24. October 2025 - 09:30
Venue: seminar room, Am Planetarium 7
Organizer: Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena
With Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the impending dissolution of the Soviet Union during the late 1980s and the first years of independence have raised new questions to the most recent history of Ukrainian politics and society. The origins of democracy as well as societal, economic, cultural and military resilience are now taking centre stage, with Russia's parting of ways towards imperial aggression and dictatorship has become the obvious reference. Yet, these developments were far from straightforward. The workshop aims to revisit key aspects of Ukrainian history during this crucial period and to situate it in its post-Soviet, Central and East European context. Comparative reflections with regard to developments in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Moldova will be particularly welcome.
Workshop Programme
09:30 // Panel I / Ukrainian Historiography and the West
Yaroslav Zhuravlov: Between Western Attention and Domestic Hesitation: Holocaust Memory and the (In)direct Role of the Ukrainian Diaspora
Diana Pidburtna-Kostiv: Ukrainian Migration Literature at the Turn of the Millennium
Ostap Sereda: Ukrainian Studies in North America in the Late Cold War Period and the Early Transformation of the (Post-)Soviet Ukrainian Academia
chair: Immo Rebitschek
11:30 // Panel II / Cultural Dynamics
Kateryna Chernii: Soviet-Ukrainian Football on the Path to Independence
Oksana Kis: Changing Perceptions of Feminism Among Ukrainian Women Activists
Tamara Hundorova: Post-Chernobyl: from Apocalyptic to Ecological Imagination
chair: Nadiia Chervinska
14:00 // Panel III / The Politics and Economics of Transformation
Franziska Davies: (Anti-)Colonial Dissidence During the Cold War: Poland, Ukraine, and Russia
Florian Peters: Neoliberalism, Self-Governance, Social Paternalism: Historicising Post-Socialist Privatisations in Poland and Ukraine
Roman Koval: “Perestroika” and “Glasnost” as Political Concepts in Ukrainian Republican Discourse: Evolution, Semantic Instability, and the Struggle over Meaning
chair: Joachim von Puttkamer
15:30 // Concluding reflexions: Guido Hausmann; Nadiia Chervinska