| Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Friday, March 20, 2015 | 9:30AM - 4:00PM | External Event, OI 2-286 (the Oise – Ontario Institute for Studies in Education Building, 252 Bloor Street West, 2nd floor) |
This interdisciplinary workshop gathers political scientists, historians and linguists to discuss Ukrainian realities and Russian-Ukrainian political and cultural encounters including wars, propaganda wars, memory and lustration politics, and judicial reforms.
There will be two thematically organized panels. The first panel will explore cultural disruption in Ukraine during the Soviet era as a result of Soviet nationalities policies and state terror, and will consider its implications for contemporary Ukrainians. In addition, panelists will discuss the meanings of nationalism in the Ukraine-Russia conflict from a historical perspective, and will provide an analysis of Putin’s memory politics in the context of Soviet history and probe his attempts to rewrite the national historical narrative.
The second panel will examine Ukrainian law in Ukraine, and Russian legal and extralegal activities in Crimea after its annexation by the Russian Federation. More specifically, panelists will discuss the politics of lustration of judges, judicial reform initiatives of the past decade (police, procuracy and anti-corruption reforms), and the broader lustration program in Ukraine. The situation in Crimea will be assessed in the context of changes in the culturo-ethnic balance, in particular the evolving situation of the Crimean Tatars and their institutions, the methods of enforcement of Russian citizenship, and international legal and regional security issues.
Conceptually, the workshop traces the continuity of Soviet traditions and practices, and illuminates their influences on contemporary politics in Ukraine and Russia, and on Russian-Ukrainian relations. In all, the program accentuates Ukraine’s geopolitical significance, and identifies the challenges of legal reforms in Ukraine and the consequences of the Russo-Ukrainian war, factors that present serious obstacles on the road to Ukraine’s sovereignty and democratization.
Program of the event:
Moderator: Marta Dyczok (University of Western Ontario)
Panel One: 9.30 am – 12.15 pm
George Liber (University of Alabama at Birmingham) Euromaidan and the Sources of Russia’s Response
Olga Bertelsen (University of Toronto)
Russian and Ukrainian Cultural Encounters: Memory Politics under Putin
Victor Ostapchuk (University of Toronto) Between Glory and Disaster: Crimea and its Peoples in the Year since Russian Annexation
Myroslav Shkandrij (University of Manitoba) Living with Ambiguities: Meanings of Nationalism in the Ukraine-Russia Conflict
Q&A Session
Panel Two: 1.45 pm- 4 pm
Todd Foglesong (University of Toronto)
What Are the Purposes of Justice Reform? Ukraine vs Mexico
Bohdan Vitvitsky (former Resident Legal Advisor at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv) Rule of Law, Corruption, Ukraine and the West: Platitudes or Analysis?
Peter Solomon (University of Toronto)
Purging Judges as an Approach to Judicial Reform in Ukraine
Q&A Session
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