking east and west as well as north and south, benefitting from its Asian and Middle Eastern connections to import luxuries as easily as its more famous neighbors in Europe. In the Soviet era, as the leader of the emergent Communist world, it both emerged as an exporter of essential products to its satellite states and navigated a new path in the global economy to retain its relationships with global capital.