Call for Contributions: Anthology: Soviet Cultural and Education Policy 

Deadline: April 28, 2024

Anthology: Soviet Cultural and Education Policy | H-Soz-Kult

After 1989, the Western narrative of the triumph of free-market capitalism and liberal democracy spread rapidly, along with the promise of prosperity for more and more people. However, since the global crises from 2007 onward, it has become clear that the liberal vision of the end of history has not been realized. The economization of the former socialist states did not lead to an increase in living standards, on overage, these have declined significantly and were largely deindustrialized to the advantage of the leading economies. This has in many cases been associated with political crises and the rise of right-wing governments. Therefore, a renewed thinking about alternatives to the present organization of society gains once again actuality.

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CFP: Belarusian Visual Culture in the 21st Century

Deadline: June 1, 2024

We are inviting essay submissions for an edited volume on contemporary visual culture of Belarus. The volume is projected to have 12-14 chapters (5000-6000 words each) on Belarusian visual culture divided in three parts: early 2000s, 2010s, and post-2020 visual culture. The volume is expected to have color illustrations and to feature interviews with contemporary artists, filmmakers, and cultural figures.

Submissions on all aspects of Belarusian visual culture are encouraged, including, but not limited to: art history; all aspects of visual arts and art spaces; photography; visual aspects of social media; television and media studies; theatre and cinema studies; dance studies; street art and folk art; protest visual culture and visual art as testimony; independent and official art. 

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CFP: Geopolitics of Eurasian Crossroads? Transformations, Challenges and Development Paths (Yerevan State University, Armenia)

Deadline: May 31, 2024

Call for Abstracts 

YSU Conference on Politics and International Affairs
Geopolitics of Eurasian Crossroads? Transformations, Challenges and Development Paths

10-11 October, 2024, Yerevan State University, Yerevan, Armenia

Deadline for abstract submissions: May 31, Yerevan time (GMT+4)

The Faculty of International Relations at Yerevan State University launches its annual conference on politics and international affairs. The 2024 conference is titled “Geopolitics of Eurasian Crossroads? Transformations, Challenges and Development Paths”. Over the last several decades, Eurasia has undergone a tremendous transformation. It witnessed, among other things, the collapse of a superpower and the emergence of new states, nation-building endeavors and integration initiatives, consolidation and fragmentation of sovereignty, the rise of regional powers, financial crises and economic miracles, wars, establishment and development of regional organizations. The conference aims to bring together scholars specializing in Eurasian studies. It will serve as a venue for academic discussions and a meeting point for scholars to present their current research, discover common academic interests and discuss ideas for potential joint research projects?

Applications from all fields of political science are welcome. Presentations can be related, but not limited to the following topics:

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CFP: “Defining Soviet Antisemitism: Everyday Jewish Experiences in the USSR”

Deadline: July 1, 2024

Call for Papers for an Edited Volume

Edited by Paula Chan (All Souls College, University of Oxford) and Irina Rebrova (Center for Research on Antisemitism, Technical University, Berlin)

Antisemitism was a thread that ran through the entire fabric of the Soviet Union. During the interwar period, Bolshevik ideology condemned the persecution of Jews as an evil relic of Imperial Russian rule. Meanwhile, Westerners as prominent as Henry Ford accused the USSR of being a Jewish institution, and Adolf Hitler’s opposition to “Judeo-Bolshevism” drove his vision for a new order in Europe. Upon the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, local antisemitism collided with hostility toward Stalin’s regime, with catastrophic consequences for Jews on Soviet territory. After the end of World War II, the USSR was the first country to recognize the state of Israel. Yet in the years that followed, Soviet leaders embraced discrimination against Jews like never before, even as they insisted that the USSR remained a bastion of anti-antisemitism. Scholars have grappled with the contradictions that surround antisemitism in the Soviet context in different ways. Events such as the prosecution of members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and the Doctor’s Plot have loomed especially large, as have sweeping statements on Soviet responses to what we now call the Holocaust. Much of the literature tends to take Soviet antisemitism for granted – when the victim is Jewish, the repression is antisemitic. Intellectual siloing of Jewish, Soviet, and post-Soviet national studies perpetuate existing gaps in knowledge.

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CFP: The Future of Central and Eastern Europe

Deadline: May 1, 2024

28-29 October 2024, University of Ottawa, Canada

“The Future of Central and Eastern Europe” is a joint interdisciplinary conference organized by the Chair in Slovak History and Culture of the University of Ottawa, Canada, and the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. We encourage a dialogue between scholars, both Central European and international, to explore as broadly as possible the current challenges that Central and Eastern Europe is facing today, and its possible future development. We encourage reflection on all its cultural, social, economic, and political dimensions.

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CFP: Hidden Connections: Eastern Europe through a Comparative Lens – WEast 2024 Dublin Workshop

Deadline: May 6, 2024

 The economic history of Eastern Europe is sometimes written as that of an isolated, peripheral region. In this workshop, we want to emphasise the historical connections between Eastern and Western Europe, as well as to other regions of the world. By reassessing the transnational circulation of people, goods, ideas, techniques, diseases, institutions and other factors, this workshop aims to highlight innovative work that uses new archival data, advanced microdata, or techniques of causal analysis to offer a truly integrated East-West perspective. We also celebrate research that integrates insights and research techniques from multiple disciplines to redefine our understanding of Europe’s complex shared economic, industrial, ideological, and political past.

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CFP:  Baltic Connections 2024: a Conference in Social Science History

Deadline: March 15, 2024

 June 12–14, 2024, University of Jyväskylä, Finland

The submission deadline for the Baltic Connections 2024 conference in Jyväskylä, Finland, has been extended to March 15, 2024.

The fifth Riitta Hjerppe Lecture in Social Science History will be given by Naomi Lamoreaux (Yale University). Additional plenary sessions will be delivered by Matthias Kipping (York University in Canada), and Hanna Kuusi (University of Helsinki).

Conference website and submissions:

https://www.helsinki.fi/en/conferences/baltic-connections

Call for Applications: 2024 Research Training Workshop

Deadline: March 1, 2024

At the Summer Research Laboratory on Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

June 14-15, 2024

Moderators:
Professor Anna Whittington (Department of History, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
Dr. Nataliia Laas (Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs)

Soviet Citizenship in Flux: New Perspectives on Late Socialism and After

The Russian war on Ukraine has raised the question of why the relations between the citizens and the state diverge greatly in different post-Soviet states. This research training workshop starts from the supposition that many of these differences stem from differentiated and unequal practices of citizenship in the late Soviet era. We seek to bring together scholars working across a wide geographic and temporal spectrum, illuminating both differences in the discourses and practices of citizenship and their evolution over time and space. Key themes include the relationship between center and “peripheries”; the tensions between citizenship as conceived by political and cultural elites and citizens; the formation of new rituals and practices to promote belonging; the transformation of citizenship practices at times of upheaval and uncertainty; and the varied and contested legacies of Soviet citizenship across the former Soviet Union. We are especially interested in papers that offer political, social, economic, and ecological perspectives on late socialism and early independence.

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CFP: The 6th Workshop on Business History in Central and Eastern Europe (University of Vienna)

Deadline: April 15, 2024

supported by European Business History Association (EBHA)

Business History and Transformations in Central & Eastern Europe

Place: University of Vienna 

Date: October 24-25, 2024

Call for papers 

Abstract template

This year’s workshop is entitled “Business History and Transformations in Central & Eastern Europe”. Its focus will be on the variety of challenges that enterprises and entrepreneurs had to cope with during times of significant political, economic, social, and cultural changes and upheavals in the region of CEE from the 19th century to the early 21st century. We recognize the events of the revolutionary uprisings across CEE in 1848/49, the Austro-Hungarian compromise of 1867, the (re)emergence of new states in CEE after the end of the First World War 1918, the rise of state-socialist dictatorships in CEE after 1945, or the systemic transformations of 1989-91 as profound turning points in the history of CEE. However, we also agree that these events cannot be reduced to isolated “numeric keywords” as they were rather peaks of longer-lasting processes of change(s). We thus refer to concepts of transformation that emphasize transformation as a process of “accelerated” political, economic, and societal change with an often “unspecified” time frame of its beginning and its end (see for example Ther 2014; Kührer-Wielach, Lemmen 2016). Although there is a scholarly consensus that entrepreneurship is an important driver of transformational processes, the question of “how entrepreneurs initiate, contribute to, prevent, or foster transformation in markets and societies” remains largely unexplored (Lubinski et al. 2023, p.5). This question also applies to the role of companies and its various stakeholders in transformation processes. 

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