The aim of this international conference, organized under the auspices of the “Eurasia in Global Dialogue” Programme, was to offer a better understanding of contemporary developments in Eurasia by looking at their origins in Byzantium. The focus fell on the history of the reception of the Byzantine heritage in Russia and Eastern Europe. While addressing a wide range of topics in intellectual history, politics, aesthetics, religion, etc., all papers engaged with the contested nature of the concept of “Eurasia.”
Programme:
Morning session
10.00 – 10.15, Welcome address
Clemena Antonova (Research Director of the Eurasia in Global Dialogue Programme, IWM)
10.15 – 11.00, “Byzantium as an Argument in the Russian Intellectual Debate”
Sergei Ivanov (Prof. and Chair of Ancient and Byzantine History at the National Research University “Higher School of Economics,” Moscow)
11.00 – 11.30 “The Byzantine Myth and the European Identity of Russia.”
Alexei Lidov (Prof. and Director of the Department of Ancient Culture at the Institute of World Culture, Moscow State University)
11.30 – 11.45 Coffee-break
11.45 – 12.15 “Constantinople’s ‘Russian” Moment.”
Valentina Izmirlieva (Prof. of Slavic Literatures and Cultures, Columbia University, New York)
12.15 – 12.45 “Is the Second Fall of the Second Rome Pending?”
Ivan Christov (Prof. and Head of the Department of Systematic Theology, Sofia University, Bulgaria)
12.45 – 13.45 Lunch-break
Afternoon session
13.45 – 14.00 Book presentation of Patr. Philotheos Kokkinos, Oration on All the Saints (Greek and Old Slavonic), (Sofia University Press, 2020)
Ivan Christov
14.00 – 14.45 “Mirroring the Past? Nomadic Art between Vienna, St. Petersburg, and Prague (1918-1952),” over ZOOM
Ivan Foletti (Prof. and Head of the Centre for Early Medieval Studies, Masaryk University, Brno) and Adrien Palladino (Assistant Prof., Centre for Early Medieval Studies, Masaryk University, Brno)
14.45 – 15.15 “Russia’s Taking of Constantinople: Views from within (1667-1791), and in Late 18th-century British Balance-of-Power Thinking”
Endre Sashalmi (Prof. at the Department of Medieval and Early Modern History, University of Pécs, Hungary)
15.15 – 15.45 “Byzantinism without Byzantium: A view on Byzantium in the Serbian Orthodox theology of the 20th and 21st century”
Vladimir Cvetkovic (Research Associate Prof at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade)
15.45 – 16.00 Concluding remarks
