Dr. Lars Fredrik Stöcker

Current research project:
Laboratories of Marketization: A Historical Reassessment of Economic Reforms at the Soviet Union’s Western Fringes, 1987–1991.

There is a consensus that transnational and non-state actors have exerted wide influence over the “neoliberal revolution” in Central and Eastern Europe. Yet, as economic transformation is usually located in a post-socialist context, their role in triggering paradigm changes in socialist economic thought remains underexplored. The case of the Estonian SSR illustrates the impact of external actors on republican reform agendas in the USSR during perestroika. Based on archival research and oral history interviews, the planned monograph on the transnational diffusion of Western economic ideas sheds light on the roots of the new capitalist order in the region and the significance of space and cultural ties in times of transition.

Bridging the Baltic Sea: Networks of Resistance and Opposition during the Cold War Era. Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series, ed. Mark Kramer. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017.