Between Perestroika and the War in Ukraine. Alternative Temporalities in Eastern European and Jewish Histories

Hosted by the Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET), University of Vienna, in cooperation with:

• Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East European Jewry (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem);

• Leibniz-Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung (ZZF), Potsdam;

• Central European University (CEU), Vienna;

• Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe, Marburg;

• Bundesinstitut für Kultur und Geschichte der Deutschen im östlichen Europa (BKGE), Oldenburg;

• Nordost-Institut (IKGN) an der Universität Hamburg;

• Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf;

• Institut für jüdische Geschichte Österreichs (INJÖST), St. Pölten;

• Forschungsverbund Ambivalenzen des Sowjetischen.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the ensuing Russo-Ukraine War has led to an intensive set of re-evaluations regarding the recent history of the region. Central in these debates is the question of Soviet legacy: to what extent current events are rooted in late Soviet politics and culture and how the history of the Soviet collapse foreshadowed today’s political and cultural fault lines. At the same time, Jewish life in the post-Soviet space, often reduced to a narrative of either migration or »nationalization« within the newly established states, deserves reconsideration. Rather than conceptualizing the era since Perestroika solely through the lens of emigration, it is timely to focus on Jewish agency and subjectivity in the era of reforms and change: the emergence of new localisms and mythologies, patterns of cooperation and tension with surrounding societies, and other forms of lived experience.

This two-day international conference brings together scholars from Soviet/post-Soviet history and Jewish studies to challenge the dominant narratives of both fields by telling the story of Jewish ‘staying’ as well as ‘leaving’ and refocus the attention of research onto communities outside the large metropoles. This focus is reflected in the conference program (see below), which contains papers on migration to different destinations as well as on the impact of emigration on the societies of origin, papers on the Jewish revival under late socialism and into the postsocialist period, on the interaction of Jews with national movements at different Soviet peripheries, on the construction of Jewish memory within and beyond the post-Soviet space, and on the impact of the current Russian war against Ukraine on post-Soviet Jewry.

Please also see the conference PDF at the bottom of this page. 

Conference Program:

Day 1, 29 June

09:30-10:00 Opening Remarks

Jannis Panagiotidis (U Vienna), Semion Goldin (Hebrew U), Juliane Fürst (ZZF/CEU), Awi Blumenfeld (Vienna)

10:00-11:30 Jewish Revivalist Practices in the late Soviet Union

• Ulrike Huhn (U Düsseldorf), Racing into the past. Jewish intellectuals in search of their identity and the rediscovery of the shtetl in the late Soviet Union
• Velvl Chernin (EACJ Institute Herzliya/Bar-Ilan U), The Revival of Yiddish Theater in Ukraine as Part of the Jewish Policy of the Ukrainian SSR Authorities in the Late 1980s
• Benjamin Arenstein (U Chicago), Poetry and Perestroika: Reimaging Jewish Culture in the South Caucasus through Jemal Ajiashvili’s Hebrew-Georgian Translations
• Chair/Discussant: Semion Goldin (Hebrew U)

11:30-11:45 Coffee Break

11:45-13:15 Jews and other National Projects

• Kunduz Niiazova (Hebrew U), Jewish intellectual networks in Kyrgyzstan
• Samuel Finkelman (Vanderbilt U), Jewkrainophilia: Jewish Advocacy for Ukrainian Nationalism from Perestroika to the Russo-Ukrainian War
• Paula Oppermann (Historical Commission, Berlin), From Unity to Alienation? Latvian Jewish Intellectuals in the Perestroika and Politics of Independence, 1986-2004
• Chair/Discussant: Juliane Fürst (ZZF/CEU)

13:15-14:30 Lunch Break

14:30-16:00 Soviet and Jewish Memory

• James Casteel (Carleton U), Entangled Memories of the End of Empires among Migrants from the former Soviet Union in Germany
• Alisa Abramov (Bar-Ilan U), The Lost »Renaissance« of the Caucasian Mountain Jews (1900-1920) and Post-Soviet Memory Politics
• Alina Rebel (Bar-Ilan U), The Cinematic Jew Between Perestroika and Putin: Alternative Temporalities of Jewish Otherness in Contemporary Russian Screen Culture
• Chair/Discussant: Kirsten Bönker (IKGN)

16:00-16:30 Coffee Break

16:30-18:00 War & Memory

• Marina Sapritsky-Nahum (LSE/UCL), From Post-Soviet Jews to Ukrainian Jews: Memory Politics Shaped by War
• Anna Shternshis (U Toronto) & Rebecca Kobrin (Columbia U), Narratives of Jewish Refugees from Ukraine in the wake of Russia's Invasion, 2022–2026
• Aleksei Surin (Bar-Ilan U), Full-Scale Invasion as Rupture and »Return«: Russian-Speaking Jewish Authors and Temporal Collapse after February 2022
• Chair/Discussant: Anke Hilbrenner (U Düsseldorf)

19:00 Dinner

Day 2, 30 June

09:00-11:00 Walking Tour »Vienna as a Transit Hub for Jewish Refugees and Migrants during the Cold War«

Walking tour to landmarks of Jewish transit and settlement in Vienna’s Second District led by Daniel Jerke (U Vienna)

11:00-12:30 Citizenship and Identity

• Frank Bösch (ZZF), Jewish Migration, German Bureaucracy, and the Transformation of Soviet Identity past 1990
• Irina Nicorici (Jewish History Museum, Chișinău), The Curious Case of Soviet Citizenship for Sale
• Alexandra Zborovsky (U Pennsylvania), Soviet Jewish Migration and Citizenship: From Soviet Practices of Denaturalization to the Israeli Law of Return
• Chair/Discussant: Philipp Lenhard (INJÖST/U Vienna)

12:30-14:00 Lunch Break

14:00-15:30 Identity and Agency in Migration

• Larissa Remennick (Bar-Ilan U), Choosing One or Being Both: The Identity Dilemmas of Russian-Jewish Mixed Ethnics Living in Russia and in Israel
• Alexander Schneidmesser (U Vienna), Past, Community, Dialogue, and Challenges: Post-Soviet Germans and Jews in Germany, 1990–2024
• Jannis Panagiotidis (U Vienna), »Jews, Russians, Whites«: Post-Soviet Jews in German Migration Debates
• Chair/Discussant: Tatsiana Astrouskaya (Herder Institute)

15:30-15:45 Coffee Break

15:45-17:15 Things and Lifeworlds of Migration

• Anna Novikov (Johanna-Stahl-Zentrum for Jewish History and Culture, Würzburg), Between Post-Soviet, Jewish and German: Microhistories of Integration in Würzburg’s Jewish Community
• Dina Fainberg (City St George’s U), Lives in Transit: the Material Culture of Soviet Jewish Emigration to Israel, 1985-1995
• Victoria Smolkin (Wesleyan U), Provody: Soviet Jewish Emigres and the Worlds They Left Behind
• Chair/Discussant: Jannis Panagiotidis (RECET)

17:15-18:00 Final Discussion

Semion Goldin (Hebrew U), Anna Shternshis (U Toronto), Juliane Fürst (ZZF/CEU), Jan-Claas Behrends (ZZF/Viadrina); Chair: Jannis Panagiotidis (U Vienna)

19:00 Dinner