Ost¦Est Talk:
The Instrumentalisation of the Past and Political Mobilisation
The Painful Experiences of the Balkans and the Post-Soviet Space
Launch of Euxeinos special issue No. 29 (July 2020)
with Cécile Druey (University of Bern) and the guest authors Aleksandra Sekulić, Olesya Khromeychuk, Malkhaz Toria, Ekaterina Klimenko and Iryna Eihelson
Wed, 30 September 2020, 12h30
Watch the recording on Facebook
‘How did the past create the present?’ – This would be the usual question for historians who strive for a most accurate possible reproduction of what has happened in the past and seek to understand how past events are connected to the present. In the present volume of Euxeinos, we propose, however, to turn the question the other way around, looking at history and historiography not as something given, but as a product of a specific political context.
‘How did the present create the past?’ is therefore the guiding question for the contributors to the special issue and interlocutors of this Ost|Est Talk. In the post-Soviet space and the Balkans, memories of historical events are repeatedly instrumentalised for the purposes of nationalist mobilisation and repression, often against the background of armed conflicts. The present collection of articles sheds light on the topic from the perspective of Ukrainian, Russian, Georgian, Serbian and Western European specialists from research and practice in historical politics and conflict and peace research. The authors pay special attention not only to the political instrumentalisation of history in its respective political context, but also to the role that civil society, research and education can play in mobilising for, but also defusing conflicts and historical-political disputes.
The authors will be present at the Ost|Est Talk:
Aleksandra Sekulić, PhD candidate in Theory of Art and Media at the Faculty of Media and Communications, Belgrade (Serbia) and programme director at the Centre for Cultural Decontamination (CZKD) in Belgrade
Olesya Khromeychuk, Teaching Fellow in Modern European History at King’s College London
Malkhaz Toria, associate professor of history and the director of the “Memory Study Centre in the Caucasus” at Ilia State University (Tbilisi, Georgia)
Ekaterina Klimenko, PhD Candidate at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences
Iryna Eihelson (Brunova-Kalisetska), PhD in Psychology, facilitator of different dialogue projects, e.g. “Ukrainian action: Healing the past”