Events / Program: Ukraine in European Dialogue

	Title	Date	Type	Speakers
	Atomic Energy and the Arrogance of Man	Fri, 06.12.2019	Lecture	Katherine Younger Serhii Plokhii	Atomic Energy and the Arrogance of Man Fri, 06.12.2019 Speakers: Katherine Younger Serhii Plokhii Series: Lecture On the morning of April 26, 1986, the world witnessed the worst nuclear disaster in history: the explosion of a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine. Dozens died of radiation poisoning, fallout contaminated half the continent, and thousands fell ill. In his lecture, Serhii Plokhii draws on new sources to lay bare the flaws of the Soviet nuclear industry, tracing the disaster to the authoritarian character of Communist party rule, the regime’s control of scientific information, and its emphasis on economic development over all else. Today, the risk of another Chernobyl, claims Plokhii, looms in the mismanagement of nuclear power in the developing world. Read more
Atomic Energy and the Arrogance of Man Fri, 06.12.2019 Speakers: Katherine Younger Serhii Plokhii Series: Lecture On the morning of April 26, 1986, the world witnessed the worst nuclear disaster in history: the explosion of a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine. Dozens died of radiation poisoning, fallout contaminated half the continent, and thousands fell ill. In his lecture, Serhii Plokhii draws on new sources to lay bare the flaws of the Soviet nuclear industry, tracing the disaster to the authoritarian character of Communist party rule, the regime’s control of scientific information, and its emphasis on economic development over all else. Today, the risk of another Chernobyl, claims Plokhii, looms in the mismanagement of nuclear power in the developing world. Read more
	Between Kyiv and Vienna	Thu, 05.12.2019 - Sat, 07.12.2019	Conferences and Workshops	David Petruccelli Olha Martynyuk Stefaniya PtashnykLeah Batstone, Kateryna Botanova, Harun Buljina, Kateryna Burkush, Anna Dobrowolska, Ofer Dynes, Vera Faber, Mayhill Fowler, Marcel Garbos, Corinne Geering, Olga Gnydiuk, Daniela Haarmann, Gennadii Kazakevych, Yuliya Ladygina, Barbara Lambauer, Alexandru Lesanu, Julia Malitska, Martin Rohde, Keely Stauter-Halsted , John C Swanson	Between Kyiv and Vienna Thu, 05.12.2019 - Sat, 07.12.2019 Speakers: David Petruccelli Olha Martynyuk Stefaniya PtashnykLeah Batstone, Kateryna Botanova, Harun Buljina, Kateryna Burkush, Anna Dobrowolska, Ofer Dynes, Vera Faber, Mayhill Fowler, Marcel Garbos, Corinne Geering, Olga Gnydiuk, Daniela Haarmann, Gennadii Kazakevych, Yuliya Ladygina, Barbara Lambauer, Alexandru Lesanu, Julia Malitska, Martin Rohde, Keely Stauter-Halsted , John C Swanson Series: Conferences and Workshops This multidisciplinary conference seeks to reexamine the modern history of the space broadly bounded today by Ukraine and Austria, through the lens of circulation and motion. It considers people who moved within, out of, and into the region, interrogating the forces that drove them and the consequences of their movement; examines the flow of ideas that were articulated, set in motion, and resonated in lived experience; and asks how the circulation of material objects, goods, and resources impacted societies and the environment, shaping the relations and hierarchies between places and people. Read more
Between Kyiv and Vienna Thu, 05.12.2019 - Sat, 07.12.2019 Speakers: David Petruccelli Olha Martynyuk Stefaniya PtashnykLeah Batstone, Kateryna Botanova, Harun Buljina, Kateryna Burkush, Anna Dobrowolska, Ofer Dynes, Vera Faber, Mayhill Fowler, Marcel Garbos, Corinne Geering, Olga Gnydiuk, Daniela Haarmann, Gennadii Kazakevych, Yuliya Ladygina, Barbara Lambauer, Alexandru Lesanu, Julia Malitska, Martin Rohde, Keely Stauter-Halsted , John C Swanson Series: Conferences and Workshops This multidisciplinary conference seeks to reexamine the modern history of the space broadly bounded today by Ukraine and Austria, through the lens of circulation and motion. It considers people who moved within, out of, and into the region, interrogating the forces that drove them and the consequences of their movement; examines the flow of ideas that were articulated, set in motion, and resonated in lived experience; and asks how the circulation of material objects, goods, and resources impacted societies and the environment, shaping the relations and hierarchies between places and people. Read more
	Witness: Ukraine in the Photographs of Aleksandr Chekmenev	Mon, 25.11.2019	Visual and Performing Arts	Katherine Younger Konstantin AkinshaAleksandr Chekmenev	Witness: Ukraine in the Photographs of Aleksandr Chekmenev Mon, 25.11.2019 Speakers: Katherine Younger Konstantin AkinshaAleksandr Chekmenev Series: Visual and Performing Arts Aleksandr Chekmenev is one of the leading contemporary photographers in Ukraine. His works have frequently been published in Time, The Guardian, Vice, Libération, and many other international news outlets. But Chekmenev is not a traditional photojournalist. His photographs have often been included in exhibitions of contemporary Ukrainian art and purchased by international art museums. Read more
Witness: Ukraine in the Photographs of Aleksandr Chekmenev Mon, 25.11.2019 Speakers: Katherine Younger Konstantin AkinshaAleksandr Chekmenev Series: Visual and Performing Arts Aleksandr Chekmenev is one of the leading contemporary photographers in Ukraine. His works have frequently been published in Time, The Guardian, Vice, Libération, and many other international news outlets. But Chekmenev is not a traditional photojournalist. His photographs have often been included in exhibitions of contemporary Ukrainian art and purchased by international art museums. Read more
	1989 in a Day	Wed, 06.11.2019	Panels and Discussions	Aleksandra Głos Andrzej Waskiewicz Holly Case Ivan Vejvoda Kateryna Ruban Philipp Ther Volodymyr KulykErhard Busek, Vuk Velebit, Ralf Beste, Dagmar Rychnovská, Georgi Pirinski, Jana Tsoneva, Jennifer Bergerova, Raluca Alexandrescu	1989 in a Day Wed, 06.11.2019 Speakers: Aleksandra Głos Andrzej Waskiewicz Holly Case Ivan Vejvoda Kateryna Ruban Philipp Ther Volodymyr KulykErhard Busek, Vuk Velebit, Ralf Beste, Dagmar Rychnovská, Georgi Pirinski, Jana Tsoneva, Jennifer Bergerova, Raluca Alexandrescu Series: Panels and Discussions This is a series of conversations spanning various Eastern and Central European societies between someone, who was an active participant, or a close observer, of an event on a crucial date in 1989, and a person, who was still very young in 1989. Both speakers will start with personal reflections that will be followed by a debate about the relevance of this date/event today. Read more
1989 in a Day Wed, 06.11.2019 Speakers: Aleksandra Głos Andrzej Waskiewicz Holly Case Ivan Vejvoda Kateryna Ruban Philipp Ther Volodymyr KulykErhard Busek, Vuk Velebit, Ralf Beste, Dagmar Rychnovská, Georgi Pirinski, Jana Tsoneva, Jennifer Bergerova, Raluca Alexandrescu Series: Panels and Discussions This is a series of conversations spanning various Eastern and Central European societies between someone, who was an active participant, or a close observer, of an event on a crucial date in 1989, and a person, who was still very young in 1989. Both speakers will start with personal reflections that will be followed by a debate about the relevance of this date/event today. Read more
	How Could Art Reflect on Trauma?	Mon, 14.10.2019	Seminars and Colloquia	Katherine Younger Lia Dostlieva	How Could Art Reflect on Trauma? Mon, 14.10.2019 Speakers: Katherine Younger Lia Dostlieva Series: Seminars and Colloquia How do you make art about someone else’s traumatic past? What would you say to explain the victim’s experience to others, and where would you stop your story? And what would change if you yourself belong to the traumatized group whose story you are telling? Would your evidence be credible, or will it automatically be filed under the heading of “art therapy”? As a person coming from the occupied territories in Eastern Ukraine and as an artist who works extensively with traumatic experiences, Lia Dostlieva constantly face these kinds of questions. And while she might not have a definitive answer, she believes she has found a way to speak about personal trauma and remain objective, to give voice to the victims and make them heard, to find a way to show the personal scale of mass traumatic events. Read more
How Could Art Reflect on Trauma? Mon, 14.10.2019 Speakers: Katherine Younger Lia Dostlieva Series: Seminars and Colloquia How do you make art about someone else’s traumatic past? What would you say to explain the victim’s experience to others, and where would you stop your story? And what would change if you yourself belong to the traumatized group whose story you are telling? Would your evidence be credible, or will it automatically be filed under the heading of “art therapy”? As a person coming from the occupied territories in Eastern Ukraine and as an artist who works extensively with traumatic experiences, Lia Dostlieva constantly face these kinds of questions. And while she might not have a definitive answer, she believes she has found a way to speak about personal trauma and remain objective, to give voice to the victims and make them heard, to find a way to show the personal scale of mass traumatic events. Read more
	Recollections of the American Half-Century	Mon, 07.10.2019	Seminars and Colloquia	Holly CaseThomas Simons	Recollections of the American Half-Century Mon, 07.10.2019 Speakers: Holly CaseThomas Simons Series: Seminars and Colloquia Now a Visiting Scholar at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Ambassador Simons spent most of his U.S. Foreign Service career (1963-1998) working in East-West relations. In October 1986 he was part of the U.S. team at the Reagan-Gorbachev meeting in Reykjavik: he was in fact the U.S. notetaker on the Sunday afternoon when that meeting broke up. Many now see that afternoon’s exchange on getting rid of nuclear weapons as validating today’s elimination movement. Simons’ memory of being there gives him a somewhat different take, and he talked about it, and what came before and after Reykjavik, in his session. Read more
Recollections of the American Half-Century Mon, 07.10.2019 Speakers: Holly CaseThomas Simons Series: Seminars and Colloquia Now a Visiting Scholar at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Ambassador Simons spent most of his U.S. Foreign Service career (1963-1998) working in East-West relations. In October 1986 he was part of the U.S. team at the Reagan-Gorbachev meeting in Reykjavik: he was in fact the U.S. notetaker on the Sunday afternoon when that meeting broke up. Many now see that afternoon’s exchange on getting rid of nuclear weapons as validating today’s elimination movement. Simons’ memory of being there gives him a somewhat different take, and he talked about it, and what came before and after Reykjavik, in his session. Read more
	The East/West Within	Mon, 13.05.2019	Seminars and Colloquia	Scott Spector	The East/West Within Mon, 13.05.2019 Speakers: Scott Spector Series: Seminars and Colloquia Austrian Jews under the Habsburg crown came to be perceived and to perceive themselves as sharply divided by an imaginary boundary between East and West. The presumption of a more traditional and insular Jewish communal life in Galicia, in particular, in contrast to the assimilated Judaism of cities like Prague and Vienna, resulted at times in relationships characterized by paternalism and suspicion. But are there ways in which this peculiar structure was the foundation of forms of intellectual creativity? Taking off from comparisons of the Habsburg Empire to colonial empires, I am interested in bringing the Algerian Jewish theorist Alfred Memmi’s insights in The Colonizer and the Colonized to bear on Jewish writers who passed between Austria’s Eastern and Western regions. Original forms of Zionism emerged from such subjects, who also contributed to novel forms of literature, journalism, and other media. The dialectical tensions in the particular cultural products discussed together in this colloquium pertain to a specifically Habsburg Jewish condition of identifying both as subject and object of the orientalist gaze. Read more
The East/West Within Mon, 13.05.2019 Speakers: Scott Spector Series: Seminars and Colloquia Austrian Jews under the Habsburg crown came to be perceived and to perceive themselves as sharply divided by an imaginary boundary between East and West. The presumption of a more traditional and insular Jewish communal life in Galicia, in particular, in contrast to the assimilated Judaism of cities like Prague and Vienna, resulted at times in relationships characterized by paternalism and suspicion. But are there ways in which this peculiar structure was the foundation of forms of intellectual creativity? Taking off from comparisons of the Habsburg Empire to colonial empires, I am interested in bringing the Algerian Jewish theorist Alfred Memmi’s insights in The Colonizer and the Colonized to bear on Jewish writers who passed between Austria’s Eastern and Western regions. Original forms of Zionism emerged from such subjects, who also contributed to novel forms of literature, journalism, and other media. The dialectical tensions in the particular cultural products discussed together in this colloquium pertain to a specifically Habsburg Jewish condition of identifying both as subject and object of the orientalist gaze. Read more
	Workers’ Experiences of Post-Soviet Deindustrialisation	Mon, 01.04.2019	Seminars and Colloquia	Anastasiya Ryabchuk Marci Shore	Workers’ Experiences of Post-Soviet Deindustrialisation Mon, 01.04.2019 Speakers: Anastasiya Ryabchuk Marci Shore Series: Seminars and Colloquia As the socialist project went bankrupt with the break-up of the USSR, workers were left in an ideological vacuum. It was filled either by hope-filled dreams of successful individual adaptation to the capitalist order, or by nostalgic sentiment towards the Soviet past as a means of critiquing the present, or (on the contrary) by blaming all the current problems on the Soviet past in an attempt at ‘decommunisation’ and investing in nationalist or religious conservative projects. Read more
Workers’ Experiences of Post-Soviet Deindustrialisation Mon, 01.04.2019 Speakers: Anastasiya Ryabchuk Marci Shore Series: Seminars and Colloquia As the socialist project went bankrupt with the break-up of the USSR, workers were left in an ideological vacuum. It was filled either by hope-filled dreams of successful individual adaptation to the capitalist order, or by nostalgic sentiment towards the Soviet past as a means of critiquing the present, or (on the contrary) by blaming all the current problems on the Soviet past in an attempt at ‘decommunisation’ and investing in nationalist or religious conservative projects. Read more
	Soviet Ukrainian Patriotism in Brezhnev`s Dnipropetrovsk	Mon, 18.03.2019	Seminars and Colloquia	Andrii Portnov	Soviet Ukrainian Patriotism in Brezhnev`s Dnipropetrovsk Mon, 18.03.2019 Speakers: Andrii Portnov Series: Seminars and Colloquia One of the biggest Soviet industrial centers, a city of more than a million people in southern Ukraine, Dnipropetrovsk (today Dnipro), was closed to foreigners beginning in 1959 because of the secret rocket production in the city. It was also considered ‘Brezhnev’s city’ because the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was born nearby and began his career there. How was nationality, cultural and language politics performed and perceived in Soviet Ukraine in the 1960-70s? How was ‘Soviet’ connected/bordered to ‘Ukrainian’ in official discourse? How did the socialist realist novel ‘The Cathedral’ by Oles’ Honchar became an ‘anti-Soviet’ text, and what did that mean for the biggest closed city in Soviet Ukraine? Read more
Soviet Ukrainian Patriotism in Brezhnev`s Dnipropetrovsk Mon, 18.03.2019 Speakers: Andrii Portnov Series: Seminars and Colloquia One of the biggest Soviet industrial centers, a city of more than a million people in southern Ukraine, Dnipropetrovsk (today Dnipro), was closed to foreigners beginning in 1959 because of the secret rocket production in the city. It was also considered ‘Brezhnev’s city’ because the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was born nearby and began his career there. How was nationality, cultural and language politics performed and perceived in Soviet Ukraine in the 1960-70s? How was ‘Soviet’ connected/bordered to ‘Ukrainian’ in official discourse? How did the socialist realist novel ‘The Cathedral’ by Oles’ Honchar became an ‘anti-Soviet’ text, and what did that mean for the biggest closed city in Soviet Ukraine? Read more
	Ukraine: Thinking Together	Thu, 15.05.2014 - Mon, 19.05.2014	Conferences and Workshops	Timothy Snyder	Ukraine: Thinking Together Thu, 15.05.2014 - Mon, 19.05.2014 Speakers: Timothy Snyder Series: Conferences and Workshops Under the heading “Ukraine: Thinking Together” an international group of intellectuals gathered in Kyiv to demonstrate solidarity, meet their Ukrainian counterparts, and carry out a broad public discussion about the meaning of Ukrainian pluralism for the future of Europe, Russia, and the world. The discussions, which took place from 15 to 19 May, featured some of Europe’s, America’s, Russia’s and Ukraine’s most interesting opinion makers and intellectuals, including Wolf Biermann, Slavenka Drakulic, Viktor Erofeyev, Agnieszka Holland, Yaroslav Hrytsak, Bernard Kouchner, Ivan Krastev, Andrey Kurkov, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Adam Michnik, Mustafa Nayem, Mykola Riabchuk, Karl Schlögel, Karl Schwarzenberg, Sławomir Sierakowski, Timothy Snyder, Serhii Zhadan, and Josef Zissels. Read more
Ukraine: Thinking Together Thu, 15.05.2014 - Mon, 19.05.2014 Speakers: Timothy Snyder Series: Conferences and Workshops Under the heading “Ukraine: Thinking Together” an international group of intellectuals gathered in Kyiv to demonstrate solidarity, meet their Ukrainian counterparts, and carry out a broad public discussion about the meaning of Ukrainian pluralism for the future of Europe, Russia, and the world. The discussions, which took place from 15 to 19 May, featured some of Europe’s, America’s, Russia’s and Ukraine’s most interesting opinion makers and intellectuals, including Wolf Biermann, Slavenka Drakulic, Viktor Erofeyev, Agnieszka Holland, Yaroslav Hrytsak, Bernard Kouchner, Ivan Krastev, Andrey Kurkov, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Adam Michnik, Mustafa Nayem, Mykola Riabchuk, Karl Schlögel, Karl Schwarzenberg, Sławomir Sierakowski, Timothy Snyder, Serhii Zhadan, and Josef Zissels. Read more