Embracing the New, Preserving the Old: Studying Fascism, Communism, and Totalitarianism in the 2020s - Program - Instytut Pileckiego
Program
Wednesday, October 14
8:00 – 9:00
Registration & Coffee
9:00 – 9:30
Conference Opening
9:30 – 10:30
Keynote Address: Juliane Fürst
The Contemporary History of Writing Soviet and Post-History or What War Did to Our Field.
10:30 – 10:45
Coffee Break
10:45 – 12:15
Session I
Panel I.A: The Musealization of Forced Migrations in Poland: Deportations, Displacements, and Resettlements in the 20th Century.
Moderator: Michał Nałęcz-Nieniewski
Rafał Wnuk: Displacement as an Experience of Total War: The Musealization of Forced Migration.
Wojciech Śleszyński: Deportations to the East as an Experience of Totalitarianism: Exile and the Memory of Sybir.
Paweł Ukielski: Presenting Civilians under Totalitarian Social Engineering: The Case of the Warsaw Rising Museum.
Krzysztof Niewiadomski: Forced Displacements and Migrations in Twentieth-Century Polish History: A Synthetic Nationwide Narrative.
Panel I.B: Articulations of global -Isms in Eastern Europe.
Moderator: Gennadii Korolov
Raul Cârstocea: The Chronopolitics of Global Fascist Revolution in a ‘Balkan Periphery’.
Krisztián Csaplár-Degovics: Constructive Imperialism? Humanitarian State-building in Southeast Europe in the Periods of High Imperialism, Fascism, Communism and Neoliberalism.
Olena Palko: Ukraine’s Minorities in (dis)Entangling National/Imperial Projects.
Panel I.C: Media, Propaganda & the Information Sphere in Russia, Ukraine, and the US.
Moderator: Jerzy Rohoziński
Dmitry Biriukov: Sobornost (Togetherness): A Radical Transformation in 2020s Russia.
Yana Hashamova: Governing Media through Pressure and Profit: Comparing Putin’s and Trump’s (Totalitarian) Media Strategies.
Anna Dotsiak: Between Memory and Geopolitics: The Post-Soviet Transformation of the “Liberation” Narrative in Russia’s Information Warfare after 2014.
Konstantin Pakhaliuk: The Memory of Nazi Crimes and the Justification of Russian Aggression against Ukraine: Points of Convergence.
12:15 – 13:00
Lunch
13:00 – 14:00
Keynote Address: John Connelly
Unexplored Origins of Totalitarianism: Russian and German Imperialisms in Comparative Perspective.
14:00 – 14:15
Coffee Break
14:15 – 15:45
Session II
Panel II.A: Remembering and Contesting Georgia’s Soviet Past.
Moderator: Mariam Kalandadze
Lizi Basilaia: The Impact of Civic Restrictions on Studying Soviet Past in Contemporary Georgia.
Giorgi Javakhishvili: The Politics of Memory in Georgia: How Authoritarian Forces Rewrite History?
Mariam Kalandadze: From April 9, 1989, to April 9, 2026: Construction of Historical Continuity and Anti-Authoritarian Resistance in Georgia.
Hans Gutbrod: Memory as an Approach to Sustaining Attention Amidst a Nihilistic Totalitarianism.
Panel II.B: Authoritarian & Totalitarian Theories of the Past and their Application in the Present
Moderator: Bartłomiej Krzysztan
Alexander Evans: Applied History and Risk Appetite: Lessons from Past Totalitarianism for Handling Contemporary Authoritarian Security Policy.
Elias Forneris: Raymond Aron and the Techniques of Modern Tyranny (1940-44).
Aviezer Tucker: Debating Totalitarianism Denial.
Elnur Ismayil: Neo-Imperialism and the Return of Totalitarian Analogies: Historical Memory and the Politics of Comparison in Contemporary Geopolitics.
Panel II.C: War, Politics, and Society in mid-century USSR
Moderator: Michał Przeperski
Svitlana Pavlenko: Secrecy as Social Infrastructure: Counterintelligence in the “Rocket City”in the 1950s.
Roberta Bartkutė: Father was not a Communist?: A ‘Transmission of Historical Awareness’ in the Study of the Kremlin-Children.
Charles Shaw: The Soviet-German War as a History of Laughter.
Brandon Schechter: Prayer, Propaganda, and Pastoral Care: Comparing Chaplains and Political Workers.
15:45 – 16:00
Coffee Break
16:00 – 17:30
Session III
Panel III.A: Fascism goes Central East and South European Province? (Provincial Society and Far-Right Mobilisation in Interwar East-Central Europe)
Moderator: Constatin Iordachi
Anca Axinia: “Romanians are the forest’s brothers”: Countryside Ideology and Rural Politics in the Romanian Legionary Movement.
Michał Kowalski: Tribunes of the People and the Infrastructure of the Clergy. The Local Transfer of the Nationalist Revolution in 1930s Poland as an Analytical Category.
Grzegorz Krzywiec: Wielkopolanie into (Young) Endeks? The Great Depression, Political Mobilization and the Unfamiliar Fate of the Right-Wing Subculture in the Polish Bordeland Provinces, 1931-1939.
Izabela Mrzygłód: Far-Right Faith. Martyrs and Nationalistic Revolution in the Polish Countryside of the 1930s.
Panel III.B: (De)Colonization, (de)Sovietization, (neo)Imperialism in the (post)Totalitarian East.
Moderator: Damian Markowski
Arthur Mengozzi: Decommunization as (de)Colonization? A Semiotic Reading of Ukraine/-ian Studies in the 2020s.
Anna Zadora: Post-Totalitarianism Without Transition: Belarus Between Soviet Continuity and Neo-Imperial Revival.
Johan Hjelte: The study of East German Anti-Apartheid Campaigning. A Global History Approach.
Thursday, October 15
8:30 – 9:00
Registration & Coffee
9:00 – 10:30
Session IV
Panel IV.A: Authoritarianism, Dystopia, and Political Futures in Soviet and Post-Soviet Literature.
Moderator: Joāo Fusco Ribeiro
Eugen Wenzel: The Soviet Orwell: Andrei Platonov and the Marxist-Leninist Dystopia.
Ian Garner: The Authoritarian Future of the Soviet Past: Stalingrad Narratives and Participatory Mythmaking in Contemporary Russia.
Filip Świerczyński: The Precision of Chaos: Artificial Intelligence in Stanisław Lem’s Visions of (Post)Modern Warfare.
Panel IV.B: Liberating the Captive Mind: East-European Literary Resistance and Cross-border Solidarity.
Moderator: Joy Neumeyer
Andrzej Karcz: Literature Resisting Totalitarianism: The Efforts of Polish Emigre Writers.
Ellen Hinsey: Ethics at the Bottom: Rebuilding Civic Culture and Art in the Late Soviet Period.
Zakhar Ishov: Natalya Gorbanevskaya Translating ‘A Treatise on Poetry’ by Czesław Miłosz: A Case of Polish-Russian Poetic Solidarity.
Panel IV.C: Violence, Trauma and Identity.
Moderator: Kinga Czechowska
Agata Blaszczyk: Invisible Exile: Propaganda, Censorship, and the Epistemic Erasure of the Polish Refugee Experience in Post-War Britain.
Olesia Isaiuk: A Puzzle Inside of a Blind Zone: The Experience of Identifying and Categorizing Ukrainians in Auschwitz (1941 – 1945).
Joanna Łastun: Beyond Martyrology: Language, Emotion, and the Popiełuszko Case.
10:30 – 10:45
Coffee Break
10:45 – 12:15
Session V
Panel V.A: Imported Revolutions? Eastern Europe, Afro-Asian Socialism, and the Road to the One-Party State.
Moderator: TBA
Joāo Ribeiro: Marxism-Leninism and African Revolutions: Revolutionary Enthusiasm, Authoritarian Transitions, and Unfulfilled Expectations.
Nadezhda Yankovska: Bulgarian Support for Liberation Movements in Lusophone Africa: A Comparative Analysis.
Jarema Słowiak: Strained Friendship: Polish-Vietnamese Relations During the Władysław Gomułka Era.
Panel V.B: Weaponizing Narratives of Nazi, Soviet, and Colonial Crimes in Post-war & Present Discourses.
Moderator: Łukasz Mieszkowski
Raphael Utz: Rescuing National History: The Holocaust, Historians and Society in West-Germany, 1945-1965.
Lidia Zessin-Jurek: (Im)Moral Triangle: Holocaust, Gulag, Colonialism and the Legibility of Violence in Eastern Europe.
Małgorzata Szumna: Weaponising concepts: Nazism and Banderism in Anti-Ukrainian Narratives in the Polish Infosphere.
Panel V.C: Language & Narrative in the (post-) Soviet bloc
Moderator: Agnieszka Witkowska-Krych
Nazrin Gadimova-Akbulut: Making Republican Languages Optional: Soviet Education Reform and its Post-Soviet Legacies.
Milada Polišenská: Historical Narratives in Conflict, Confrontation and Coexistence with Totalitarian Regimes of Fascism and Communism in Czechoslovakia and Czechia.
Aspen Brinton: Old Dissidents in New Bottlenecks: The Wisdom of Prague for Understanding Art, Politics, and Totalitarianism Today.
Katarzyna Korzeniewska: ‘National Communism’. Usability and (Re)usage of the Concept in Lithuanian and Slovak History Studies.
12:15 – 13:00
Lunch
13:00 – 14:30
Session VI
Panel VI.A: Rethinking the Soviet Past and the Post-Sovietness: New Analytical Frameworks. (Discussion Panel)
Moderator: Dagmara Moskwa
Panelists: Oleksandr Avramchuk, Bartłomiej Krzysztan, Sławomir Łukasiewicz, Agata Tatarenko
Panel VI.B: Archiving the Totalitarian Past. Present-day methods, concerns, & contextualizations
Moderator: Anna Stróż-Pawłowska
Huseyin Oylupinar: Designing AI for the Study of Totalitarian Archives: A Context-Sensitive Model for Polish Underground Resistance Testimonies.
Simon Graham: Security Classification in Historical Perspective: Old and New Strategies for Ethically Engaging with Intelligence Materials.
Oleksandr Ishchuk, Nataliia Nikolaieva: Digitizing Soviet-Era Archives in Ukraine (1917–1991): Digital Preservation and the Transformation of Research on Communist Totalitarianism.
Ivan Kanivets: Reconstructing the Archive: Digital Restoration and the Visual Memory of the Ukrainian Revolution.
Panel VI.C: Historical Approaches to Fascism & Totalitarianism.
Moderator: Elias Forneris
Tomasz Ceran: ‘Perfect and imperfect totalitarianism’. Nazism, Fascism and Communism in Jerzy W. Borejsza’s Comparative Perspective.
Joy Neumeyer: Gazing Back at the Perpetrator: Feminist Approaches to Totalitarian Biography.
Andrii Portnov: The Declassified KGB Cases of Ukrainian Soviet Historians: Searching for a Methodology of Analysis.
Krystian Wiciarz: The Totalitarian Paradigm after the Cold War.
14:30 – 14:45
Coffee Break
14:45 – 16:15
Session VII
Panel VII.A: A Struggle for Work, Land, and Love. Practicing Communism in the First Half of the 20th Century.
Moderator: Franciszek Krawczyk
Łukasz Bertram: Ryevolution, or What Is to Learn About Rural Communists.
Bartłomiej Błesznowski: From „Kooperatyzm” to „Spółdzielczość”: The Subordination of Associative Socialism in Postwar Poland, 1944–1949.
Katarzyna Kwiatkowska-Moskalewicz: Red Love and Sexual Awakening in Communist Youth Organisations in Interwar Poland.
Panel VII.B: Cultural Expression and Resistance in Communist, Fascist, and Totalitarian Regimes.
Moderator: Bartłomiej Kapica
Anna Yanenko: Photographs as Evidence: Museum Collections in the Fight against Historical Erasure under Two Totalitarian Regimes.
Xiaofei Tu: The Alchemy of Steel: Comparing Industrial Narratives in Communist China and Fascist Japan.
Barys Paulau: Seeing Like the State, Doubting Like a Jurist: Two Prosecutors and the Crisis of Legal Truth in Stalinism.
Boróka Emma Balogh: Beyond Propaganda: Ideology and Materiality in Early Childcare Spaces in State-Socialist Hungary.
Panel VII.C: Fascism’s Memory and Legacy in the Present-Day Far-Right.
Moderator: Agata Tatarenko
Vlad Surdea-Hernea: Building Fascism: How Consensual Mobilization Creates Persistent Far-Right Legacies.
Kevin Harris: Challenging Mosley’s Legacy: Archiving the Far-Right
Maya Vinokour: Imagined Geographies and Ludic Logic in Contemporary Far-Right Thought.
16:15 – 16:30
Coffee Break
16:30 – 18:00
Keynote Discussion: 20th Century Fascism & Totalitarianism: Legacies and Challenges Today.
Moderator: Ian Garner
Discussants: Anca Axinia, Nadia Boyadjieva, Mark Kramer, Aviezer Tucker, Michał Wawrzonek
18:00 – 19:30
Conference Closing and Farewell Reception