Våren 2015
Seminarieprogram
Plats: Gamla Torget 3, tredje våningen, biblioteket
Tid: Tisdagar, 15.15-17.00 (om inget annat är meddelat)
22 jan Sven Hirdman “Sveriges förhållande till Ryssland”. Ordförande: Elena Namli. Språk: svenska.
Sven Hirdman är en svensk diplomat och ambassadör. Han har varit anställd på Utrikesdepartementet sedan 1963 och bland annat tjänstgjort i Moskva, London och Peking. Åren 1979-1982 var han statssekreterare i Försvarsdepartementet. Därefter var han bl.a. ambassadör i Tel Aviv 1983-1987 och ambassadör i Moskva 1994-2004. Han är ledamot av Kungliga Krigsvetenskapsakademien sedan 1990. Hirdman var också ordförande för den svenska sektionen av Transparency International.
23 jan Workshop ”Indigenous Gender Asymmetries and Natural Resource Politics in the Russian North”. Ladda ner programmet.
27 jan Barbara Lehmbruch (UCRS): "Bureaucrats as Entrepreneurs: Semi-Autonomous Agencies and Post-Soviet Governments". Ordförande: Li Bennich-Björkman. Språk: engelska.
The formation of semi-autonomous agencies separate from standard rank-and-file ministries has been an important component of international efforts at public administration reform over the past 25 years. In the standard narrative, their purpose is to push traditional public sector actors bureaucracies into increased efficiency and greater customer orientation; this makes them very much a top-down phenomenon.
This presentation analyzes superficially parallel attempts at agency reform in the post-Soviet realm. It argues that post-Soviet agencification, while outwardly similar, followed a very different logic. Driven both by opportunities for corruption and the sheer struggle for organizational survival, mid-level bureaucracies began striking out into a hybrid zone between public and commercial activities and forms of organizations.
Agencification thus has been decidedly ambiguous. While threatening to corrupt and subvert the only-just-emerging market economy, it also served the pragmatic interests of post-Soviet states. Perhaps for this very reason, hybrids were and are not a purely bottom-up phenomenon. Although often based on the political entrepreneurship of state officials, their formation would not have been possible without at least tacit government support. Post-soviet rulers, hard-pressed for cash and anxious to comply with international demands for (even if nominal) reductions in public sector employment ratios, recognized the potentials inherent in such organizational forms. While maintaining plausible deniability and selectively cracking down on the worst abuses, they often encouraged organizational spin-offs, various forms of self-financing and incentivization of former or current budgetary organizations, and helped to provide suitable legal frameworks.
Barbara Lehmbruch holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley. Before joining UCRS as a researcher, she held previous research and teaching positions at Munich, Tübingen and Rotterdam universities as well as visiting research appointments in Helsinki and Vienna; she has also worked as a development consultant in Tbilisi, Georgia. Her main research interests include public administration reform and comparative and international political economy, as well as aid effectiveness and the European Neighborhood Policy.
3 feb Bert Sundström (Sveriges Television): ”On the developments in Ukraine and Russia”. Ordförande: Elena Namli. Språk: engelska.
At this seminar Bert Sundström will share his field experiences regarding the recent political developments in Ukraine, Russia and Crimea - people he has met, experiences from different cultural environments. He will offer a reflection on how communication functions during a political crisis. At the seminar Bert Sundström will show and discuss several of his reportage video clips.
Bert Sundström has worked as a foreign correspondent on the Swedish National Television (SVT) for the past 25 years and contributed immensely with highly- appreciated and sharp reportages from different corners of the world. Sundström has been a correspondent in the United States 1995-1999 and Russia 2002-2005. Bert Sundström studied languages and literature in Uppsala and journalism in Stockholm.
5 feb (OBS! Torsdag kl.15:15-17:00) Yulian Konstantinov (University of Tromsø): "Conversations with Power: Soviet and post-Soviet developments in the reindeer husbandry part of the Kola Peninsula". Ordförande: Elena Namli. Språk: engelska. Seminar arrangeras i samarbete med Uppsala Forum för demokrati, fred and rättvisa.
This lecture presents a book under the above title, submitted for publishing in the Red Series of Uppsala University. The book examines the way people talk with power – and power talks back to them – in the context of authoritarian state regimes, the Soviet/Russian one being the case in point. My claim is, in the first place, that there does exist such a conversation in the sense of communicating critical meanings. I show that grassroots’ messages are communicated by significant practices, while those of power come down as ideological slogans, decrees, and coercions as interpretative responses to grassroots’ illocutions. I thus critically resist the reading of recent Soviet history in terms of people’s mute and passive subordination to crushing imposition of power, or at best – of forms of indirect resistance or escapism. Instead, my claim is that multi-layered communication between the pinnacle and the broad base of the social pyramid was part and parcel of the identity of the Soviet period all along.
As it is argued in the book, grassroots-with-power communication in the Soviet and post-Soviet context reflects a will and corresponding practice for a continuously re-negotiated arrangement with power. Its principal thrust is the establishing of a grassroots-to-power tensed compromise over such fundamentally critical issues like existential security and a degree of well-being. I argue for the presence of effective grassroots’ agency in the Soviet/post-Soviet context. To examine it I turn special attention to the period of enforced collectivisation of agriculture (1929-1934) in the context of the reindeer husbandry economy of what is today Murmansk Region of NW Russia. My specific ethnography takes a reindeer husbandry practice of mixing private and collective reindeer as a metaphorical expression of a risk-free socioeconomic arrangement I call ‘sovkhoizm’. My general conclusion is that a socioeconomic and political environment that has sovkhoizm as a principal worldview presents serious communicative obstacles as regards a generalized ‘western’ attempt, over the last two decades, for constructive dialogue on, particularly, the Sami indgeneity issue.
The ethnographic basis of the study comes from long-term fieldwork with Sami and Komi reindeer husbandry teams in Lovozero District, Murmansk Region.
Yulian Konstantinov is a Social Anthropologist, currently Adjunct Professor at the University of Tromsø, Norway. He is known for his ongoing long-term research with Sami/Komi reindeer herders in the Kola Peninsula (NWRussia) ('Reindeer Herders', Uppsala University 1995); previously for his work with Bulgarian Muslims and Roma in the Balkans (with G.Alhaug 'Names, Ethnicity, and Politics', Oslo, 1995), on trader-tourism ('Patterns of Reinterpretation', American Ethnologist 1996, 23(4)). His visit at the UCRS (19/1-21/2) is connected with an initiative, together with Vladislava Vladimirova and an international team, for realizing a research-project on Indigenous Gender Asymmetry (INGA) in the Arctic. To this end a workshop of the team was held at the UCRS on 23 January, and an application for support submitted. Yulian shall present his latest book ('Conversations with Power', Uppsala University (in press)) on 5 February. He is currently leading a major NFR-supported project 'INPOINT: Socioeconomic developments in Murmansk Region – the insiders' point of view' which is a reason for wishing to share current project findings and thus benefit from being – till 21 February – in the stimulating research environment that UCRS has created.
10 feb Martin Kragh (UCRS): “Enterprise in Soviet and Soviet-Type Economies” Ordförande: Stefan Hedlund. Språk: engelska.
The economic history of the recent past reminds us that in the mid-20th century, one third of the world’s population lived under communist regimes, stretching across a landmass from Berlin to Canton. The main institutions of the Soviet economy were established by Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin in the 1920s and early 1930s: nationalization of industry, collectivization of agriculture, and centralized state control over the economy. As communist regimes spread across the globe in the post-World War II era, so did the main institutions of the Soviet-Type-Economy. Although the experience of communist rule, with the exception of North Korea and Cuba, can now be written in the past tense, its legacies in terms of industrial structure, economic geography, institutions, and possibly behavioral patterns, have continued to be felt in the post-transition eras. The purpose of this essay is to provide a historical background and comparative analysis of the Soviet and Soviet-Type-Economies which emerged in the 20th century, with an emphasis on the enterprise level.
Martin Kragh is a researcher at the Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies. Kragh defended his PhD at the Stockholm School of Economics in 2009, and has since published on topics such as the economic history of Russia and the USSR, history of economic thought and policy, and the contemporary economic and political development in Russia and Ukraine. His most recent publication is the book project A History of Russia: From Alexander II to Vladimir Putin (in Swedish). Previous articles have appeared in journals such as Europe-Asia Studies and Journal of History of Economic Thought.
12 feb Ivan Timofeev ”Russia and Public Diplomacy”. Ordförande: Li Bennich-Björkman. Språk: engelska.
This talk will deal with current Russian public diplomacy. It will be taken from the point of view and the experience of the Russian International Affairs Council, which is a recent organisation that was created to engage in public diplomacy beyond the formal governmental structures.
Ivan Timofeev has been a Program Director at the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) since 2011. He is responsible for the intellectual performance of RIAC, managing its programs and projects. His personal background at RIAC includes working with Russian and foreign diplomats, governmental officials, experts, businessmen and NGO-leaders regarding Russia’s foreign policy and public diplomacy. Before joining RIAC, Ivan was the Head of Analytical Monitoring Center at MGIMO-University (2009-2011). There he designed and implemented the methodology of local conflicts’ event-analysis, providing with analytical materials Russian MFA and other governmental institutions. Since 2006, he has been teaching at MGIMO-University, with a special focus on methodology courses. In Russia and abroad, he is known as a co-author of “Political Atlas of the Modern World” and its five indices as well as an author of non-linear analysis of military expenditures of the leading powers. Ivan was awarded a doctoral degree in Political Science at MGIMO-University in 2006. He has a Master of Arts in Society and Politics (Lancaster University and Central European University, 2003) and BA in Sociology (Saint-Petersburg State University, 2002). He is an author and co-author of more than 50 publications, issued in Russian and foreign academic press. He provides commentary to Russia Today, Voice of Russia, Radio-Kommersant, Russia Beyond the Headlines and other media.
13 feb (OBS! kl. 13.30-15.30) Project launch seminar: "Building Sustainable Opposition in Electoral Authoritarian Regimes". Participants: Sofie Bedford, Laurent Vinatier, Leila Alieva and Alexei Pikulik. Download event description for information. The number of seats is limited so please send an email to sofie.bedford@ucrs.uu.se to sign up.
17 feb Igor Torbakov (UCRS): ”Russia and Ukraine: Imperial Legacy and Post-Imperial Unmixing of Peoples”. Ordförande: Elena Namli. Språk: engelska.
At the center of the seminar's discussion is an essay "'This Is a Strife of Slavs among Themselves': Understanding Russian-Ukrainian Relations as the Conflict of Contested Identities" that has been published as a chapter in an edited volume The Maidan Uprising, Separatism and Foreign Intervention: Ukraine's Complex Transition. Eds. Klaus Bachmann & Igor Lyubashenko (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2014). The talk will investigate how contested identities affect bilateral relations. Two interconnected questions will be explored: 1) in what way did the pre-1991 Russian-Ukrainian interaction prepare the ground for the clash of identities? and 2) which practices employed by both sides during the post-independence period helped reinforce the conflict potential, putting the two Slavic neighbors on a collision course?
Igor Torbakov is a Senior Fellow at the Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies and at the Center for Baltic and East European Studies at Södertörn University. A trained historian, he specializes in Russian and Eurasian history and politics. He was a Research Scholar at the Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow; a Visiting Scholar at the Kennan Institute (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars) in Washington DC; a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University; a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University; a Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study; Senior Fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs in Helsinki; and a Visiting Fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin. He holds an MA in History from Moscow State University and a PhD from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. His recent publications discussed the history of Russian nationalism, the linkages between Russia’s domestic politics and foreign policy, Russian-Ukrainian relations, and the politics of history and memory wars in Eastern Europe.
24 feb Saulius Grybkauskas (Vilnius): "How Lithuanian Communists Overcame Stalin? The Roots of Communist Secession from CPSU in Lithuania in 1989". Ordförande: Li Bennich-Björkman. Språk: engelska.
According to Stalin the Communist organizations of soviet republics had to be a glue against formal legal right and possible will of republics to leave the Soviet Union. The Lithuanian Communist party was the first one seceded from the CPSU at a time when the Soviet Union still very much existed. This political step enabled Lithuanian nomenklatura to join the Lithuanian national movement and participate in political live after the state independent was reached. In his talk Grybkauskas will examine roots of this secession by revealing nomenklatura networks, soviet center-republic relations and national identity of titular nomenklatura. He will try to reveal difference between nomenklatura clan and consolidated nomenklatura in Lithuania during late soviet period using personal networks, krugovaia poruka and trust concepts. He argues that 1) Lithuanian soviet nomenklatura obligation against the Moscow to drain out political forms of nationalism in the republic led to functionalism in its leadership: a nomenklatura member had to be not just trusted person to the first secretary or his family member but active manager able to deal with political, social and economic problems in the republic, 2) low status (in comparison) of soviet Lithuania leader in all-Union institutions led to kind of diarchy in the republic were political power was shared between the first and second secretaries of Central Committee of Lithuanian Communist party. These circumstances made soviet Lithuanian nomenklatura network rather horizontal than hierarchical and vertical. This feature of network could help us explain why Lithuanian Communist party became the first one which declared secession from Communist Party of Soviet Union (in 1989).
Saulius Grybkauskas is senior research fellow in Lithuanian Institute of History and Vilnius University. He has more than 15 years’ experience of research in Soviet history, focusing on national conflicts in a centralized command economy and multi-national state. His PhD dissertation (defended in 2007) resulted in a book on the management of Soviet industry, analyzing conflicts over ideology and power among groups with an identity defined technologically (engineers) or ideologically (party leaders, KGB informers). As a Fulbright scholar he spent seven months of the 2012/13 academic year at Stanford University. He has continued to work on centre-periphery problems in the Soviet empire in a book project (to be published by the end of 2015) on the “second secretaries” of communist parties in the Soviet republics, appointed from the Kremlin to ensure Moscow‘s will in the periphery.
3 mar Carolina Vendil Pallin (FOI): “Russia’s Military Reform – The Outlook in 2015”. Ordförande: Stefan Hedlund. Språk: engelska.
After the war in Georgia in August 2008, Russia launched a major restructuring of its Armed Forces. Military reform had been on the agenda since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but under the relatively new minister of defence, Anatolii Serdiukov, the Russian Armed Forces were rapidly transformed from a mass-mobilization army into one with units with high readiness. This, together with increased defence spending, has resulted in an increased Russian military capability.
In order to carry out a military reform you need to have political will, military know-how outside the MoD and an institutional framework that keeps the reform on track. Serdiukov’s reforms did not constitute the first attempt at military reform in the Russian Federation and could not have carried out his reform without a strong political will in the Kremlin to back him up. However, just as before, the political institutions remain week. Russian military reform will probably not reach all of the goals set out in 2008, but Russia is set on increasing its military power and will succeed in doing so primarily by prioritising defence expenditure in the national budget.
Carolina Vendil Pallin is Deputy Research Director at the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI), where she heads the Russia Programme. She holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics. Her previous positions include Senior Research Fellow at the Swedish Institute for International Affairs, where she headed the research programme “Russia and Its Neighbours”, and Expert Advisor for the Swedish Defence Commission. Among her latest publications are “Russian Military Capability in a Ten-Year Perspective” – 2013 (co-edited with J. Hedenskog, FOI, 2013), “Russian Domestic Politics and the Internet in 2012” (with Ulrik Franke, FOI 2012), “The Russian Armed Forces in Transition” (co-edited with R. McDermott and B. Nygren, Routledge, 2011) and Russian Military Reform (Routledge 2008). She is a Fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences since 2010.
10 mar Bokpresentation av Julie Hansens bok: ”Punishment as a Crime? Perspectives on Prison Experience in Russian Culture.” Språk: engelska. Ordförande: Elena Namli
At the seminar, Julie Hansen will present the new book Punishment as a Crime? Perspective on Prison Experience in Russian Culture, edited by Julie Hansen and Andrei Rogatchevski, published in Acta Upsalenisis Universitatis Uppsala Series on Eastern Europe. This collection of articles offers new perspectives on the phenomenon of prison experience in Russia and beyond, drawing upon both factual and fictional source material. A number of scholarly approaches inform the chapters of this volume, coming from literary and cultural studies, film and gender studies, philosophy, psychology, and economic history. The book’s first part, entitled “Prison Realities,” provides a factual overview of conditions of forced labor and confinement during the Stalin and Putin eras. The second, “Reactions and Representations,” examines a number of cultural responses to prison experience in Russia, from the nineteenth through the twenty-first century. The third, “Comparative Dimensions,” broadens the focus to include accounts of prison experience originating from contexts outside Russia. The book contains contributions from Helena Goscilo, Andrea Gullotta, Martin Kragh, Inessa Medzhibovskaya, Andrei Rogatchevski, Igor Sutyagin and Sarah J. Young.
17 mar Matthew Kott (UCRS): “Constructing the 'Gypsy' Other in the Latvian Press before 1945”. Ordförande: Li Bennich-Björkman. Språk: engelska.
Taking advantage of the research opportunity provided by the ongoing digitisation of historical newspapers by the National Library of Latvia, this presentation will present the preliminary results of a pilot analysis of antiziganistic stereotypes in the Latvian-language press for the period prior to the end of World War II, i.e. up to and including the Romani genocide under the Nazis. The various ways in which the ideational "Gypsy" has been othered will be discussed, linking the historical discourse in Latvia more closely with the general history of European antiziganism that has been heretofore acknowledged.
Matthew Kott holds a PhD in history and is a researcher at the UCRS. Among his interests are: contemporary history, history of ideas, Baltic Sea Region, Baltic states, Scandinavia, Germany, Russia/Soviet Union, civil society, ideologies and political movements, occupation regimes, political mass violence, Romani minorities, majority-minority relations, historical memory, and public history.
19 mar Kalle Kniivilä ”Det ryska imperiets återkomst”. Ordförande: Elena Namli. Språk: engelska.
I Ryssland ledde annekteringen av Krim för ett år sedan till en aldrig tidigare skådad våg av patriotisk hysteri. Kritiken från omvärlden sågs som kvitto på att Ryssland hade agerat rätt och stoppat en västlig aggression. Erövringen av Krim hade i en handvändning blivit en symbol för Rysslands återställda stormaktsstatus. För många Krimbor är Putins Ryssland i själva verket drömmen om Sovjetunionen, om en gyllene tidsålder som aldrig funnits.
Kalle Kniivilä, journalist på Sydsvenskan, som i dagarna släppt boken "Krim tillhör oss – Imperiets återkomst" på Atlas förlag, berättar hur drömmen om imperiet skickligt utnyttjas av de ryska makthavarna.
24 mar Ann-Sofi Dahl “Swedish Security in the Baltic Sea Region Post-Crimea”. Ordförande: Stefan Hedlund. Språk: engelska.
The aggressive Russian behavior in the last few years, with the annexation of Crimea and the attack on Ukraine a year ago, has been a wake-up call for the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea region. Nonaligned Sweden and Finland find themselves in a particularly vulnerable position in this regard, with a large amount of Russian military incursions into their waters and airspace but without the protection of NATOs Article Five. How has the new security environment affected Sweden, and how has the country responded to the new security challenges? These and other issues will be discussed at the seminar.
Ann-Sofie Dahl, PhD and Associate Professor, is Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Military Studies in Copenhagen and an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC. Her main research topics include Nordic-Baltic security, NATO, Swedish and Nordic foreign and security policy, and transatlantic relations. Dr. Dahl is also a columnist and regular contributor in the Swedish and Danish media.
26 mar Kaarel Piirimäe (University of Tartu): “Foreign Minister Lennart Meri and the Creation of Estonian Foreign Policy, 1990-92”. Ordförande: Li Bennich-Björkman. Språk: engelska.
As we are marking the 25th anniversary of the beginning of Estonian foreign policy, it is fitting to analyse the turning points, or “critical junctures,” during that formative period, which influenced Estonian strategies on the international scene for years to come. One of the key decisions that appear to have been crucial was the agreement, in early 1990, to rest Estonian foreign policy on the historical and legal conception of the continuity of the Republic of Estonia since 1918, and to negotiate with the Soviet Union on the basis of the Treaty of Tartu of 1920.
According to Hussein Banai, “state sanctioned diplomacy... is in large measure the practice of mediating state-sanctioned histories.” There is the commonly accepted proposition that diplomacy of any sovereign state must rest on a single core conception of that state’s history. However, the processes by which such conception is formed, sanctioned by the state and translated into sovereign diplomacy are not well understood. The construction of Estonian foreign policy in 1990-1991 is an interesting case, as the legitimacy of state institutions, including the embryonic foreign ministry, was contested, and multiple actors were claiming to represent the Estonian nation at the international stage. The seminar will offer an historical in depth analysis of the construction of sovereign diplomacy, by marking the main debates about the nation’s history, the historical narratives underlining different foreign-policy strategies, and the key compromises that were made to create an undivided foreign policy.
Kaarel Piirimäe (PhD University of Cambridge 2009) is Professor of Military History at the Estonian National Defence College and Research Fellow at the Institute of History and Archaeology, University of Tartu. He is currently also a research fellow at the Institute of Contemporary History, University of Turku. He has written extensively on the role of the Baltic question in international politics during the Second World War and the early Cold War period. He has published a monograph Roosevelt, Churchill and the Baltic Question: Allied Relations during the Second World War (Palgrave MacMillan 2014) and co-edited The Baltic Sea Region and the Cold War (Peter Lang 2012) and The Second World War and the Baltic States (Peter Lang 2014). At the time he is involved with an Academy of Finland Research Project “Reimagining Futures,” studying the beginning of Estonian foreign policy in the late 1980s and the early 1990s.
31 mar Kataryna Wolchuk (University of Birmingham): “In a Cross-Fire of Integration: Ukraine between the EU and Russia”. Ordförande: Li Bennich-Björkman. Språk: engelska.
Both the EU and Russia have been pursuing hegemonic region-building projects in the post-Soviet space. While the EU offers Association Agreements with Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA), Russia has sought to attract Ukraine join the Eurasian Economic Union. The seminar will examine the intrinsic features of these projects and Ukraine’s positioning between them. Now Ukraine’s European path seems to be asserted in the aftermath of the Maidan and punitive measures inflicted by Russia (annexation of Crimea and the war in Eastern Ukraine). However, as will be argued the integration rivalry is far from over. The seminar will discuss the fate of the Association Agreement and Russia’s attempts to re-shape Ukraine’s integration with the EU.
Kataryna Wolczuk is Reader in Politics and International Studies at the Centre for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies (CREES), the University of Birmingham. She holds an MA in Law from the University of Gdansk, Poland, an MSocSc and a PhD from the University of Birmingham. She has been a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence and a visiting professor at the University of Lucerne. Her research has focused on the state-building process in the post-Soviet states; relations between the European Union and the post-Soviet states as well as Eurasian integration and its impact on EU's eastern policy. Her current research projects examine: 1) the impact of the EU on domestic change in the Eastern Partnership countries and 2) Eurasian economic integration and its implications for the ‘common neighbourhood’ with the EU. Kataryna stays in Uppsala mid-March to mid-April. During her research visit, Kataryna is completing a book In a Cross-Fire of Integration: EU, Ukraine and Russia (co-authored with Rilka Dragneva) to be published by Routledge Pivot in the summer 2015.
INSTÄLLT 7 apr Heidi Kjærnet (NUPI): "Petroleum, Politics and Power: The National Oil Companies of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan". Ordförande: Stefan Hedlund. Språk: engelska.
9 apr Boklansering av Dominika Borg Janssons bok "Modern Slavery. A Comparative Study of the Definition of Trafficking in Persons". Språk: engelska. Ordförande: Stefan Hedlund.
LL.D. Dominika Borg Jansson will present her recently released book on human trafficking "Modern Slavery. A Comparative Study of the Definition of Trafficking in Persons" (Brill/Nijhoff, 2014). The presentation will be followed by a post-seminar where refreshments will be served. The number of seats is limited so please send an email to Dominika Borg Jansson dominika.borg@ucrs.uu.se to sign up. Please feel free to forward this invitation to others who might be interested in attending.
Dominika Borg Jansson is PostDoc researcher at the Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies. She is currently working with a project on trafficking and human rights financed by the Swedish Crime Victim Compensation and Support Authority.
14 apr Susanna Rabow-Edling (UCRS): "Nationalism and Imperialism in Russian Pre-Revolutionary Liberal Thought". Ordförande: Elena Namli. Språk: engelska.
Liberalism in Russia has very little public support and has become a peripheral phenomenon in the country’s political and social life. Russian liberals are regarded as unpatriotic and accused of being agents of Western powers. But this has not always been the case. In late imperial Russia, liberalism was a powerful movement, in fact the only political force the regime truly feared. This was also a period in Russian history when issues of empire and nation were of real concern. The seminar will discuss Peter Struve, the prominent liberal nationalist of the first Russian liberal party (The Cadets) and the way he tried to combine nationalism, imperialism and liberalism to create a Great Russia.
Susanna Rabow-Edling (PhD, Docent) is an Associate Professor in Political Science at Uppsala University and a Senior Research Fellow at the Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies. She is an expert in the field of nationalist thought and has published a monograph, Slavophile Thought and the Politics of Cultural Nationalism (SUNY Press, 2006) and several articles on both cultural and liberal nationalism in Russia. In addition to nationalism and liberalism, she has an interest in gender and imperial history. Her recent book, Married to the Empire. Three Governor’s Wives in Russian America 1829-1864, is forthcoming on Alaska University Press later this year. Her current project deals with nationalism and imperialism in Russian liberal thought.
21 apr Ann-Mari Sätre (UCRS), Ηanna Söderbaum (Institution för ekonomisk historia) och Ildiko Asztalos Morell (UCRS): “Attitudes, Poverty and Agency in Russia and Ukraine”. Ordförande: Stefan Hedlund. Språk: engelska.
At the seminar, Ann-Mari Sätre will introduce the Special issue 'Attitudes, Poverty and Agency in Russia and Ukraine', edited by Ann-Mari Sätre and Ildikó Asztalos Morell, published in Debatte: Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, Volume 22, Issue 3, 2014. Then Hanna Söderbaum will present her contribution, on Ukrainian political-economical elites and poverty reduction efforts. Finally, Ildikó Asztalos Morell will make some comments based on Hungarian experiences. One of the main ideas behind this special issue was to trace continuities from the Soviet time to post-Soviet Russia. There are many similarities between Russia and Ukraine, indicating such a continuation. Russia and Ukraine had a lot in common in terms of culture, language and history, partly also because of their common origin. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, however the two independent countries chose different routes of development. This makes it possible to distinguish between the effects of politics/reforms on the one hand, and impacts from the Soviet system, on the other. After some more or less chaotic development paths in the 1990s, showing clear differences between the two countries, and before the contemporary conflict broke out in Eastern Ukraine (2013), they had once again more similarities in terms of political leadership and policies in general. Two articles are on Ukraine and five on two regions in Russia: Nizhny Novgorod and Archangelsk. Two of the articles concern attitudes towards poverty and poor people (Varyzgina & Kay; Ryabchuk). Two concern strategies of the poor (Asztalos Morell & Tiurikova; Sätre, Soldatkin & Varyzgina), while three of the articles focus on policies against poverty (Ivashinenko; Kostiuchenko & Söderbaum; Sätre).
Ann-Mari Sätre, Associate Professor in Economics, is specialized in the structure and performance of the Soviet/Russian economy. She is a senior lecturer/researcher at the Centre of Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University. Her current research focuses on poverty, local development and women’s work in Russia. Her most recent articles include: ‘Paid and Unpaid Social Work in Russia. Is Women’s Social Work opening up Opportunities for Empowerment Processes?’, International Social Work, Volume 57, Number 5, 2014: 523-534 and ‘Women in Local Politics in Second Russia: Coping with Poverty and Strategies for Development’, Eastern European Countryside. Volume 20, Number 1, 2014: 27-53.
Hanna Söderbaum is a PhD Candidate at the department of Economic History at Uppsala University. Her research focuses on the growth of giving, or “philanthropy”, among the political and business elites in post-Soviet Ukraine. Her dissertation explores the self-representation and deeds of the initiated giving organisations. Her research interests include Wealthy Elites, Oligarchs, Post-Soviet transformation and Corporate Social Responsibility. Currently, she is working on a media study of the framing of Ukrainian oligarchs before and after the Maidan demonstrations in Ukrainian and Russian newspapers.
Ildikó Asztalos Morell is Associate Professor in Sociology at Mälardalen University as well as senior research fellow at the Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies. Her research interests cover gender studies, the study of rural transition including agrarian production forms and processes of social marginalization. Her main research focus is on Hungary during and after state socialism. Her major publication is: Emancipation’s Dead-End Roads: Studies in the formation and development of the Hungarian model for Gender and Agriculture 1956-1988 (1999). She has been co-editor of several comparative volumes: Gender regimes, citizen participation and agricultural restructuring (2008), Gender transitions in Russia and Eastern Europe (2005) and Bilden av ingenjören (2013).
28 apr (OBS! Tid och plats: kl.16:15-18:00 på Museum Gustavianum, Auditorium Minus) Panelsamtal "Utmaningar inom internationell diplomati och folkrätt i ljuset av Ukrainakrisen". Medverkande: Sven Hirdman, Rolf Ekéus och Inger Österdahl. Moderator: Elena Namli. Språk: svenska. Anmälan: Jevgenija Gehsbarga jevgenija.gehsbarga@ucrs.uu.se. Mer information: Elena Namli elena.namli@ucrs.uu.se.
Den dramatiska utvecklingen i samband med Ukrainakrisen kräver ställningstaganden som präglas av eftertanke, ansvar och långsiktighet. Maktskiftet i Kiev, Rysslands annektering av Krim liksom den akuta militära konflikten i Östra Ukraina sätter olika politiska och diplomatiska strategier på prov och påkallar en kritisk omprövning av olika agendor.
Vad är hållbara strategier i en sådan internationell kris? Hur bör folkrätten tolkas och implementeras i en konflikt som den i Ukraina? Vilka har ansvar för utvecklingen och hur ska ansvaret förvaltas?
Under ett panelsamtal kommer dessa högst aktuella frågor att relateras till den generella utvecklingen och de samtida utmaningarna inom internationell politik och folkrätt.
Vad säger utvecklingen i Ukraina om den nya expansiva tolkningen av Responsibility to protect? Var går gränsen för statssuveränitet enligt folkrätten och dess olika uttolkare? Vad har vi lärt oss om sanktionernas innebörd och verkan? Hur ska internationell diplomati utformas?
Dessa och andra frågor kommer att diskuteras under ett panelsamtal anordnat av Uppsala Centrum för Rysslandsstudier i samarbete med Svenska institutet för internationell rätt och Uppsala Forum för demokrati, fred och rättvisa.
5 maj (NB! Föreläsningssal 2, 1 vån) Professor Iulian Chifu: "International Relations and Security Dimensions of the Ukraine Crisis: A Romanian Perspective". Ordförande: Li Bennich-Björkman. Språk: engelska.
Ukraine events with the annexation of Crimea and the hybrid war in Eastern districts of Luhansk and Donetsk are far more than the threat and rivalry between Russia and its former unional republic: it proves a change in the format of the international relations, challenges to the post world war of the rules of the game and a signal that Russia wants back as a super-power with its sphere of influence in the post-soviet space and integrative institutions. It is also a part of a plan to remake the Soviet Union in a different form but also to make a better position in the negotiations to come for the global governance, where the US, China and even the EU are far better places to negotiate.
Iulian Chifu is an associated professor at the National School of Political and Administrative Studies Bucharest. He is the founder of the Conflict Prevention and Early Warning Centre Bucharest. Since 2011 he is the Presidential Councillor for Strategic Affairs and International Security of the Romanian President. He acted as Advisor for Foreign Policy, Security and Defence of the Vice-President of the Romanian Senate (2006-2011). He was Professor at the National School for Political and Administrative Studies (2000-2005). He was Advisor of the President of the Iasi House of Health Insurances (1998-2000), researcher and journalist (1991-1998), including correspondent of the BBC World Service, Romanian Service (1991-1995). He is specialised in Conflict Analysis, Crisis Decision making and the post-Soviet Space. He is a the member of the board of the Centre for Energy and Resource Security - EUCERS at King’s College London, UK, member in the International Advisory committee of the Journal CBRNE-Terrorism-Newsletter, Athens, Greece, member of the Coordination Council of the Romanian Transatlantic Committee Casa NATO. He is author and co-author of more than 30 books on conflicts, crisis, post-soviet space and energy security.
12 maj Vera Tolz (UK): ”The Great War and the Politics of Memory in Contemporary Russia”. Ordförande: Elena Namli. Språk: engelska.
This lecture considers what the fluctuations of history politics around the Great War and the post-war conflict tell us about Russian national-building projects and the ideological underpinnings of the current political regime? Tolz compares and contrasts two interrelated Russian media campaigns. The first campaign, focusing on the plight of Soviet POWs of the Soviet-Polish War (1919-1921) began soon after the collapse of the USSR. In the first decade of the new millennium this campaign received the backing of the Kremlin, but from 2010 onwards, the attention of the top political leadership switched to 'reclaiming' the memory of the Great War itself. At first glance the two campaigns promote strikingly different historical narratives. The lecture argues, however, that both campaigns share a range of common ideological assumptions and both are influenced by the Kremlin's consistent overestimation of the potential impact of top-down campaigns and of the power of a national government to shape collective memories.
Vera Tolz is Sir William Mather Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Manchester (UK). She holds a PhD in Russian and East European Studies (Birmingham, 1993). Her research areas include modern Russian cultural and intellectual history, nationalism and identity politics in post-communist Russia and Eastern Europe, the politics of culture in the Soviet Union, and translation from and into Russian.
19 maj Leonid Polishchuk (UCRS): "Transformative Experience of War and Cultural Transmission: Soviet WWII Veterans and Their Descendants". Ordförande: Stefan Hedlund. Språk: engelska.
Norms and values are shaped by historic milestones – wars, crises, revolutions, etc. Existential experience of such “natural experiments” is sustained across generations by the process of value transmission which occurs in large part within families. Such cultural path dependency enables social scientist to study value shifts that had occurred decades and even centuries ago by using contemporary data. We employ this approach to describe the impact of combat experience in WWII on the norms and values of Soviet war veterans. Some historians argue that for many in the Red Army the war was a unique “window of freedom” which cultivated autonomy, personal dignity, capacity for collective action, public awareness and other civic virtues. Similar ideas resonate throughout the post-war Soviet literature, and especially “the lieutenants’” poetry and prose. However there was no rigorous empirical confirmation of such value shift, and the paper fills such gap. It uses data from a 2013 survey where Russians were asked about their views and attitudes as well as to whether they are descendants of WWII veterans. Veterans’ children and grandchildren have turned to have, ceteris paribus, more pro-social and liberal values and displayed higher levels of civic culture and other stripes of social capital. Such differences are highly statistically significant and disappear in “placebo” groups. Our findings contradict the stereotypical view of Soviet WWII veterans as bearers of paternalistic and conservative ideology. In fact, direct descendants of the veterans belong to a more liberal and civic part of today’s Russian society.
Leonid Polishchuk is a researcher at the Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies who has held academic positions at Novosibirsk University (Russia), University of British Columbia (Canada), California Institute of Technology and the University of Maryland (US), and the New Economic School and the Higher School of Economics (Russia). His research interests are in institutional economics, social capital, economic and political transformations, public choice and political economy.
20 maj (kl. 14:15-16:00) Andrzej Rychard (Polen): “Polish society and institutions: Has transformation been completed?” Ordförande: Hedvig Ekerwald. Språk: engelska. OBS! Plats: Engelska parken, Thunbergsv. 3H, Torgny Segerstedt-room (2-1026). Seminariet arrangeras i samarbete med UCRS och Sociologiska institutionen (Uppsala universitet).
The presentation deals with the sociological overview of the changes introduced in Poland during last 25 years. The author adopts an evolutionary perspective enabling us to compare the dynamics of changes in the political, economic and social life. One of the issues analyzed is the level of consolidation of the democratic, market and civil society institutions. The author presents empirical data showing better economic than political consolidation processes and their relationship with the peculiar structure of social capital in Poland. As a conclusion, the thesis on the completion of the current stage of transformation is presented. This means that the current model of “transformative promise” seems to be already exhausted.
Andrzej Rychard, born 1951, Ph.D in Sociology 1978, Polish Academy of Sciences. Professor, Director of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Main areas of research: sociology of political and economic institutions, post-communist transformation. Among latest publications: “The Legacy of Polish Solidarity“, co-edited, Peter Lang Edition, Frankfurt am Main, 2015.
21 maj Yelena Furman "Russian-American Fiction: Negotiating the Hyphen". Ordförande: Stefan Hedlund. Språk: engelska.
This talk focuses on contemporary Russian-American writers: Russian-Jewish immigrants in the United States who write in English on Russian-related themes, most notably their immigrant experiences. Because these writers live in North America and produce English-language works, critics tend to treat this fiction as belonging to the American and/or the Jewish-American tradition, while downplaying its Russian component. Yet both these writers’ own views and the nature of their fictional output contradict such a reading. In essays and interviews, these writers consistently self-identify not as Americans, and certainly not as American Jews, but rather as specifically Russian-Jewish immigrants who live in America, to which they have successfully adapted. What is at play here is the idea of hybridity: these writers see themselves – and create protagonists who see themselves – as belonging to Russian and American cultures simultaneously. Thus, a different understanding of Russian-American fiction and its creators is required, one that does not align them with any single literary or cultural tradition. Rather, they should be seen as carving out a new cultural and literary space. They are not Russian, they are not American, but they are precisely their own, hybrid category: Russian-American, reflecting Homi Bhabha’s idea of a “third space” of identity.
Yelena Furman is a Lecturer in the Department of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her areas of interest include contemporary Russian and Russian-American literature and feminist theory. She has published articles on hybridity in Russian-American fiction, writing the body in Russian women’s fiction and film, and on Virginia Woolf’s collaboration on translating Dostoevsky.
26 maj Leo Granberg, Ann-Mari Sätre and Igor Shagalov "Governments meet civil society? Institutionalized community initiatives in Russia". Ordförande: Stefan Hedlund. Språk: engelska.
The seminar is about local development initiatives in some Russian regions in recent years. Russia still has Soviet-type NGOs, which play a role in local society. Local political representation takes place through deputies, who mediate between people and state power. It seems, however, evident that local problems cannot be solved in a satisfying way through these mechanisms. Presentations handle these questions and take up experiences from new local initiatives. It is of essential interest to touch upon territorial self-governed organizations, established by citizens at their place of residence with or without government support. Ann-Mari Sätre will deal with the role of deputies in local development, and present the rapidly increasing TOS–project activities in the Archangelsk Oblast. These are self-governed organizations at the local level (Territoryalnoe Obshestvennoe Samoypravlenye). Then Leo Granberg will present some results of an action research, which was carried out in the Karelian Republic. The research was connected to a local development experiment, and gave results, among others, of how participatory democracy works in Russian local circumstances and what kind of questions local society can solve. The analysis is part of his fresh book (2015). Finally, Igor Shagalov deals with the current state of territorial self-government communities within the local government (TOS), their contribution into well-being of the local citizens. Based on empirical data, received in the city of Kirov, he provides answers to the following questions: which position do these organizations take in the city development; where is the borderline between such an organization and the local government; whether such organizations have any advantages over the municipal government and what their sources are; why do residents establish these communities; what are conditions for their existence?
Leo Granberg (professor of rural studies in social sciences at the University of Helsinki 2005-13) is scholar at the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Russian Studies, University of Helsinki, and visiting researcher in Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies. He has studied rural development in former socialist countries.
Ann-Mari Sätre, Associate Professor in Economics, is specialized in the structure and performance of the Soviet/Russian economy. Her current research focuses on poverty, local development and women’s work in Russia.
Igor Shagalov is a PhD Candidate and lecturer at the department of management and marketing at Vyatka State University. His current research focuses on local development, social capital, nonprofit organizations and the quality of governance in Russia. His dissertation explores the efficiency of territorial public self-government communities in Russia.
2 jun Frans Jorna (University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands): "Images of corruption in Poland: can quick value shifts occur?". Ordförande: Li Bennich-Björkman. Språk: engelska.
The reasons behind the decrease in corruption levels are to a large extent unknown. Explanations abound, but none of these seem to offer conclusive answers (De Graaf, von Maravić & Wagenaar2010; Grindle 2012; Quah ed. 2013). The sudden emergence of corruption, on the other hand, has been explained quite well (Misangyi, Weaver & Elms 2008; Bajohr 2001). It appears to be changes in the prevailing political ideology that can cause sudden surges in corruption.
The paper explores Poland’s apparent success in fighting corruption over the last few years, and tries to establish its causes. This is done by applying Hoetjes’ categorization of social values to map changes in notions of corruption, using methodological triangulation for each of these sources. The working hypothesis is that changes in the prevailing political ideology have been responsible for diminishing corruption in this case, in the exact same way they caused sudden surges in corruption in several notorious instances in the past.
Frans Jorna is professor of Governance at Saxion University (Enschede, NL). Between 2009 and 2012, he worked as a professor of Governance at the Lower Silesian College for the Public Service 'Asesor' in Wroclaw, Poland. Having studied in that city from 1992 to 1994 and returning as a visiting scholar ever since, he personally witnessed the transition from a post-communist society to a country strongly rooted in the EU. One of the phenomena that struck him most is the transformation in the way which Polish society deals with corruption, and what that says about post-communism, the soviet legacy, CEE democracies and Central European societies. In his contribution, Frans Jorna will look at this value-shift through the lense of Bo Rothstein's “Big Bang Theory”.
9 jun Julia Mannherz (University of Oxford): "Everyday Music-Making and Identities in Russian History and Culture". Ordförande: Elena Namli. Språk: engelska.
This talk analyzes how everyday activities - and in particular amateur music making - contribute to the construction of social identities. As educated Russians became interested in folksong in the late eighteenth century, a musical idiom that had previously been reserved to villages, streets or taverns, made its way into urban salons. In the new setting, this music was adapted to meet norms of social propriety, it reflected changing commercial developments, and it became a focal point in debates about what it meant to be Russian.
Julia Mannherz is associate professor of modern European history at the University of Oxford and Oriel College. Her research focuses on Russian cultural history of the nineteenth- and twentieth centuries. Her book "Modern Occultism in Late Imperial Russia" (Northern Illinois University Press 2012) analyzes the widespread fascination with the supernatural in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Russia and its role in contemporary discussions about science, folklore, literature and theology. Currently, she is editing a volume devoted to conceptions of "the irrational" in Russian culture; and she is developing a research project on amateur music making.