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**This event will be held in Ukrainian.**

Euromaidan revolution, economic and financial crisis, annexation of the Crimea, Russian-supported violent separatism, Western sanctions, a shot-down Malaysian airliner, a new Cold War, rejuvenated NATO and higher defense spending, Russian invasion of Ukraine, and Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threat to the West: decades of history have been condensed into a few months since November of last year and continue to unfold before our eyes each day with the crisis in Ukraine. Despite globalisation, the Internet, social media, and 24-hour news, our sources continue to be skewed by conflicting information coming from capital cities. Ukraine is a regionally diverse country and, to fully understand it, we need to look beyond Kyiv.

Valerii Padiak–an academic professor, publisher, and local activist– is well qualified to present to us the view from Transcarpathia, a region that both borders Europe and is situated on the opposite side of the country from the violence raging in the Donbas.

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Information is not yet available.

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This talk continues a line of research that argues that the strength of civil society at the point of extrication from communism is a powerful predictor of how “liberal democratic” post-communist regimes become. This is based on the impact that a mobilized civil society has on the reconfiguration of elites in the initial postcommunist phase and the degree to which the model of accumulation permits concentration of resources in the hands of previous elites on the basis of political power. In cases where civil society was stronger at the moment of extrication the elite was disposed to a more liberal model of capitalism with at least some protection for social welfare. Where civil society was weaker the elite was able to convert political power into concentrated control of economic assets and a more predatory and highly inegalitarian model of political capitalism emerged. This thesis will be tested by examining the impact of civil society strength at the moment of extrication from communism on income equality in the two decades since its collapse.

Professor Bernhard specializes in comparative politics. His interests include democratization, development, comparative historical analysis, and European politics. His main lines of research have included the role of civil society in processes of democratization, the political economy of democratic survival, the politics and ramifications of institutional choice in new democracies, and paths from dictatorship to democracy in late-democratizing European countries. He is currently working on papers on the role of the state in development, the impact of revolution on the state’s war-making capacity, the effect of how democracy is measured on findings in the literature on regimes and conflict, and the legacies of fascism and communism for democratic political systems.

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**This event will also be streamed live via webcast. A link is provided at the bottom of this listing.**

Join four experts for an in-depth panel discussion regarding the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

Prof. Marta Dyczok (Western University, Jacyk Program) studies mass media in Ukraine and spent twelve weeks in the country over the summer. She will speak about media representations and their impact.

Journalist Andriy Kulykov (ICTV, Public Radio Ukraine) who has interviewed many of the key actors and has travelled to Donets’k, Mariupol, Crimea, Kharkiv and other cities, will provide a perspective from Kyiv via Skype.

Prof. Lucan Way (CERES, University of Toronto) has written extensively on democratization in Ukraine and is a frequent commentator on events in Ukraine.

Prof. Peter Solomon (CERES and Jacyk Program, University of Toronto), who studies law and courts in Ukraine, will speak about possible measures to decentralize governmental operations and reform the judiciary.

LIVE WEBCAST beginning at 3 pm: https://hosting2.desire2learncapture.com/MUNK/1/live/294.aspx

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Dr. Balabukha received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology from Kharkiv State University and her PhD in Child and Family Studies from Syracuse University.

Location: Ericson Seminar Room, Centre for Criminology and Socio-legal Studies, 14 Queen’s Park Crescent West, 2nd floor

Participants are encouraged to brown bag their lunch. Cold drinks will be provided.

If you are a person with a disability and require accommodation, please contact Lori Wells at 416-978-3722 x226 or email lori.wells@utoronto.ca and we will do our best to make appropriate arrangements.

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This presentation will deal with the complex issues of Polish-Ukrainian relations during the 1930s and 1940s in light of the recently published documents of Polish and Soviet secret service documents. The presenters will include two representatives of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance and a prominent Ukrainian historian and leading authority on the history of Communist rule in Ukraine. The presentations will include:

Dr. Jerzy Bednarek:

The Publication Poland and Ukraine in the 1930s and 1940s. Documents from
the Archives of the Secret Services: Editorial Issues

Marcin Majewski:

The Genesis of Historical-Archival Cooperation between the Polish Institute
of National Remembrance and the Security Service of Ukraine

Prof. Yuri Shapoval:

Poland and Ukraine in the 1930s and 1940s in Light of Secret Services
Documents

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The Ukrainian Jewish Encounter, in collaboration with the Chair of Ukrainian Studies (University of Toronto), invites you to its inaugural
UJE Graduate Student Symposium

The world is watching Ukraine. Ever since November 2013, when thousands took to the streets of Kyiv, the nation has been under an intense international spotlight. This symposium will examine the consequences of the ongoing crisis on the relationship between Ukrainians and Jews in Ukraine, Israel, and their respective diasporas. Comprised of two panels of graduate students, representing diverse global perspectives, it will aim to both re-imagine the Ukrainian-Jewish relationship in a historical context as well as propose visions of their future together.

Panel I -“Ukrainians, Jews, and their Historical Perspectives.”
3:00pm – 4:30pm
This panel will aim to examine the long-standing relationship between Ukrainians and Jews in a historical context. Graduate students will propose new research in an attempt to both problematize existing narratives and influence future scholarship.

Presenters:
Gregory Aimaro, Lewis University 

Vitalii Chernoivanenko, National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy
Lev Daschko, Northwestern University
Daniel Federowycz, University of Oxford 


Panel II – “The Euromaidan and Visions of the Future.”
5:00pm – 6:30pm
This panel will explore Ukrainian-Jewish relations in the context of Euromaidan and the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. Graduate students will consider the consequences of the crisis on this relationship as well as propose visions of its future.

Presenters:
Miriam Feyga Bunimovich, National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy 

Stephen Gellner, Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Toronto
Oleksandr Melnyk, University of Toronto
Anton Shekhovtsov, University College London


Moderator: Kassandra Luciuk, University of Toronto
Discussant: Nadia Gereliouk, University of Toronto

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Professor Nelson teaches modern European history at the University of Windsor, with a special emphasis on German history, the First World War, and colonialism. In his current research, Professor Nelson investigates the development of a German ‘colonial gaze’ upon Eastern Europe, which began in the 1880s, and radicalized during the First World War. His research interests include the social and cultural history of war and occupation, as well as both overseas and ‘inner’ colonialism.

Dr. Waters’ research interests are in the areas of international human rights law, the law of armed conflict, law and politics in Eastern Europe and bicycling law. He has extensive field experience in the Caucasus and Balkans, including with the UN/OSCE’s Kosovo Mission in 1999-2000, and has been interviewed on Eastern European issues by domestic and international media including CTV, National Public Radio, The New York Times and Agence France Presse. On several occasions he has been deployed by Canada as a monitor for elections in Eastern Europe and has addressed military audiences in Canada and the UK on law of armed conflict issues.

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Set against the backdrop of the mass transition from communal to single-family housing that Khrushchev ushered in in 1957, this talk traces the everyday experiences and hopes of Soviet citizens who continued to live in the old housing stock as the supply of new apartments failed to keep pace with demand. Drawing upon housing petitions and official responses to them, it also depicts individuals challenging public rhetoric about building Communism, while demanding the realization of a long-awaited postwar normalcy. At the same time, the talk demonstrates the ways in which the housing question constituted a point of convergence for popular expectations and state promises during the Thaw.

Christine Varga-Harris is an Associate Professor at Illinois State University specializing in postwar Soviet history. Her research examines the intersection of Khrushchev-era housing policy with official ideology, society, and identity. Among her publications are chapters in the volumes Divided Dreamworlds? (University of Amsterdam Press, 2012) and The Dilemmas of De-Stalinization (Routledge, 2006), as well as the article “Homemaking and the Aesthetic and Moral Perimeters of the Soviet Home during the Khrushchev Era,” which appeared in the Journal of Social History (2008). She recently completed the monograph, Stories of House and Home: Socialism, Society and the Soviet Person during the Khrushchev Years (Cornell University Press, forthcoming). Her new research project focuses on Soviet relations with non-aligned countries, from the perspective of gender.

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In retrospect, NATO and EU enlargements can be viewed as easy politics; they admitted states that wanted membership and were lavishly rewarded. In contrast, far harder politics is waged by the much larger regional organizations of the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). These organizations lack material incentives or instruments of coercion, instead having to work on the basis of shared values. Worse still, they also face threats to their existence from recalcitrant members. Based on 200 interviews across post-Soviet states and in IOs, the presentation introduces the idea of internal conditionality to show how international organizations which lack powers of compulsion or incentivization can still respond – often surprisingly – to the threats from member-states and achieve greater compliance that otherwise conceivable. Case studies include the Chechen wars; the abolition of the death penalty; democratization and election observation; and the Kazakhstan Chairmanship of the OSCE. The presentation concludes with practical and more-broadly based lessons for the international promotion of norms.

Rick Fawn is a Professor of International Relations at the University of St Andrews, UK. This presentation draws from his recent book International Organizations and Internal Conditionality: Making Norms Matter. Among other books, he has edited Globalising the Regional, Regionalising the Global; Georgia: War and Revolution; and co-authored Historical Dictionary of the Czech State. He works regularly in various post-communist countries, in both policy and academic capacities.

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In this project, Prof. Grant looks at the role of satirical experiment in the Caucasus region of the former Soviet Union through a focus on the journal, Molla Nesreddin, and its many afterlives in the Eurasian space that it has helped to define. It is a project that takes the reader across disciplines by connecting historical questions of literary genre to political rule, and by grounding these questions in anthropological study of the shared cultural patterns and symbolic logics that have guided normative understandings of authoritarianism, personhood, and propriety in times of great upheaval across this area.

Bruce Grant is interested in cultural history and politics as well as religion. His research focuses on former Soviet Union, Siberia, and the Caucasus. His current and recent project include a study of changing social mores in the rapidly transforming capital of Azerbaijan, Baku, from model socialist urban centre to nationalizing metropolis. He is also working on a new project on the role of satire in authoritarian settings as seen through the life and work of Celil Memmedquluzade, editor of the Azeri-language, cross-regional journal, Molla Nesreddin, which was published from 1906-1931. Professor Grant is also involved in an ongoing study of rural religious shrines in the Caucasus, with particular regard for the rich historiographies surrounding them, and the way those histories challenge conventional narratives of Caucasus social life.

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The referendum on Scottish independence has been a major event for the United Kingdom. Referendums on secession by a stateless nation in the developed world are rare enough; for one to happen in the UK, with its strong tradition of parliamentary government and representative rather than direct or plebiscitary democracy is more unusual yet. While the outcome of a No vote was widely expected, the campaign caused serious upheavals not just in Scottish politics but also at UK level.

The upshot has been a set of commitments to further devolution in Scotland, which will also have knock-on effects for Wales and Northern Ireland. There are also UK Government commitments to address the ‘English problem’, through ‘English votes for English laws’ in Parliament. The UK has entered its own era of constitutional mega-politics, in a way it may not have intended or expected.

This talk will look at how the referendum came to be called, the strategy of the campaigns and how those campaigns played out. It will then look at the emergent plans for further devolution and what those mean not only for Scotland but for the rest of the UK as well.

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This event will be held in French.

Dr. Blais teaches history at the University of Paris 10. She has written widely on French colonial geography and history, including her most recent book on mapping colonial Algeria: Mirages de la carte (Fayard, 2014).

Her other publications include:

Voyages au grand océan. Géographies du Pacifique et colonisation, 1815-1845, Paris, CTHS, 2005.

Co-edited with Fl. Deprest and P. Singaravelou, Territoires impériaux. Une histoire spatiale du fait colonial, Paris, Presses de la Sorbonne, 2011.

Co-edited with J.-M. Besse and I. Surun, Naissances de la géographie moderne (1760-1860). Lieux, pratiques et formation des savoirs de l’espace, Presses de l’ENS Lyon, 2010.

Co-edited with Isabelle Laboulais, Géographies Plurielles. Les sciences géographiques au moment de l’émergence des sciences humaines (1750-1850), Paris, l’Harmattan, 2006.

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This event will be held in English.

Moderator, Eric JENNINGS, University of Toronto

Bruno CABANES (Ohio State University). “Sortir de la Grande Guerre”: New Perspectives on the Transition from War to Peace

Nicolas OFFENSTADT (Université Paris I) “Memory and Memories of the French Veterans of the First World War in the Public Sphere, 1919-2014 : a global reappraisal”

Richard FOGARTY (University at Albany, SUNY) “Empire, Race, and Religion in the Great War”

Leonard SMITH (Oberlin College, USA) French Historiography of the Great War and the ‘Return to Experience’

Olivier WIEVIORKA (ENS Cachan), “One Memory for Two World Wars?”