Re-Thinking Post-Socialist War(s): Comparative Dimensions of the War in Ukraine (2014-2024)
An interdisciplinary conference
Where: GCSC (International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture), Otto Behaghel Str. 12, 35394 Giessen
When: January 31 - February 2, 2025
Organizers: Justus Liebig University Giessen / UNDIPUS joint project & Charles University in Prague / IMS Research Centre “Ukraine in a Changing Europe”
Contact:
Dr. Alexander Chertenko (Justus Liebig University Giessen): oleksandr.chertenko@slavistik.uni-giessen.de
Dr. Valeria Korablyova (Charles University in Prague): valeriya.korablyova@fsv.cuni.cz
Funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research
The end of February 2024 marked ten years since the beginning of the war in Ukraine—heralded by an (almost) non-violent annexation of Crimea in March 2014 and culminating in an all-out war launched by Russia in February 2022. During this period, the war, which brought about massive destruction of human lives, ecosystems, and infrastructure, as well as large-scale displacement, became part and parcel not only of the global agenda in journalism, politics, culture, and academic research, but also a crucial factor in cultural production and identity formation.
Our interdisciplinary conference “Re-Thinking Post-Socialist War(s): Comparative Dimensions of the War in Ukraine (2014-2024)” aims at conceptualizing the repercussions of this highly traumatic event that changed the lives of millions of people in Ukraine and also became a game-changing factor on a global scale. It is a collaborative effort between the Justus Liebig University Giessen and the Charles University in Prague, which will be hosted at the University of Giessen on January 31 - February 2 2025 as part of the joint project “UNDIPUS—(Un)Disciplined: Pluralizing Ukrainian Studies—Understanding the War in Ukraine” (funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research; subproject “After Masculinity: Female Perspectives on the War in Eastern Ukraine”). As the title suggests, rather than focusing on the war’s idiosyncrasy, we will instead juxtapose it to other typologically comparable military conflicts in order to grasp their convergences and divergences. Premising on that, we are also going to discuss the possible peacebuilding strategies and compare them to the relevant experiences observed in other countries and cultures.
Our guiding questions are (i) what enabled armed conflicts (and the war in Ukraine in particular) as legitimate tools for achieving (geo)political goals; (ii) how warfare (co-)produced certain social and cultural practices that transformed implicated actors and polities or (iii) which social, cultural, and economic factors possibly prefigured the emergence and the perpetuation of warfare; (iv) finally, how the post-socialist and post-dependency wars were framed—in warring countries and in third states; by victims and by aggressors—and how those framings, in turn, reshaped identities of the involved sides?
The conference draws some 40 participants from political science, sociology, literary and cultural studies, international relations, linguistics, and history representing universities and research institutions in Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Serbia, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the USA. It will begin on January 31 at 9 am and end on February 1 around 9 pm.
In addition to regular panels, the program of the conference also includes two keynotes—by Prof. Mark R. Beissinger (Princeton University, USA) on „Imperial Decline and Post-Socialist Wars: Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine in Comparative Perspective“ (to be held on January 31 at 6 pm).
PROGRAM
DAY 1 (31.1.2025)
8.30 – 9.00 – registration
9.00 – 9.30 – opening remarks
9.30 – 12.30 Panel 1
CHALLENGES OF POSTSOCIALIST WARS
Chair: Vitaly Chernetsky (U of Kansas)
Monika Wingender (Giessen): Language(s) and War in Ukraine: Problems, Challenges, and Perspectives in Dealing with the Soviet Legacy
Roman Horbyk (Zurich): From Participative Warfare to Participatory Attrition: Technology and the Russo-Ukrainian War
*
Chair: Valeria Korablyova & Alexander Chertenko
Valeria Korablyova (Prague): From Hope to Fear and Back: The Geopolitics of Emotion after 1989
Mikhail Minakov (Milan): War-Making as Autocracy-Building: Autocratization through Wars in Post-Soviet Countries
12.30 – 14.00 Lunch at the Mensa (Otto Behaghel Str. 27, 35394 Giessen)
14.00 – 15.20 Panels 2A & 2B
2A. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON WAR(S)
Chair: Thomas Bohn (Justus Liebig University Giessen)
Semion Goldin (Jerusalem): Russian Army and Jewish Population During WWI: Some Lessons for Ukraine
Aliaksei Bratachkin (Hagen): The War in Ukraine and the Discursive Legacy of WWII Memory in Belarus: Radicalization of Changes?
2B. WAR & MEMORY
Chair: Oleksandr Zabirko (U of Regensburg)
Anna Ivanova (Giessen): Wartime Memory Politics and the City: Competing Approaches in the Production of Space in Kharkiv, Ukraine
Iryna Tarku (Giessen): Narrative Construction of Memory and Identity in Donbas War Prose
15.20 – 15.40 Coffee break
15.40 – 17.40 Panels 3A & 3B
3A. POST-WAR TEMPORALITIES
Chair: Tatjana Petzer (U of Graz)
Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl (Graz): Imagining Generations in Times of War
Iryna Orlova (Graz): Temporalities of Displacement
Tatjana Petzer (Graz): Transforming the Post-War(s) Environment
3B. HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS & WAR
Chair: Dmitry Dubrovsky (Charles U, Prague)
Irina Rebrova (Berlin): The Future of the Holocaust Remembrance in Contemporary Russia
Alexander Cherkasov (Prague): The Chain of Wars, the Chain of Crimes, the Chain of Impunity: Russian Wars in Chechnya, Syria, and Ukraine
Dmitry Dubrovsky (Prague): The Notion of the “Genocide of the Soviet People” in Putin’s Propaganda
17.40 – 18.00 Coffee break
18.00 – 19.30 KEYNOTE LECTURE
Mark R. Beissinger (Princeton): Imperial Decline and Post-Socialist Wars: Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine in Comparative Perspective
Moderation: Valeria Korablyova
20.00 – 22.00 Dinner at “Croatica” (Ludwigsplatz 8, 35390 Giessen)
DAY 2 (1.2.2025)
09.00 – 12.00 Panels 4 & 5
4. UNRAVELLING THE POST-COMMUNIST SPACE I
Chair: Andreas Langenohl (Justus Liebig U Giessen), Valeria Korablyova (Charles U, Prague)
Aleksandar Životić (Belgrade): Geopolitical Consequences of the Collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia: Similarities and Differences of the Wars in Yugoslavia and Ukraine
Alessandro Achilli (Cagliari)/Marco Puleri (Bologna): Intellectuals and the Nation (Yesterday and Today): Pluralism and the Responsibility of Culture
Péter Hevő (Budapest): The End of the Visegrád Cooperation? The V4 and the War in Ukraine
Jochen Kleinschmidt (Dresden): From Realpolitik to Surrealpolitik? Russia’s War in Ukraine and the Discursive Antinomies of the Berlin Republic
5. OTHERS’ WAR(S) I
Chair: Roman Dubasevych (University of Greifswald)
Ewa Wróblewska-Trochimiuk (Warsaw): What Happened to homo sovieticus? Reshaping Ukrainian Society in Social Media
Alexander Chertenko (Giessen): Voices from Periphery: Mapping Ukraine after 2014 in Polish Books of Interviews (Andrukhovych & Savchenko)
Matthias Schwartz (Berlin): Kresy as a Combat Zone: Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Russian Borderlands in Poland's Popular Culture
12.00 – 13.30 Lunch at the Mensa (Otto Behaghel Str. 27, 35394 Giessen)
13.30 – 15.30 Panels 6A & 6B
6A. WAR AND GENDER
Chair: Olga Plakhotnik (U of Greifswald)
Andreas Langenohl (Giessen): Queering Warfare: LGBTQI+ Presences On and Off Military Scenes
Roman Dubasevych (Greifswald): From patsan to Veteran: Masculinity and War in Ukraine
Tania Arcimovich (Erfurt): War and Epistemology: Displaced Scholars’ Perspectives
6B. OTHERS’ WAR(S) II
Chair: Alexander Chertenko (Justus Liebig U Giessen)
Alina Strzempa (Regensburg): Unravelling War and Peace in Contested Regions: A Comparison of Upper Silesia and the Donbas from a Literary Perspective
Aleksei Surin (Tel Aviv): Toppling Idols, Redefining the Past: Russian-Israeli Poetic Strategies Responding to the War in Ukraine
Namita Kumari (Delhi): Narratives about the Ukraine War in India: A Study of National Newspapers
15.30 – 16.00 Coffee break
16.00 – 17.30
Moderation: Alexander Chertenko
7A. DYNAMICS OF CONFLICT
Chair: Jochen Kleinschmidt (TU of Dresden)
Oksana Myshlovska (Bern): Contesting the New “Legitimate Political Order”: Conflict Escalation and Local-Level Peacebuilding in Ukraine from February to April 2014
Andrei Vazyanau (Vilnius): Disintegration via Infrastructure: A Case of Public Transport Activists from Donetsk Region
7B WAR IN POPULAR CULTURE
Chair: Alessandro Achilli (U of Cagliari)
Oleksandr Zabirko (Regensburg): Microraion as Battleground: Post-Socialist Landscapes in Video Game Warfare
Beata Waligórska-Olejniczak (Poznań): Turning Trauma into Art of Life: New Ukrainian Cinema in Time of War
17.30 – 18.45 Dinner buffet with varenyky
18.45 – 20.45 Film screening and discussion: THE HAMLET SYNDROME
(directed by Elwira Niewiera & Piotr Rosołowski, GER/PL 2022)
Moderation: Alexander Chertenko & Valeria Korablyova
21.15 – 23.59 Twilight get-together at “Bolero” (Ostanlage 45, 35390 Giessen)