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1. Book Talk. Architectures of Violence by Kate Ferguson

Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
Paramilitary or irregular units have been involved in practically every case of identity-based mass violence in the modern world, but detailed analysis of these dynamics is rare. Through exploring the case of former Yugoslavia, Kate Ferguson exposes the relationships between paramilitaries, state commands, local communities, and organised crime present in modern mass atrocities, from Rwanda and Darfur to Syria and Myanmar. Visible paramilitary participation masks the continued dominance of the state in violent crises. Political elites benefit from using unconventional forces to fulfil ambitions that violate international law—and international policy responses are hindered when responsibility for violence is ambiguous. Ferguson’s inquiry into these overlooked dynamics of mass violence unveils substantial loopholes in current atrocity prevention architecture.
Topic:
Crime, Governance, Conflict, Violence, and Paramilitary
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2. Crisis in Kazakhstan: Protests, Regime Stability, and Regional Security

Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
How did the protests erupt and how will recent events influence government policy? Who is in charge? Will Kazakhstan’s foreign policy orientation change? And what is the significance of the CSTO’s intervention? Our expert panelists will address these and other questions, as well as ponder what the future holds for the country widely considered as Central Asia’s economic engine.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Economics, Governance, and Protests
Political Geography:
Central Asia, Kazakhstan, and Asia

3. Crisis and Bargaining Over Ukraine: A New US-Russia Security Order?

Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
As Russian troops have amassed on Ukraine's border, talks aimed at resolving the standoff between Russia and NATO appear to have collapsed. Poland's Foreign Minister warned that "it seems that the risk of war in the OSCE area is now greater than ever before in the last 30 years." Russia has been seeking a new European security agreement that would include formal binding pledges to limit NATO's expansion and military activities across Eastern Europe. US and NATO officials respond that they will not give up on NATO's principles, especially its "open door" policy towards membership. Ukrainians are bracing for a renewed conflict amidst domestic political turmoil. Are the Russian and Western positions irreconcilable? How did we get to the brink of another conflict? And how would a Russian-Ukrainian war affect Russian and Ukrainian domestic politics? How would it impact Ukrainian identity and foreign policy goals?
Topic:
Defense Policy, NATO, Regional Cooperation, and Military Strategy
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Ukraine

4. Book Talk. Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives

Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
Please join the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute for a presentation of the book Contemporary Ukrainian Art and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives (ibidem Press, 2021). The event will feature presentations by the volume’s editor Svitlana Biedarieva and contributors Ieva Astahovska, Olena Martynyuk, and Margaret Tali with moderator Mark Andryczyk (Harriman Institute). This volume focuses on political and social expressions in contemporary art of Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. It explores the transformations that art in Ukraine and the Baltic states has undergone since their independence in 1991, discussing how the conflicts and challenges of the last three decades have impacted the reconsideration of identity and fostered resistance of culture against economic and political crises. It analyzes connections between the past and the present as seen by the artists in these countries and looks at their visions of the future. Contemporary Ukrainian art portrays various perspectives, addressing issues from controversial historical topics to the present military conflict in the East of the country. Baltic art speaks out against the erasure of past historical traumas and analyzes the pertinence of its cultural scene to the European community. The contributions in this collection open a discussion of whether there is a single paradigm that describes the contemporary processes of art production in Ukraine and the Baltic countries. With contributions by Ieva Astahovska, Svitlana Biedarieva, Kateryna Botanova, Olena Martynyuk, Vytautas Michelkevičius, Lina Michelkevičė, Margaret Tali, and Jessica Zychowicz.
Topic:
Nationalism, Arts, Culture, and Identity
Political Geography:
Europe, Ukraine, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia

5. Book Talk. Stalin's Millennials: Nostalgia, Trauma, and Nationalism

Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
Stalin’s Millennials examines Joseph Stalin’s increasing popularity in the post-Soviet space, and analyzes how his image, and the nostalgia it evokes, is manipulated and exploited for political gain. The author argues that, in addition to the evil dictator and the Georgian comrade, there is a third portrayal of Stalin—the one projected by the generation that saw the tail end of the USSR, the post-Soviet millennials. This book is not a biography of one of the most controversial historical figures of the past century. Rather, through a combination of sociopolitical commentary and autobiographical elements that are uncommon in monographs of this kind, the attempt is to explore how Joseph Stalin’s complex legacies and the conflicting cult of his irreconcilable tripartite of personalities still loom over the region as a whole, including Russia and, perhaps to an even deeper extent, Koba’s native land—now the independent Republic of Georgia, caught between its unreconciled Soviet past and the potential future within the European Union.
Topic:
Nationalism, Governance, Leadership, Trauma, and Memory
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Soviet Union, and Georgia

6. Environmental Activism in Russia

Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
Our panel of distinguished experts will discuss the growing environmental activism movement in Russia. We will be joined by both academics and activists who will explore the unique challenges that environmental activists have faced and continue to endure in Russia. They will also assess the results achieved to date by the Russian environmentalist movement, both from those operating within the country and those abroad.
Topic:
Climate Change, Environment, and Activism
Political Geography:
Russia and Europe

7. Governing Habits: Treating Alcoholism in the Post-Soviet Clinic, Eugene Raikhel

Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
Critics of narcology—as addiction medicine is called in Russia—decry it as being "backward," hopelessly behind contemporary global medical practices in relation to addiction and substance abuse, and assume that its practitioners lack both professionalism and expertise. On the basis of his research in a range of clinical institutions managing substance abuse in St. Petersburg, Eugene Raikhel increasingly came to understand that these assumptions and critiques obscured more than they revealed. Governing Habits is an ethnography of extraordinary sensitivity and awareness that shows how therapeutic practice and expertise is expressed in the highly specific, yet rapidly transforming milieu of hospitals, clinics, and rehabilitation centers in post Soviet Russia. Rather than interpreting narcology as a Soviet survival or a local clinical world on the wane in the face of globalizing evidence-based medicine, Raikhel examines the transformation of the medical management of alcoholism in Russia over the past twenty years. Raikhel's book is more than a story about the treatment of alcoholism. It is also a gripping analysis of the many cultural, institutional, political, and social transformations taking place in the post-Soviet world, particularly in Putin's Russia. Governing Habits will appeal to a wide range of readers, from medical anthropologists, clinicians, to scholars of post-Soviet Russia, to students of institutions and organizational change, to those interested in therapies and treatments of substance abuse, addiction, and alcoholism.
Topic:
Health, Mental Health, Alcohol, Post-Soviet Space, and Addiction
Political Geography:
Russia and Europe

8. Internationalist Aesthetics: China and Early Soviet Culture by Edward Tyerman

Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
Following the failure of communist revolutions in Europe, in the 1920s the Soviet Union turned its attention to fostering anticolonial uprisings in Asia. China, divided politically between rival military factions and dominated economically by imperial powers, emerged as the Comintern’s prime target. At the same time, a host of prominent figures in Soviet literature, film, and theater traveled to China, met with Chinese students in Moscow, and placed contemporary China on the new Soviet stage. They sought to reimagine the relationship with China in the terms of socialist internationalism—and, in the process, determine how internationalism was supposed to look and feel in practice. Internationalist Aesthetics offers a groundbreaking account of the crucial role that China played in the early Soviet cultural imagination. Edward Tyerman tracks how China became the key site for Soviet debates over how the political project of socialist internationalism should be mediated, represented, and produced. The central figure in this story, the avant-garde writer Sergei Tret’iakov, journeyed to Beijing in the 1920s and experimented with innovative documentary forms in an attempt to foster a new sense of connection between Chinese and Soviet citizens. Reading across genres and media from reportage and biography to ballet and documentary film, Tyerman shows how Soviet culture sought an aesthetics that could foster a sense of internationalist community. He reveals both the aspirations and the limitations of this project, illuminating a crucial chapter in Sino-Russian relations. Grounded in extensive sources in Russian and Chinese, this cultural history bridges Slavic and East Asian studies and offers new insight into the transnational dynamics that shaped socialist aesthetics and politics in both countries.
Topic:
Nationalism, Arts, Culture, and Identity
Political Geography:
Europe and Soviet Union

9. What’s Next? Experts Respond to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
Join us for a special meeting of the New York-Russia Public Policy Series, co-hosted by the Harriman Institute at Columbia University and the New York University Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia. This event is also cosponsored by the Center for Social Media and Politics at NYU and the Salzman Institute of War and Peace Studies.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Military Strategy, Strategic Interests, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Ukraine

10. Radomir Konstantinović’s The Philosophy of Parochialism

Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
The Philosophy of Parochialism is Radomir Konstantinović’s (1928–2011) most celebrated and reviled book. First published in Belgrade as Filosofija palanke in 1969, it attracted keen attention and controversy through its unsparing critique of Serbian and any other nationalism in Yugoslavia and beyond. The book was prophetic, seeming to anticipate not only the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, but also the totalitarian turn in politics across the globe in the first decades of the new century. With this translation, English-speaking audiences can at last discover one of the most original writers of eastern European late modernism, and gain an important and original perspective into contemporary politics and culture in the West and beyond. This is a book that seems to age in reverse, as its meanings become deeper and more universal with the passage of time. Konstantinović’s book resists easy classification, mixing classical, Montaigne-like essay, prose poetry, novel, and literary history. The word “philosophy” in the book’s title refers to the solitary activity of reflection and critical thinking, and is also paradoxical: according to the author, a defining characteristic of parochialism is precisely its intolerance toward this kind of self-reflexivity. In Konstantinović’s analysis, parochialism is not a simply a characteristic of a geographical region or a cultural, political, and historical formation—these are all just manifestations of the parochial spirit as the spirit of insularity. His book illuminates the current moment, in which insularity undergirds not only ethnic and national divisions, but also dictates the very structure of everyday life, and where individuals can easily find themselves locked in an echo chamber of social media. The Philosophy of Parochialism can help us understand better not only the dead ends of ethnic nationalism and other atavistic ideologies, but also of those cultural forces such as digital technologies that have been built on the promise of overcoming those ideologies.
Topic:
Fragile/Failed State, Governance, Philosophy, State Building, and Modernization
Political Geography:
Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Serbia, and Montenegro

11. Sanctioning Russia: Implications and Expectation

Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the West rapidly adopted unprecedented sanctions on Russia. These included a series of export controls and the sanctioning of the Russian Central Bank, major institutions in the financial sector as well as individual “oligarchs” who live and conduct business outside of the country. In addition to these government actions by the United States, the European Union and the UK, hundreds of Western private companies have withdrawn from the Russian market or suspended operations, further exacerbating Russian economic uncertainty. How likely are the sanctions to pressure Russia to halt its campaign in Ukraine, what is their purpose and logic, and what additional measures could be imposed?
Topic:
Economics, Hegemony, Sanctions, Conflict, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Ukraine

12. Book Talk. "Orbánland" by Lasse Skytt

Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
From Europe to America, political landscapes have shifted in recent years in a way summed up in microcosm no better than by the trajectory of one small country, Hungary—whose leader, Viktor Orbán, has gained outsized international notoriety as the bad boy of the European Union for his steadfast alternative to the liberal democracy that has dominated the Western world since 1989. Orbánland is the fascinating story of a Danish journalist who moves to Hungary to gain an insight into the political complexities of this divisive European country. Along the way, he encounters people from all walks of life, and he learns as much about the Hungarians as about himself. In a narrative as absorbing and as it is vital for the lessons it carries as America prepares for its 2020 presidential elections, he asks: Can we get along with those on the other side of the fence? Is it worth even trying? His answers are surprising. By guiding us through a polarized landscape of differing opinions, Lasse Skytt delivers a broader perspective on Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, one that suggests possibilities for the future of Europe and America. His journey will leave us questioning our own truths, and, ultimately, which side we are on.
Topic:
Politics, Authoritarianism, Liberal Order, and Far Right
Political Geography:
Europe and Hungary

13. Things Washed Ashore

Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
One could not physically leave totalitarian autarchic Albania, but one could always escape it. Ardian Vehbiu, who has extensively written on totalitarian language and semiotics, will talk about the out-sized effects of found western objects, casual merchandise, media and images in the Albanian popular imagination. Looking at this “flotsam” that washed ashore, we will explore the relationship between these objects and images and how they shaped the imagination and experiences of Europe and of ourselves. How did these objects, images and messages reach an otherwise impervious Albania? How did they circulate once in Albania and what life and meanings did they take on? Did this relationship with the “beyond”, cherished and suffered by the citizens-inmates of a country otherwise closed to the world, lead to an inadvertent “colonization” of minds by these ethereal images built by and for Western media? Or, did these highly censored or scarcely available objects and images allow Albanians to clandestinely escape across the porous borders of the imagination?
Topic:
Authoritarianism, Media, Totalitarianism, and Identity
Political Geography:
Europe and Albania

14. Book Talk. #WomenofBiH

Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
Please join the Harriman Institute for a talk with Amila Hrustić Batovanja and Masha Durkalić, two co-authors of the book #WomenofBiH, now newly available in English. Dijana Jelača (Brooklyn College) will participate as a discussant with Tanya Domi (Harriman Institute) as moderator. #WomenOfBiH is an artistic, activist, and research initiative comprised of biographies of over fifty BiH women who have broken stereotypes and advocated for women’s rights and emancipation. Each woman was illustrated by a different woman illustrator/designer/artist from Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is a book about first female artists, writers, poets, social workers, national heroines, directors, scientists, musicians, doctors, activists, professors, and other exceptional women from BiH. The initiative was started with the goal of increasing the visibility of women in Bosnia and Herzegovina and to encourage similar educational initiatives. It celebrates women who were trailblazers and pioneers in women’s rights and emancipation, who achieved worldwide fame in their respective fields of work and are some of the greatest treasures of BiH. The book was published in 2019 and has since traveled to more than fifty countries. The publishing of the book was financed by Open Society Foundation and by more than 500 crowdfunding supporters from all over the world. In 2020, the second edition of the book was published in Bosnian, as well as an English edition of 650 copies, supported by OSCE in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Topic:
Women, Feminism, Activism, and Gender
Political Geography:
Europe and Bosnia and Herzegovina

15. Book Talk. La Nijinska by Lynn Garafola

Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
Overshadowed in life and legend by her brother Vaslav Nijinsky, Bronislava Nijinska had a far longer and more productive career. An architect of twentieth-century neoclassicism, she experienced the transformative power of the Russian Revolution and created her greatest work - Les Noces - under the influence of its avant-garde. Many of her ballets rested on the probing of gender boundaries, a mistrust of conventional gender roles, and the heightening of the ballerina's technical and artistic prowess. A prominent member of Russia Abroad, she worked with leading figures of twentieth-century art, music, and ballet, including Stravinsky, Diaghilev, Poulenc, Alexandra Exter, Natalia Goncharova, Frederick Ashton, Alicia Markova, and Maria Tallchief. She was also a remarkable dancer in her own right with a bravura technique and powerful stage presence that enabled her to perform an unusually broad repertory. Finally, she was the author of an acclaimed volume of memoirs in addition to a major treatise on movement. Nijinska's career sheds new light on the modern history of ballet and of modernism more generally, recuperating the memory of lost works and forgotten artists, many of them women. But it also reveals the sexism pervasive in the upper echelons of the early and mid-twentieth-century ballet world, barriers that women choreographers still confront. Lynn Garafola is Professor Emerita of Dance at Barnard College, Columbia University. A dance historian and critic, she is the author of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance, and the editor of several books, including The Diaries of Marius Petipa, André Levinson on Dance (with Joan Acocella), José Limón: An Unfinished Memoir, and The Ballets Russes and Its World. She has curated several exhibitions, including Dance for a City: Fifty Years of the New York City Ballet, New York Story: Jerome Robbins and His World, Diaghilev's Theater of Marvels: The Ballets Russes and Its Aftermath, and, most recently, Arthur Mitchell: Harlem's Ballet Trailblazer.
Topic:
Arts, Culture, Feminism, Russian Revolution, and Gender
Political Geography:
Russia and Europe

16. Finding Common Ground: Intercultural Dialogue Among Youth in North Macedonia

Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
Marija Krstevska will discuss her trajectory as a girl raised in a mono-ethnic environment to a young advocate for intercultural acceptance. She is the Secretary General of the Center for Intercultural Dialogue, a youth organization in Kumanovo, North Macedonia. Through that organization, she has created learning opportunities within non-formal education for diverse groups of learners, advocated for direct involvement in community decision-making, and supported youth participation through inclusive policies. She will discuss the importance of active citizenship, capacity building, and non-formal education in fostering intercultural dialogue among youth.
Topic:
Education, Culture, Youth, Activism, and Gender
Political Geography:
Europe and North Macedonia

17. Book Talk. Torture, Humiliate, Kill: Inside the Bosnian Serb Camp System by Hikmet Karčić

Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
Please join us for a discussion with genocide scholar Hikmet Karčić, author of Torture, Humiliate, Kill: Inside the Bosnian Serb Camp System (University of Michigan Press, 2022), in conversation with discussant John Cox, director of the Center for Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Studies at UNC Charlotte. Moderated by Tanya Domi (SIPA/Harriman Institute).
Topic:
Genocide, Torture, Discrimination, Humanitarian Crisis, and Identity
Political Geography:
Europe and Bosnia and Herzegovina

18. Book Talk. Café Europa Revisited: How to Survive Post-Communism by Slavenka Drakulic

Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
Please join the East Central European Center at the Harriman Institute for a book talk with Slavenka Drakulic, author of Café Europa Revisited: How to Survive Post-Communism (Penguin Books, 2021), an evocative and timely collection of essays that paints a portrait of Eastern Europe thirty years after the end of communism. This event is part of the Collective Memory and Democratic Backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe series organized by Harriman Institute Postdoctoral Fellow Čarna Pištan, and will be introduced by Aleksandar Bošković co-director of the East Central European Center.
Topic:
Communism, State Building, Post Cold War, Post-Soviet Space, and Anti-Communism
Political Geography:
Europe

19. Russia's Invasion of Ukraine: Reflections on Historical and Psychological Dimensions

Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
Mariam Antadze will discuss the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and its mental health and psychosocial implications on communities. Focusing on how war affects mental health and psychosocial development facilitates a better understanding of trauma experienced by people who are directly or indirectly affected. Among the topics Antadze will discuss: Russia's post-Soviet invasions chronologically; what we have learned from Russia's war in Georgia; understanding how sociopolitical and psychological factors interact in war trauma; psycho- and mental health needs that arise from war; and justice as a healing factor.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Military Strategy, Mental Health, Health Crisis, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Europe and Ukraine

20. The First Deportation of Hungarian Jews in World War II, 1941

Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
This talk emerges from a book project examining the history and events leading up to the first deportation of Hungarian Jews in 1941. During the first weeks of the campaign against the Soviet Union, the wartime Hungarian government deported more than 20 thousand "foreign” Jews to occupied Soviet territories. Most of them became the victims of the massacre of Kamenetsk-Podolsk in late August. This crime ushered in the period of the Holocaust that Father Patrick Desbois and Paul A. Shapiro have called the "Holocaust by bullets." The talk returns to and takes up the question of "alien Jews” in the period between 1919 and 1941 in East-Central Europe in general and in Hungary in particular, examining how government decrees were used by state authorities in Hungary and in Romania to make it very difficult for Jews to prove their citizenship. The authorities were thus able to 'create' 'aliens' out of unwanted Jews almost without limit. An analysis of these processes exposes the techniques used by nationalist regimes to incite hatred against different groups in society.
Topic:
Genocide, Citizenship, Holocaust, Humanitarian Crisis, and Identity
Political Geography:
Europe and Hungary