Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 has prompted scholars operating in various research areas ranging from Eastern Europe to Central Asia to advocate for the decolonization of Russian history. What this means, however, and how it can be achieved has become a matter of controversy. Seen from an academic perspective, to decolonize Russian history amounts to clearing the rubble of Russian colonialism from our current thinking about the history of the successor countries to the USSR. Others, instead, confer on this agenda a different meaning: to expose the peculiar understanding that Russia today has of its own past, an understanding which is based on a selective reading of the imperial and Soviet past, on the one hand, and the systematic denial or erasure of select aspects from its history, on the other ...CFP

Proposals should include paper abstracts of up to 500 words and a short CV (no more than 2 pages) of each speaker.

Please send your proposal to paolo.sartori@oeaw.ac.at  and w.mueller@univie.ac.at  by 15 January 2024 at the latest. Travel and accommodation costs for invited speakers will be covered by the Austrian Academy of Sciences.