Panels

Panel Overview

Post-communist legacies: populism, human rights violations, and corruption

This panel explores the rise of populism in Eastern Europe as a consequence of its post- communist legacy. It observes whether nationalism, human rights violations, and corruption serve as a common point between Eastern European countries in their transition. Consequently, the panel will question the actual ‘democratic’ aspect of these nations today, when many of them are still incredibly influenced by the old communist circles in their political, economic and social spheres.

 

Culture(s) and National Identit(y)ies of the ‘East’: heterogeneity in a presumed homogeneity

This panel discusses the dichotomy between the presumed homogeneity of Eastern European cultures and narratives and its actual heterogeneity. Western European countries have long perceived Eastern Europe as a single entity because of the Iron Curtain isolating nations from each other. However, Eastern Europe’s common communist history interplays which the singularity of its cultures towards giving a new facet to European integration.

 

Gender equality and Eastern Europe: stereotypes, consequences, and the emergence of a strong feminist movement

This panel will shed a light on the situation of gender inequality in Eastern Europe, with a focus on stereotypes directed at Eastern European women around the Western world. These stereotypes did not just appear out of the blue, as the women in the patriarchal East have been undermined through history and are still oppressed today. However, where there is oppression, there is strong agency. In the post-communist era, feminist response in Eastern Europe has been radical in order to give a voice to voiceless women through the newfound freedom of speech, even if it is only in a minority of cases.

 

Where has everyone gone? Migration, Diaspora and Disillusionment

This panel aims to explore the impact of the post-communist economic and social transitions on individual Eastern Europeans, with particular emphasis on the Eastern European diaspora. This discussion will also shed light on what is pushing today’s European-integrated and globalized youth to move away in increasing numbers when their parents have not. This phenomenon creates a new diasporic identity for Eastern European youth, avid to redefine themselves in globalized societies devoid of the nepotism and political corruption they abandoned back at home.

 

European integration: Eastern Europeans want EU funds, not EU democracy

This panel seeks to unpack three assumptions about Eastern European countries: they are net receivers in the European Union, their democracies are not in good health and that Eastern Europeans are Eurosceptic. By looking closely at these aspects, the panel will offer a glimpse into the future of the European integration of these countries. This integration represents a high cost of transition from Communist to European identity politically, culturally, economically or socially.

 

Speakers

Panel 1, Dr. David R. Marples

David R. Marples is a Distinguished University Professor of Russian and East European History and currently Chairman of the Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta. He is the author of sixteen single-authored books, including Ukraine in Conflict (2017), Our Glorious Past: Lukashenka’s Belarus and the Great Patriotic War (2014), and Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine (2008). He has published over 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals. He has also co-edited four books on nuclear power and security in the former Soviet Union, contemporary Belarus, and most recently Ukraine’s Euromaidan: Analyses of a Civil Revolution (Stuttgart: ibidem Verlag, 2015).

Panel 1, Dr. Derek Fraser

Derek Fraser is a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Global Studies, Adjunct Professor for Political Science at the University of Victoria. and Member of the Board of Directors of the Canada Ukraine Foundation. He had a long career with Global Affairs Canada. He gained extensive experience in East-West relations and the communist and post-communist world, through postings in Vietnam, Germany, the Soviet Union, Hungary and Ukraine, and in Ottawa, as Director of Relations with Eastern Europe. He is fluent in French and German and has a familiarity with Russian. He was ambassador to Hungary, Greece, and Ukraine.

Panel 2, Dr. Merje Kuus

Panel 2, Dr. Igor Drljaca

Panel 2, Dr. Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz

Panel 3, Dr. Lisa Sundstrom

Panel 3, Dr. Ervin Malakaj

Panel 4, Dr. Heidi Tworek

Panel 5, Dr. Kurt Huebner