Living the Soviet Utopia

How was technological modernity imagined, negotiated and experienced in Soviet Ukraine? 

On 24–25 September 2026, the Faculty of History at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and the Department of History at the University of Basel bring together researchers for the online conference Living the Soviet Utopia: Cultural History of Technologies in Ukraine, 1922–1991. 

Download: Conference programme

The conference approaches technology not simply as infrastructure or economic development, but as a cultural force shaping knowledge, social hierarchies and everyday life. It examines the relationship between visions of progress and lived experiences of scarcity, adaptation and unequal access to technological change. 

Four panels explore these questions: 

• Cybernetics, Mass Housing & Atomic Utopias
• Secret Cities, Elites & Closed Knowledge
• Technologies of Everyday Life: Sound, Mobility & Health
• Visualizing Progress: Media, Cinema & Photography 

Contributions range from ideas of digital immortality among Kyiv cyberneticists and the monuments of Prypiat to consumer tape recorders, family photography and scientific cinema. Researchers from Basel include Olha Martynyuk, who examines road rallies as a mobility culture in early Soviet Ukraine, and Oleksii Kuchanskyi, whose presentation explores scientific filmmaking and the representation of nuclear contamination. 

The conference is organised by Gennadii Kazakevych, F. Benjamin Schenk and Olha Martynyuk within the joint Ukrainian–Swiss research project Testing the Soviet Utopia: Social History of Technologies in Ukraine, 1922–1991, supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation. 

Participation 

24 September 2026: 14:00–18:00 
25 September 2026: 10:00–15:00 
All times are in Kyiv time (EEST). 

The conference takes place online via Zoom. No registration is required. 

Meeting ID: 214 183 4026 Passcode: gg31YV