CALL FOR PAPERS | Conference “Shared Experiences – Different Paths? The Turning Point of 1956 and Its Significance for the Countries and Societies of East Central Europe” - Instytut Pileckiego

The Pilecki Institute and the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences invite you to participate in an international academic conference, Shared Experiences – Different Paths? The Turning Point of 1956 and Its Significance for the Countries and Societies of East Central Europe, which will be held on 19–21 October 2026 in Warsaw. The event is part of a series of conferences devoted to the history of transformations in East Central Europe after 1945.

International academic conference “Shared Experiences – Different Paths? The Turning Point of 1956 and Its Significance for the Countries and Societies of East Central Europe”

19–21 October 2026
Instytut Pileckiego, 82 Sienna Street, Warsaw 

The year 1956 is widely regarded as one of the key turning points in Poland’s post-war history, marking a fundamental shift within the political order established after 1945. On the seventieth anniversary of the Polish October, we would like to ask: was this year equally transformative for political and social processes across the wider region? The aim of the conference is to offer a critical reassessment of the significance of the turbulent year 1956 for countries and societies of the Eastern Bloc, with particular emphasis on the relationship between political transformation and social change. Our perspective goes beyond national frameworks. Situating the events of 1956 within the broader context of the Eastern Bloc allows us to draw on the approaches of transnational history, histoire croisée and connected history. This approach not only encourages interdisciplinary dialogue, but also offers new interpretative insights into issues long established in historiography. We invite scholars from various disciplines – history, sociology, political science and anthropology – to participate in the conference. We believe that innovative theoretical approaches and the dialogue between different scholarly traditions will contribute to a deeper understanding of the region’s historical trajectories during the era of ‘real socialism’ and in the longer term, extending to the transformations of 1989. 

The academic reflection will be organised around three thematic axes:

• Nationalisms and national issues during the period of de-Stalinisation
• The socialist welfare state: modernisation, consumption and social security
• Ideology, legitimisation of power and international politics 

In particular, we encourage you to address the following issues:

• High politics and everyday social practices: in search of continuity and change
• The party and the state from above and from below: mechanisms of power
• 1956: between rational strategies and spontaneous resistance
• The year 1956 and the formation of the socialist welfare state
• National and ethnic minorities during the period of de-Stalinisation
• New strategies of legitimisation and control
• The year 1956 in international politics: a ‘window of opportunity’?
• The Cold War and the question of the agency of small states on both sides of the Iron Curtain

We also welcome proposals that extend beyond the thematic areas outlined above.

Conference languages: English, with Polish permitted in exceptional cases.

Key note lecturers:

Daniela Koleva – professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, Sofia University, academic associate of the Centre for Advanced Study, Sofia and member of the Academic Board of New Europe College, Bucharest. Her research interests include social history and anthropology of socialism and post-socialism, with a particular focus on oral history, ageing studies, and biographical and cultural memory. She is also interested in the politics of memory and heritage as well as the social history of medicine. She wrote, among others: Memory archipelago of the communist past: Public narratives and personal recollections (Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2022), Ageing, ritual and social change: Comparing the secular and religious in Eastern and Western Europe (Routledge 2013), Negotiating normality: everyday lives in socialist institutions (New Brunswick, London, Transaction Publishers 2012) 

Silvio Pons – Professor of Contemporary History at the Scuola Normale Superiore and the president of the Fondazione Gramsci, Rome. His main field of interest is 20th-century international history, with a particular focus on Communism and the Cold War. He wrote, among others: Stalin and the Inevitable War, 1936-1941 (Einaudi 1995, Frank Cass 2002, Routledge 2014), The Global Revolution. A History of International Communism 1917-1991 (Einaudi 2012, Oxford University Press 2014), and The Rise and Fall of the Italian Communist Party. A Transnational History (Stanford University Press, 2024). He edited A Dictionary of 20th-Century Communism (Einaudi 2006-2007, Princeton University Press 2010) and was General Editor of the Cambridge History of Communism (Cambridge University Press 2017).

Vladimir Tismăneanu - Professor of Politics and Director of the Center for the Study of Post-communist Societies at University of Maryland (College Park), His main field of interest is East European and Russian politics, the collapse of communism, memory, and moral justice in post-authoritarian societies nationalism, threats to liberalism in post-Cold War Europe. the revolutions of 1989 and their aftermath. He wrote, among others” Putin’s Totalitarian Democracy: Ideology, Myth, and Violence in the Twenty-First Century (Palgrave Macmillian, 2019), Reinventing Politics: Eastern Europe from Stalin to Havel ( Free Press, 2003), Fantasies of Salvation: Democracy, Nationalism, and Myth in Post-communist Europe (Princeton University Press, 1998), Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

Proposals for papers (with a short summary of no more than 1,000 characters, including spaces) and a biographical note (200 characters, including spaces) should be sent by 30 June 2026 to: konferencja2026@instytutpileckiego.pl

Applicants will be notified of the results by 11 July 2026. The organisers will provide accommodation and meals.

The conference is intended to result in the publication of a peer-reviewed collective monograph with a renowned academic publisher.