Archieven: Events

Cerise lecture: Russian Interference in Europe Russian Interference in Europe: The Dilemma Between Addressing Exploitable Societal Vulnerabilities and Scapegoating Russia

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.

Online registration required

Cerise lecture: Russian approaches to international law

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”.

Online registration is required

Cerise lecture: Selective censorship and strategic visibility on the Russian internet

Dr. Tetyana Lokot, Dublin City University

Bio: Dr. Tetyana Lokot is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communications at Dublin City University. Her research and writing focus on the interplay between digital media, people, politics, and spaces. She has written about activism, protests, internet freedom and mediated conflict on the Russian-speaking and Cyrillic internet. Her forthcoming book on digital media and protest in Ukraine and Russia will be published in 2020.

Abstract: Over the past decade, the Russian state has adopted new laws and amendments aimed at combatting extremism and protecting civility and security on the internet. In practice, these laws are ambiguous and are often arbitrarily and selectively applied, turning them into a tool of censorship, surveillance, and political persecution. RuNet activists and users are visibly responding to the crackdown with digital literacy campaigns, extensive documentation and open ridicule of state pressure, and public online support for those already repressed. Such strategic visibility practices can be viewed as resistance to the regime of “networked authoritarianism”, as citizens struggle to preserve space for free expression online.

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Cerise lecture: Donbas residents’ response to Ukrainian and Russian mainstream media narratives

Dariya Orlova, Mohyla School of Journalism

Bio: Dariya Orlova is a Senior Lecturer and Deputy Director for Research at the Mohyla School of Journalism (National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Ukraine). She holds a PhD degree in Mass Communications from Autonomous University of Barcelona. Dr. Orlova was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Stanford University’s Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies during the spring term of 2016.

Her articles appeared in peer-reviewed journals, including Journalism Studies, Europe-Asia Studies, Central European Journal of Communication. Her recent publications include, among others, a working paper “Computational Propaganda in Ukraine: Caught Between External Threats and Internal Challenges” based on a case study conducted as part of the project “Computational propaganda” by Oxford Internet Institute. Her major academic interests include: media transformations in transition countries, political communication, journalism culture, media and national identity.

She has also served as an independent media expert and researcher with NGOs, both local and international, and international development agencies. Among other projects, she has been contributing to the “Freedom of the Net Report” by Freedom House. Prior to her academic career, Dariya worked as a journalist for the English-language publication in Ukraine, Kyiv Post, and editor of the European Journalism Observatory website in Ukraine.

Abstract:
The Ukraine-Russia conflict, that has been strikingly fierce in the domain of media and information, exposed Ukrainian public to contradictory narratives propagated through the media and by the media. In addition to conflicting narratives, citizens have also been bombarded with all sorts of disinformation. As a result, the level of general confusion and distrust to information and the media has significantly increased among Ukrainians, as evidenced by a number of opinion polls. Residents of conflict-torn Donbas in particular have been affected by both, actual military actions and conflicting narratives. While there is available quantitative data on Ukrainian citizens’ attitudes to central statements within narratives promoted by Ukrainian and Russian governments, there has been a lack of studies exploring citizens’ perceptions of those narratives in a qualitative way. In my lecture I would like to share findings of a recent study that addressed this issue. The study is based on data obtained from 9 focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with 48 families conducted in eight different locations in government-controlled parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in summer of 2017. Analysis of how Donbas residents navigate different media and make sense of diverse and often contradictory information found there reveals widespread ambivalences that shape consumption of news media and attitudes to the clashing narratives regarding the conflict. A significant part of the region’s residents rejects central claims of both, ‘Ukrainian’ and ‘Russian’ narratives. Crucially, such a rejection is not driven by their assessment of ‘truthfulness’ or credibility of narratives, but rather stems from their broader political views. Widespread dissatisfaction with the situation in the region thus results in scepticism towards mainstream narratives. Instead, many people tend to develop and accept a kind of ‘middle-ground’ narrative that blends elements of Ukrainian and Russian mainstream narratives with popular interpretations of those elements. The presentation will discuss why many Donbas residents reject ‘Ukrainian’ narrative and what constitutes this ‘middle-ground’ narrative that finds significant acceptance.

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De Grote Russische contrarevolutie van 2017

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.

Opening tentoonstelling: Cultural Heritage of the Bulgarians in Migration

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.

Dubbele lezing 3: Jean-Paul Sartre’s Theatre after Communism: Perpetuating the Past through Non-Retranslation

Charlotte Bollaert (Universiteit Gent)

Jean-Paul Sartre’s Russian fate in translation has been complex and highly changeable over time. He was first introduced to the Soviet reader as a playwright with the translation of two of his plays in 1955: La Putain Respectueuse and Nekrassov (to be republished already in 1956). Although they both form the basis for the canonization of the Russian Sartre, the selection of these plays with their respective anti-American and pro-communist thematic, the way in which they were initially translated and then performed for about a decade, led to what Gal’tsova (1999:252) describes as the “total falsification” of Sartre’s oeuvre. In 1966, Le Diable et le Bon Dieu as first translated and in 1967, Nekrassov and Le Diable et Le Bon Dieu republished, this time in a collection of seven plays, together with a retranslation of La Putain Respectueuse and four new plays (Le Diable et le Bon Dieu, Les Mouches, Morts sans Sépulture, Les Séquestrés d’Altona). A part from Sartre’s autobiography Les Mots, these seven plays were the only works by Sartre officially accessible to the Soviet reader before the Perestroika.

With the political changes induced in the 1980s and the ensuing fall of the USSR in 1991, Sartre’s other work became acceptable and he was slowly introduced as a novelist and a philosopher as well. His theatre, however, was consigned to oblivion in those years, and this for about a decade. Our hypothesis is that “Sartre as a playwright” was, regardless, of the earlier framing of his work, felt to be too closely related with the communist past to be of interest during those years. Between 1999 and 2010, however, the 1967 collection (without Nekrassov and Huis Clos) was republished at least 7 times by different publishing houses. It will be our aim to explore the stakes of non-retranslation, id est to investigate the impact of uncritically (?) reprinting Sartre’s Soviet theatre translations today and to uncover how Soviet censorship, 25 years after its abolition, continues to shape the reading of contemporary readers.

Dubbele lezing 5: Het cultuurbeleid van hedendaags Rusland: Poesjkin lezen, Poetin steunen

Oshank Hashemi (Universiteit Gent)

Sinds het begin van de derde presidentstermijn van Vladimir Poetin in 2012 ondergaat Rusland in politiek en cultureel opzicht een paradigmaverschuiving: het het land heeft zich steeds verder verwijderd van de westerse democratische waarden, terwijl de hervormingen van president Boris Jeltsin als anti-Russisch en corrupt worden bestempeld. Het Rusland van Poetin wordt met de jaren autoritairder en de oppositie wordt vervolgd. Andersdenkenden kunnen niet meer ongehinderd kritiek uiten op het zittende regime.

Naast de toenemende staatsinmenging in de media en de economie, voert het Kremlin sinds 2012 ook een actief cultuurbeleid. Zo heeft het ministerie van Cultuur een canon van honderd films en boeken opgesteld die iedere Rus moet hebben gezien of gelezen. Culturele instellingen komen nu in aanmerking voor subsidies – in tegenstelling tot wat tijdens het Jeltsintijdperk gebruikelijk was. Het land heeft ook allerlei initiatieven genomen om bijvoorbeeld ‘ontlezing’ tegen te gaan, en heeft een standaard literatuur- en geschiedenisboek voor middelbare scholen geïntroduceerd. Deze  institutionalisering van cultuur gaat steeds verder. Het Kremlin geeft filmmakers de opdracht om in hun films patriottisme en de liefde voor Rusland te tonen. Theatermakers wordt verboden bepaalde voorstellingen te maken, omdat ze tegen de traditionele Russische waarden ingaan. Op middelbare scholen wordt zelfs het vak ‘Russisch patriottisme’ onderwezen. Het cultuurbeleid dat in 2014 is aangenomen, benadrukt sterk het belang van de Russische identiteit in spirituele, culturele en nationale zin, en roept op tot serieus herstel van de Russische culturele code, met duidelijke verwijzingen naar de Russisch-orthodoxe kerk en de Russische geschiedenis en traditie.

Tijdens deze lezing zal ik dieper ingaan op het huidige cultuurbeleid van Rusland en bespreken welke implicaties dit beleid heeft voor het literatuuronderwijs in het algemeen en de leescultuur in het bijzonder. Vervolgens zal ik bespreken welke gevolgen dit beleid voor de gewone Rus heeft, waarbij niet door de bevolking zelf, maar door de machtige conservatieve elite wordt bepaald welke vormen van cultuur de bevolking moet appreciëren en welke boeken en films zij moet lezen en kijken. Ten slotte zal ik een antwoord formuleren op twee fundamentele vragen die het Russische cultuurbeleid tracht te beantwoorden: “Wie zijn wij?” (“Kto my?”) en “Wie willen we worden?” (“Kem my khotim byt’?”).

Dubbele lezing 4: De historische roman van de Russische emigratie (1919-1939): een herinterpretatie van de geschiedenis?

Luc Breukelman (Universiteit Gent)

De Eerste Wereldoorlog deed menig intellectueel twijfelen aan de belofte van vooruitgang die in de voorgaande eeuw betekenis gaf aan het historisch proces. François Hartog stelt dat het interbellum gekenmerkt werd door een tijdscrisis of een “crisis of time” waarin het op de toekomst gerichte historiciteitsregime, onder meer uitgedrukt in de idee van vooruitgang, onder druk kwam te staan en bekritiseerd werd. Ook onder bepaalde intellectuelen van de Russische migrantengemeenschap uit die periode werd de waarde en waarheid van het vooruitgangsdenken ondervraagd. Deze migrantengemeenschap had niet enkel de destructie van de Eerste Wereldoorlog meegemaakt, maar was ook geconfronteerd met de verwoestingen van de Revolutie en Burgeroorlog en de daaropvolgende vlucht en verbanning. De toekomst had hun lijden dus niet verzacht, eerder het omgekeerde. Bovendien kwam onder emigranten het idee op afgesloten te zijn van de geschiedenis nu het Russische Keizerrijk, de drager van de continuïteit van de Russische geschiedenis en de daaraan verbonden identiteiten, zelf tot een (on)voltooid verleden werd verbannen.

In deze periode van ondervraging van het historische proces wint de historische roman aan populariteit onder de Russische emigranten. Het is de vraag of de tijdscrisis van het interbellum zich ook in de historische romans, een genre dat zich in het verleden leende voor al dan niet expliciete reflectie op of weergave van het historische proces, die geschreven zijn door Russen in de emigratie  manifesteert.

In deze lezing zal ik nader in gaan op de hierboven gebruikte concepten van historiciteitsregime en tijdscrisis en kort de context schetsen waarbinnen de historische romans van de Russische emigratie tot stand kwamen. Verder zullen enkele romans van Ivan Nazjivin en Dmitry Merezjkovski besproken worden.

Dubbele lezing 4: “Through the eye of the besprizornik”. Representations of children homelessness in the early Soviet children’s literature

Diana Antonello (Università degli Studi di Padova)

The besprizornost’, childhood homelessness, has represented a social plague of enormous dimensions for the Soviet Union, a phenomenon increased by the significant historical and social transformation which hit the country during the twentieth century. Considering the social significance and dimensions of the phenomenon, the besprizornost’ influenced the emergence of a literature related to child homelessness, in which this topic became a literature subgenre with a specific narration and imaginary.

My presentation will focus on the representations of besprizornost’ through an overview of the Soviet children’s literature during the 1920s and 1930s. It will in particular analyse how the literary character of the besprizornik has transformed according to the emergence of the Stalinist official ideology and the creation of the myth of the “happy childhood”. In the 1920s and 1930s, the main characters of Soviet children’s literature were, indeed, besprizorniki. The topic of child homelessness was initially linked to the narration of besprizorniki adventures and troubles on the streets and orphanages (detskij dom), where children had to prove themselves “worthy of survival”. The journey they had to complete to become honest members of the new Soviet society was full of obstacles and challenges, but also of unexpected and exciting adventures. This “romantic” vision of besprizornost’ was challenged at the end of the 1920s, when the character of the neglected child became functional to the ideological discourse which saw in street urchins, deprived of a family and home, the perfect “raw material” to be moulded in order to create the “new Soviet man”.