Lezingen en presentaties 2018-2019

Prof. Dr. Julie Hansen (University of Uppsala)

This presentation examines how historical understandings of the Stalinist period are problematized in the novel Kamennyi most by Alexander Terekhov (2009; Eng. trans. The Stone Bridge). The narrative is based on an actual event in 1943, when the son of the Soviet Minister of Aviation is believed to have murdered his girlfriend—daughter to the Soviet ambassador to Mexico—because she refused to remain with him in Moscow. In the novel, this case is re-investigated by the narrator-detective, whose findings suggest alternative interpretations of the event. The novel can be described as a work of faction, in that it mixes documentary and fictional narrative modes. My analysis focuses on the functions of the sources used in novel, which include archives and a variety of literary and documentary texts. Drawing upon Linda Hutcheon’s concept of historiographic metafiction as a prominent feature of postmodern texts, I will examine how this novel functions as a site of negotiation between past and present, providing at the same time a commentary on broader questions of memory, history and silence in a totalitarian society.

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Pieter Stockmans (MO* Magazine)

Miriam Lexmann, IRI Beacon Project

This lecture seeks to inform the current discourse about what many analysts refer to as a “hybrid” warfare between the Russian Federation/Russia and the West. It will particularly focus on the EU’s security modalities with respect to Russia, and more precisely discuss the threat that stems from disinformation and Russian attempts to exploit existing societal vulnerabilities and democratic deficit for its geopolitical aims.

The lecture will argue that simply blaming and securitizing Russia for exploiting loopholes and gaps in our democratic system is insufficient, and merely exaggerates the challenge facing us. Instead, the answer requires a holistic approach that shifts away from the perception of disinformation as merely requiring technical solutions, such as fact-checking, or simply blaming internal or external actors such as Russia, and moves towards a deeper political debate on both the Member-States and European-level.

Miriam Lexmann is the Director of EU Regional Programmes of the International Republican Institute. Prior to that, she served as the Permanent Representative of the Slovak Parliament to the EU. As a Member of the Advisory Board of the University of Kent COMPASS project, Miriam advises academics and practitioners on research and programmes focusing on better governance and capacity-building in the EU neighborhood. Ms Lexmann regularly publishes on topics relating to international democracy support and Central and Eastern Europe. In her latest publications and lectures, Miriam captures various causes of disinformation and its eroding impact on liberal democracy. Miriam hold a master’s degree in Philosophy. You can follow her on Twitter @MiriamMLex.

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The exhibition “Cultural Heritage of the Bulgarians in Migration” represents in posters the activity of the formal and informal organisations which focus on the safeguarding, transmission, and popularisation of the cultural heritage of the Bulgarian migrants in Europe and the USA in the last three decades.

The materials were collected during the period between 2014 and 2017 by a team of scholars based at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, who visited 80 cities in 16 countries in Europe, among which Ghent and Brussels in Belgium, as well as several states in the USA. They met representatives of over 300 Bulgarian Sunday schools, dance formations, embassies and consulates, cultural institutes and centres, associations and societies, choirs, food stores and restaurants, media, as well as individual artists. This is the largest study of Bulgarian communities living abroad that has ever been done.

The exhibition is a result of the project “Cultural Heritage in Migration. Models of Consolidation and Institutionalisation of the Bulgarian Communities Abroad” funded by the Bulgarian National Science Fund at the Ministry of Education and Science.

The exhibition will be opened by Prof. Dr. Vladimir Penchev from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

Prof. dr. Lauri Mälksoo, University of Tartu
The lecture 'Russian approaches to international law' deals with the question whether the understanding and application of international law has specific features in Russia that other actors in the international community should be aware of. Essentially, this approach fits into the frame of comparative international law. For this, it is necessary to also examine the history of international law in Russia as well as the recent state practice and doctrine. Different areas of international law such as use of force, human rights as well as international investment law will be covered in the talk.

Lauri Mälksoo is Professor of International Law at the University of Tartu in Estonia. He was sixteen years old when the USSR disintegrated and uses sources in the Russian language extensively in his research. He is member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences and associate member of the Institut de droit International (established in 1873 in Ghent). He is co-editor in chief of the Baltic Yearbook of International Law (at Brill) and has published two monographs, "Illegal Annexation and State Continuity" (2003) and "Russian Approaches to International Law" (2015), as well as co-edited the volume "Russia and the ECtHR: the Strasbourg Effect".

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Vladimir Ronin (KU Leuven)

De lezing gaat dieper in op de perceptie van de Oktoberrevolutie van 1917 bij  de hedendaagse Russische politieke elite en in de bredere samenleving. Aan de basis van de lezing ligt de recente, spraakmakende Russische documentaire "Подлинная история русской революции" ("Het ware verhaal van de Russische revolutie"). De documentaire zoomt in op de taal die de elite gebruikt om het verhaal van 1917 te reconstrueren en suggereert dat er een sterke contrarevolutionaire stroming is die segmenten van de Russische samenleving beïnvloedt.

Dr. Tetyana Lokot, Dublin City University

Sven Biscop (UGent)

The course of world politics is determined by the interaction between great powers. Those powers are the US, the established power; Russia, the declining power; China, the rising power; and the EU, the power that doesn’t know whether it wants to be a power. If the EU does not just want to undergo the policies of the other powers it will have to become one itself, but it should differ in its strategy. The EU has the means to pursue a distinctive great power strategy, a middle way between dreamy idealism and unprincipled pragmatism, and can play a crucial stabilizing role in this increasingly unstable world.

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Koen Schoors (UGent)

While Russia is an electoral autocracy, China is just an autocracy. Several observers have argued that this difference constitutes the main reason why China has been growing much faster than China. In this reading of the facts, the combination of political autocracy and proper economic rules would provide an economic model for the future, with Singapore and Dubai as main role models. I defend the reverse position. In Russia, bureaucratic promotion is increasingly based on loyalty and the political leadership of the country has not been renewed for 20 years now, leading to stagnation. China has been economically more successful than Russia in recent decades, precisely because it managed to mimic some characteristics of democracies. The current Chinese leadership is abandoning these characteristics. China is starting to exhibit uneasy similarities with its big Russian neighbour. Stagnation will infallibly follow.

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Dariya Orlova, Mohyla School of Journalism

Fabienne Bossuyt (UGent)

Given the ongoing tensions between the EU and Russia, only few experts will give serious thought to the prospect of trilateral cooperation on connectivity between the EU, China and Russia in Central Asia. Nevertheless, as China further embarks on implementing its Belt and Road Initiative, and remains firmly set on pursuing the ambitious goal of connecting China overland with Europe, the EU and Russia – as indispensable stakeholders for any Eurasian land bridge to successfully materialize – have been developing policy responses to China’s initiative that reveal an unexpected willingness to cooperate. In scrutinizing the likelihood of cooperation on connectivity between the EU, China and Russia in Central Asia, this lecture identifies the common interests between the three sides, and highlights to what extent cooperation between them is possible in Central Asia. In doing so, the lecture points to the main opportunities while outlining the main bottlenecks, which mostly stem from these actors’ diverging beliefs and approaches to connectivity and development.

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