From Object of Trauma to Subject of History

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent “wild 1990s” are increasingly portrayed in Russian public discourse as a traumatic experience. This framing contrasts the perceived chaos and lawlessness of the 1990s with a nostalgic idealization of the Soviet past and the narrative of restored state strength since Putin’s second presidency. This pervasive framing often implicitly imposes a role of disempowered subjects upon individuals who lived through the upheaval. Drawing on biographical interviews conducted in 2018 with 12 former market traders across Russia, this article challenges these instrumental trauma narratives. The analysis explores how people who worked as “shuttle traders” in the 1990s retroactively construct their pasts by asserting their active participation and rejecting externally defined victimhood. Their narratives point to alternative frameworks that reconcile Soviet-era moral economies with emerging neoliberal values, emphasizing resilience, entrepreneurial acumen, material gains, and self-reliance. They assert themselves as capable agents who actively shaped their trajectories and broader social relations amid systemic collapse. Their life stories offer counter-narratives to the streamlining of the memory culture of the 1990s and demonstrate how moral justifications for capitalism are negotiated among ordinary people. Ultimately, these women’s accounts reveal the 1990s as a contested moral terrain encompassing a broad range of experiences that go well beyond a framing of the era solely through trauma and treachery.