Memories of Soviet Repressions in Post-Multi-Colonial Post-Soviet Spaces*

muzeum

Przydatne informacje
Nr grantu: 
2020/39/B/HS6/02809
Nr wewnętrzny UW: 
501-D131-66-0006664
Kierownik grantu: 
Zuzanna Bogumił
Wysokość dofinansowania: 
1285076
Termin rozpoczęcia: 
01-03-2024
Termin zakończenia: 
28-10-2026

*the formal title: "Pamięć o represjach sowieckich na post- wielokolonialnym Rosyjskim Dalekim Wschodzie"/"Memories of Soviet repression in the post-multicolonial Russian Far East" 

 Projects objectives

The project aims to examine how Soviet repressions are remembered in post-multi-colonial, post-Soviet spaces and in countries, which were formerly dependent on the Soviet Union. It assumes that these regions are characterized by the coexistence of diverse cultural, religious, discursive, and aesthetic patterns of memory, where different memory policies are enacted and various religious denominations shape the collective memories. In these regions, different models of living with the dead can be found, while global memory trends influence these memories in distinct ways. Furthermore, these spaces, once part of the so-called Soviet sphere of influence, are now integrated into other geopolitical systems and economic and political dependencies, which also impact their relationship to the past. Therefore, the project's hypothesis suggests that the memory of Soviet repressions in post-multi-colonial, post-Soviet spaces is not monolithic or homogeneous, but rather consists of multiple facets, dimensions, and textures. The project seeks to describe this heterogeneous nature of memories of Soviet repressions and determine what the heritage of these repressions in post-Soviet spaces is.

During the implementation of the project, the Russian Federation launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, provoking the mobilization of memories of Soviet repressions in various ways across different societies. Therefore, the project also raises the question of how Russia’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine, and the ongoing war over nearly past three years, have updated and transformed these memories of Soviet repressions. Additionally, it explores how these memories are being mobilized in the decolonization processes of the studied societies from the influence of the Russian Federation.

 

Project team

Zuzanna Bogumił Zuzanna Bogumił (Project Leader) is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at University of Warsaw. She specializes in memory studies, museum studies and anthropology of religion. For last years Bogumił worked on the secular and orthodox memories of Soviet repressions in Russia. She wrote: Gulag Memories: The Rediscovery and Commemoration of Russia's Repressive Past (Berghan Books 2018), and More than Alive: The Dead, Orthodoxy and Remembrance in Post-Soviet Russia (together with Tatiana Voronina, Peter Lang 2023). She is also one of the advocates of the postsecular turn in memory studies and co-editor of two books on this issue: Memory and Religion from a Postsecular Perspective (with Yuliya Yurchuk,  Routledge 2022), and Towards Postsecular Memory Studies (with Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska, forthcoming Brill.

 

Andriy Fert Andriy Fert, PhD in history is currently a lecturer at Kyiv School of Economics and a fellow at Center for East European and International Studies in Berlin (ZOiS). He was an Ukrainian PI in the international research project Postsecular Approach to Memory Processes in Central-Eastern Europe (Visegrad Fund, 2023–2024). Since 2017, he has been working for the Institute for International Cooperation of the Deutscher Volkshochschul-Verband e.V. (DVV), coordinating projects related to history education in secondary schools in Ukraine. His studies focus on religion in the Soviet period and religion’s role in memory processes. He currently studies the impact of the Russian war against Ukraine on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

 

Ketevan GurchianiKetevan Gurchiani is a professor of anthropology at Ilia State University in Tbilisi, Georgia. She is particularly interested in lived religion, the domesticated and undomesticated nature of the city, and informal practices of resistance. Since 2020, Ketevan Gurchiani has been leading the project: "Tbilisi as an Urban Assemblage" https://urbanassemblage.iliauni.edu.ge). In this project she is interested in different aspects of the intertwining of human and non-human in the city. Ketevan Gurchiani is also involved in the projects "An Anthropology of Gardens Otherwise and Elsewhere", "Surrogacy as Networked Phenomenon", and “Conflict and Cooperation in Eastern Europe”. Webpage https://faculty.iliauni.edu.ge/arts/ketevan-gurchiani/?lang=en

 

Iwona KaliszewskaIwona Kaliszewska is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at University of Warsaw. Her research focuses on intersections among Islam, state and anti-state violence, and more recently on war and humanitarian crisis. Iwona has been conducting research projects in Dagestan and Chechnya since 2004, and lately in the Polish-Ukrainian borderlands. Her most recent book For Putin and for Sharia. Dagestani Muslims and the Islamic State has recently been published by the Cornell University Press.

 

 

 

Raili NuginRaili Nugin is a sociologist, working at the School of Humanities, Tallinn University. During her academic career she has studied transition to adulthood, generational conceptualisation, youth mobilities, rural youth, rural-urban relations, memory transmission and social exclusion. Within her different research projects (international and national), she has also studied Russian ethnic minorities in Estonia and recently, Ukrainian refugees in the context of rural-urban networks. She has authored several research articles in different journals (Memory Studies, Journal of Youth Studies, Journal of Rural Studies, Sociologia Ruralis), edited a book about generations (“Generations in Estonia: Contemporary Perspectives on Turbulent Times,” Tartu University 2015) and written a monograph about the generation born in the 1970s (“The 1970s: Portrait of a Generation at the Doorstep,” Tartu University 2015).

 

Tomasz RawskiTomasz Rawski is a political and cultural sociologist focused on researching memory politics, nationalism/war and state socialism in contemporary Eastern Europe and beyond. He authored a book on Bosniak nationalism in Bosnia and Herzegovina after 1995 and several articles in renowned journals, including East European Politics and Societies, International Journal of Comparative Sociology and Problems of Post-Communism. He participated in research projects focused on memory politics, including H2020: REPAST and H2020: DisTerrMem. He was a visiting scholar at University College London, Uppsala University and University of Sarajevo.

 

Katarzyna Roman RawskaKatarzyna Roman-Rawska, assistant professor at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Literary scholar, sociologist, publicist and literary translator. She works on the intersection of culture and politics as well as anti-regime and anti-war resistance in contemporary Russia. https://pan-pl.academia.edu/KatarzynaRomanRawska

 

 

Events

►International conference, Warszawa/Białystok/Wyszków

September 21-24, 2024

During the four-day conference titled “Remembrance of Soviet Repressions in Post-Soviet Spaces,” project members and invited experts on the memory of Soviet repressions discussed the existing convergences and divergences in the remembrance of Soviet repressions across various post-Soviet and post-dependent regions. In her opening speech, Zuzanna Bogumił addressed the current state of Soviet Repressions Memory Studies. On the second day, participants travelled to the city of Białystok to learn how memories of Soviet repressions are materialized in Poland's cultural landscape. They visited the Museum of Memory of Sybir, the Sybirak Memorial, and the memorials in Jedwabne, where memories of the Holocaust and Soviet repressions are in conflict. Over the next two days, through individual presentations and roundtable discussions, participants explored how Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing war have updated memories of Soviet repressions, as well as the particularities of vernacular remembrances of Soviet repressions in various post-multi-colonial, post-Soviet spaces.

PDF icon Conference Poster

PDF icon Conference Program

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►Regular online team meetings

September 2024 – October 2026 / online

We organize a monthly seminar to discuss selected existing research on the remembrance of Soviet repressions in post-Soviet spaces and in countries that were formerly dependent on the Soviet Union. We also examine existing concepts and theories in memory studies, heritage studies, and post-colonial and subaltern studies to assess their applicability and usefulness for our research.

 

Postcolonial perspectives – postdependance entanglementspublic online seminars 

May 2022 – October 2026

Series „Postcolonial perspectives – postdependance entanglements” is organized in frames of two research projects sponsored by the National Science Centre, Poland “Remembering Soviet repressions in the post-multiple colonial Russian Far East”, no. 2020/39/B/HS6/02809 and Social Memory and the Post-Imperial Russian Heritage in Poland no. 2021/41/B/HS3/00852. These seminars are organized jointly with the Centre for Research on Social Memory. The seminars are held in Polish and/or English. 

 

plakat spotkaniaBook discussion with the editor Alima Bissenova (Nazarbayev University) on a book “Labyrinth of Postcoloniality” (2023). Moderator: Zuzanna Bogumił

ikona kalendarza 21 April 2024

ikona języka English

This collection is an attempt to form a new post-colonial agenda, in which we, seven Kazakhstani authors, are trying to rethink and theorize our current state from the position of our own locality and develop a “local” point of view on the most pressing issues of “our post-coloniality” - a point of view that would be pronouncedly local but, at the same time, global – connected with the universal post-colonial experience.

 

plakat spotkania 

Seminar with Wenzhuo Zhang (University of Melbourne ) on the topic: “(Re)interpreting Harbin’s Russian colonial heritage: changing China, changing perceptions.”  Moderator: Małgorzata Głowacka-Grajper.

ikona kalendarza 21 February 2024

ikona języka English

 

plakat spotkania

Seminar with Ilya Kukulin (a research fellow at the Amherst Center for Russian Culture) on the topic: “Political and Cultural Mythologies of Post-Soviet Sovereignty”

ikona kalendarza 21 May 2023

ikona języka English

he new states on the ruins of the USSR emerged not as a result of the struggle of enslaved peoples, but as a result of the crisis of central power. We could now discuss in what ways the new political elites of the former “union republics” -- and especially Russia -- reproduced the Soviet notion of sovereignty, and what new elements were included in this notion.  In my paper, I hope to discuss the cultural and political mythologies of sovereignty that have proliferated in the public rhetoric and Russian language literature of the “perestroika” period and in Russia in the 1990s.

 

plakat spotkania

Book discussion with the authors William Partlett (University of Melbourne,) and Herbert Küpper (Research Centre for Eastern and South Eastern Europe, Regensburg) on the book “The Post-Soviet as Post-Colonial. A New Paradigm for Understanding Constitutional Dynamics in the Former Soviet Empire” (Edward Elgar 2022)

ikona kalendarza 14 March 2023

ikona języka English

First comment: Immo Rebitschek (Friedrich Schiller University Jena)
Chair: Małgorzata Głowacka-Grajper (Faculty of Sociology UW)

The Post-Soviet as Post-Colonial. A New Paradigm for Understanding Constitutional Dynamics in the Former Soviet Empire describes the collapse of the Soviet Union as a moment of decolonization and the post-1991 constitution-building experience as a postcolonial one. Partlett and Küpper’s application of the post-colonial paradigm to the former Soviet world adds new facets to post-colonial constitutional theory by presenting a third type of (ideology-based) colonialism and a third type of decolonization.

 

plakat spotkania Rozmowa z Iwoną Kaliszewską, (Instytut Etnologii i Antropologii Kulturowej UW) i Grzegorzem Skrukwą (Wydział Historii, UAM) na temat „Obszar postradziecki w perspektywie postkolonialnej”. Moderator: Zuzanna Bogumił

ikona kalendarza 16 maja 2023

ikona języka Polski

Rok temu w maju zainicjowałyśmy spotkania z serii „Postkolonialne perspektywy – postzależnościowe uwikłania”. Rok od tego spotkania i ponad rok od pełnoskalowej militarnej agresji Rosji na Ukrainę perpektywa post-kolonialna i post-imperialna stała się niemalże normą w mówieniu o wojnie w Ukrainie i analizowaniu przemian społecznych i kulturowych zachodzących w wielu państwach postradzieckich.

 

plakat spotkania

Dyskusja wokół książki Zbigniewa Szmyta (Uniwersytet Adama Mickiewicza) zatytułowanej, “Zbyt głośna historyczność Użytkowanie przeszłości w Azji Wewnętrznej” (Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2020). Spotkanie prowadzi Zuzanna Bogumił

ikona kalendarza 10 Stycznia 2023

ikona języka English

Zbyt głośna historyczność opisuje poszukiwania użytecznej przeszłości prowadzone przez mieszkańców postsocjalistycznej Azji Wewnętrznej. Autor, traktując historię jako politykę skierowaną ku przeszłości, analizuje jej użycia na poziomie państwa, społeczności lokalnej i na poziomie rodzinnym. Wiele uwagi zostało poświęcone praktycznym formom funkcjonowania przeszłości wykraczającym poza tradycyjną historiografię i politykę historyczną, a także poza instytucje ją reprodukujące: szkoły, muzea, uniwersytety.

 

plakat spotkania Seminar with Jie-Hyun Lim (Sogang University/ University of Warsaw), on the subject of "Global Easts-Entangled Mnemoscape in Postcolonial Perspectives". Moderator: Zuzanna Bogumił (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology PAS)

ikona kalendarza 13 December 2022

ikona języka English

The end of the global Cold War has dramatically reconfigured the mnemoscape in the third millennium. In Eastern Europe, released memories of Stalinist terror and Holocaust collaboration unboxed the pandora box of conflictual memories. In East Asia and the other peripheral region, the West could no longer marginalize the memories of colonial genocide and atrocities because the imperative to defend Western civilization against Soviet communism had lost its historical force. With a focus on global Easts-Eastern Europe and East Asia, I will probe for the non-hierarchal comparability and multidirectional interactions among the memories of the Holocaust, colonialist crimes, and the Stalinist terror. Dislocating this triple victimhood from the memorial provincialism and relocating it in the postcolonial perspectives would be the first step towards mnemonic solidarity. Suggesting “critical relativization” and “radical juxtaposition” as conceptual tools, I will try to rescue global memories from remembering provincialism.

 

plakat spotkania

Dyskusja z Hanną Gosk (Wydział Polonistyki UW), Joanną Wawrzyniak, (Wydział Socjologii UW) i Tomaszem Zaryckim (Instytut Studiów Społecznych UW) na temat  „Polska i Europa Środkowo-Wschodnia w perspektywie postkolonialnej”. Prowadzenie: Małgorzata Głowacka-Grajper (Wydział Socjologii UW)

ikona kalendarza 10 Maja 2022

A|Z English

Militarna napaść Federacji Rosyjskiej na Ukrainę 24 lutego 2022, poprzedzona rewizjonistycznym wykładem historycznym Władimira Putina na temat historii Ukrainy oraz przedstawieniem pożądanego przez Rosję porządku geopolitycznego w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej, a następnie reakcje UE i NATO na wywołaną przez Rosję wojnę, w sposób wyrazisty pokazały trwałość zależnościowej sytuacji mieszkańców regionu Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej. Włączanie interpretacji historii Polski i całego regionu w nurt studiów postkolonialnych ma już swoją długoletnią tradycję, lecz ciągle aktualne pozostaje pytanie o to, co badania nad kolonializmem i perspektywa post-kolonialna (de-kolonialna) mogą wnieść do rozumienia przeszłości i aktualnej sytuacji państw i społeczeństw regionu (w różnych wymiarach – od ekonomicznego, przez polityczny, po kulturowy).