SUMMARY:

In this essay, Igor Stas’ – the editor of the volume discussed in the book forum “Soviet Departmentalism” – responds to the forum participants. He defends a multidimensional “departmental approach” to understanding the Soviet Union, moving beyond traditional institutional histories to examine how state agencies functioned as complex systems of social practices, material infrastructures, and discursive rhetoric. Stas’ structures his defense around four analytical categories – system, materiality, practices, and discourse – arguing that “departmentalism” was not just a bureaucratic flaw but a fundamental lens through which Soviet citizens and officials rationalized power and identity. By responding to critics who, he believes, favor a more rigid, essentialist definition of state institutions, Stas’ advocates for a processual and contextual methodology that reveals the fragmented, non-monolithic nature of the Soviet state. He seeks to shift the scholarly focus toward “situations of departmentalism,” where the interplay between central authority and local agency produced the unique sociomaterial landscape of Soviet modernity.