Dr Juhan Saharov, Visiting Fellowship 2024/25

Biography

Dr Juhan Saharov is a Research Fellow in Political Theory at the University of Tartu. He specializes in the intellectual history of economic and political thought in the late Soviet Union and East-Central Europe, focusing on market socialism, the role of expertise in state socialism, and the transformation of ‘self-management’ and ‘sovereignty’ concepts in Soviet republics during perestroika. He has held visiting fellowships at Stanford University and the Imre Kertész Kolleg (University of Jena). Currently, Saharov leads the research project ‘From Experts to Revolutionaries’ (2025–2028) at the University of Tartu, which examines the transformation of the intelligentsia, its expertise and professional languages in the Baltics and East-Central Europe during the late Cold War. The project investigates how scholarly elites evolved from scientific experts into catalysts of political change, mapping Estonian experts’ networks in East-Central Europe during the late 1980s.

Visiting Fellowship, February 2025

Motivation

During my research at the Institute of Contemporary History, I will examine interconnected aspects of Estonian and Slovenian intellectual and political history from the late 1980s. In collaboration with Dr. Marko Zajc, I will analyze how the discourse of ‘sovereignty’ in Slovenia, focusing on the May Declaration (1989) and the constitutional debate (1990), which paralleled similar developments in Estonia (as Declaration of Sovereignty was adopted in November 1988). The research will examine the extent to which these concepts and declarations were communicated and adapted between Estonian and Slovenian intellectuals and politicians during this period. The analysis will draw on various sources, including documentation of Estonian economic experts’ and government officials’ visits to Ljubljana during 1988–90.

List of publications

Saharov, J, Dementavičius, J. [2025, forthcoming]. The Languages of Transition in the Soviet Republics: Interpreting Perestroika in Estonia and Lithuania in 1985–89. –Transitions. Comparative and Transnational European Perspectives on the History of a Political Concept. Eds. Agustín Cosovschi and Pablo Sanchez León. Berghahn.

Saharov, J. (2022). From Future Scenarios to Sovereignty Declarations: Estonian Cyberspeak and the Breakup of the Soviet Union. –Europe-Asia Studies. Vol. 74, Issue 5, 809–831.

Saharov, J. (2021). From an Economic Term to a Political Concept: The Conceptual Innovation

of ‘Self-Management’ in Soviet Estonia. –Contributions to the History of Concepts. Vol. 16, Issue 1, 116–140.

Saharov, J. (2021). Combining Laclauian Discourse Analysis and Framing Theory: Václav Havel’s ‘Hegemonic Rhetoric’ in Charter 77. –Politologický časopis / Czech Journal of Political Science. Issue 2, 186–203.

Saharov, J. (2018). An Economic Innovation as an Icebreaker: The Contractual Work Experiment in Soviet Estonia in 1985. –The Baltic States and the End of the Cold War. Eds. Kaarel Piirimäe and Olaf Mertelsmann. Peter Lang.