Juhan Saharov

Estonia is globally known for its digital state and start-up culture, but less for its political innovation in the late 1980s, which played an important role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. As the first Soviet republic to issue a "Declaration of Sovereignty" in November 1988, Estonia established a model for the other republics to follow, culminating in the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991. During his stay at Stanford University, Juhan Saharov works on the book project which deals with the question, why did the concept of “sovereignty” emerge at the centre of political discourse in Estonia and not somewhere else? The book highlights the global expert languages and local academic community as pre-existing platforms for Estonian perestroika and traces the conceptual transformation of the idea of the republic's economic independence (self-management) into the project of political independence (sovereignty). The story starts in the 1960s, when Estonia became an economic "experimental republic" in the Soviet Union, and ends with the political action of the Estonian expert and scholarly community during the perestroika period (1986–89). At Stanford, Juhan will work at the Hoover Institution Archive with materials on the economic reforms and sovereignty debates within the Soviet political and academic elite during the period, as well as shares the story of Estonian perestroika with Stanford students and scholars.