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How are Soviet repressions remembered, contested, and instrumentalized today?Time: 29-31 October, 2025
Location: Library of the University of Warsaw, 60 Dobra St. (room 316), Warsaw, Poland
This conference seeks to explore diverse vernacular articulations of Soviet repression memory, both in the former Soviet republics and in countries that once lay within the Soviet sphere of influence. A central focus will be on how local memories have interacted with broader frameworks—ex. the “cosmopolitan” memory of the Gulag, shaped by the Memorial Society—and how Russia’s war against Ukraine is disrupting or reshaping that legacy. The conference will also address the role of a wide array of actors—governments, civil society, religious institutions, and grassroots movements—in shaping, preserving, or contesting these memories, and how these processes play out across a spectrum of political and ideological contexts. We will examine how memories of Soviet repressions are being transformed and mobilized in contemporary processes of decolonization and disengagement from Russian influence, as well as how they have been instrumentalized in political and cultural battles, underscoring their potent role in ongoing struggles over history, identity, and geopolitical alignment.
The conference has evolved from the project “Memories of Soviet Repressions in Post-Multi-Colonial Post-Soviet Spaces”, hosted by the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Warsaw.
More information about the conference: https://etnologia.uw.edu.pl/conference-mobilizing
PROGRAM
DAY 1: October 29, 2025
9:30 – 10:00 | Participant Registration
10:00 – 10:30 | Welcoming Speeches – Zuzanna Bogumił, Principal Investigator of the project Memory of Soviet Repressions in Post-Multi-Colonial Post-Soviet Spaces,
10:30 – 12:00 | Keynote Speech: Violeta Davoliūtė (Lithuanian Institute of History), Continuity and Change in Remembrance of the Soviet Past: The Case of Lithuania
12:00 – 12:30 | Coffee Break
12:30 – 14:30 | Panel Session 1 Gulag Memories, Gulag Heritage from Diverse Perspectives
Moderator: Ihab Saloul (University of Amsterdam)
Tomas Sniegon (Lund University) Irradiated Memory of the “Czechoslovak Gulag”
Vladislav Staf (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Sorbonne Université) Memorialization of Dalstroy and Sevvostlag Heritage at the Russian Northeast (Kolyma and Chukotka) 2020-2025: Projects, Conflicts, and Transformations after February 2022
Margaret Comer (University of Warsaw) The Intersection of Gulag Heritage and Heritage of WWII in Kazakhstan, May 2025
Gavin Slade and Katherine Erdman (Nazarbayev University) Central Asia's Gulag: Mapping and Managing Penal Heritage in Kazakhstan
14:30 – 15:30 | Lunch
15:30 – 17:30 | Panel Session 2 Protest and the Impact of Soviet Memories on Current Politics
Moderator: Ivan Peshkov (University of Adam Mickiewicz)
Ketevan Gurchiani (Ilia State University) From Victims to Allies: The Political Afterlives of Stalinist Repression in Georgian Protests
Shugyla Kilybayeva (Al-Farabi Kazakh National University) Zheltoksan and Qandy Qantar: Protest, Repression, and the Struggle for Memory in Kazakhstan
Aneta Strzemżalska (Independent Researcher) Between Subversion and Statecraft: Jazz, Memory, and National Ideology in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan
Ekaterina Korableva (Concordia University) On Standing in a Line: Memory and Political Performance in Contemporary Russia
18.00 - 20.00 | SPECIAL EVENT: ‘Reading of Names’ at ks. Twardowski Square. This is a memorial event organized by Memorial Poland and the History Meeting House to remember Victims of Political Repressions
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19:00 | Dinner
DAY 2: October 30, 2025
9:30 – 11:30 | Panel Session 3 Contested Memories of Soviet and State Socialist Repressions in Literature
Moderator: Florence Fröhlig (Södertörn University)
Iryna Tarku (University of Giessen) Remediation of Silenced Memories of Soviet Terror in Contemporary Ukrainian War Literature
Domenico Scagliusi (Eur'Orbem (Sorbonne University/CNRS)) Reclaiming the Memory of Soviet Repressions in Contemporary Belarus: The Example of Sasha Filipenko’s Russian-Language Novel, Red Crosses
Juliane Prade-Weiss (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich) “They’re like us, only different” (Sou jako my, ale nejsou jako my): Past and Present Complicity
Claudia Macey-Dare (Charles University) “Za komunizmus bolo lepšie”: Petite Histoire and Contested Memories of Socialist Repression in Príhody Tuláka po Slovensku
11:30 – 12:00 | Coffee Break
12:00 – 14:00 | Plenary session: Ethics, Forgetting, and the Politics of Memory: Researching Soviet Repressions in the 21st Century
Moderator: Zuzanna Bogumił (University of Warsaw)
Alexander Etkind (Central European University), Andrea Gullotta (University of Palermo), Luba Jurgenson (Sorbonne University), Eneken Laanes (Tallin University), Barbara Törnquist-Plewa (Lund University)
14:00 – 15:00 | Lunch
15:00 – 17:00 | Panel Session 4 Memories of Soviet Repressions in Contemporary Culture
Moderator: Melanie Hussinger (Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg)
Tyler Kirk (University of Alaska Fairbanks) Monumental Landscapes: Soviet Repression and the Production of Space in Gulag Returnees’ Art
Alina Legeyda (Newcastle University) Cinematic Re-Perspectivization of Stalinist Repressions (1980s-Present): Soviet and Post-Soviet (Ukrainian and Russian) Perspective
Anna Pazio and Magdalena Lejman (University of Warsaw) Reimagining Remembrance: The Sybir Memorial Run as Embodied Memory in a Post-Witness Era
Mariam Manjgaladze (Ilia State University) Goals under Occupation: Dinamo Tbilisi, Identity and Memory in the Late Soviet Space
17:00 – 17:30 | Coffee Break
18:00 – 20:00 | SPECIAL EVENT: Film Screening in the History Meeting House
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Moderator: Zuzanna Bogumił
Julia Simonchuk, Testimony of CHAIKA-II (2025), Background (2025)
Äsel Kadyrkhanova, All the Dreams We Dream (2021)
Ülo Pikkov, Body Memory (2011)
Maria Kapajeva, The enforced memory (2022}
20:00 | Gala dinner at the History Meeting House
DAY 3: October 31, 2025
10.00 – 11:30 | Panel Session 5 Mobilizing Memories of Soviet Repressions in Contemporary Ukraine
Moderator: Dagmara Moskwa (Institute of Political Sciences PAS)
Tatiana Vagramenko (University College Cork) When Does the “Soviet” End? Endangered Memory and Religious Minorities in Wartime Ukraine
Darja Lukjanenko (Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem) How to Make Rockets Disappear: Decolonizing Memory in Dnipro
Galia Chimiak (Polish Academy of Sciences) “We don’t want to have another Soviet Union”: Americans of Central and East European Descent Assisting Ukraine Following Russia’s Full-Scale Aggression
11:30 – 12:00 | Coffee Break
12:00 - 14:00 | Panel Session 6 Minority Memories of Soviet Repression in Contemporary Europe
Moderator: Iwona Kaliszewska (University of Warsaw)
Nino Aivazishvili-Gehne (FHAB / IOS Regensburg) Which Language “Sounds” Better? The War in Ukraine and the Language Use among Spätaussiedler in Germany
Raili Nugin (Tallinn University) Mnemonic Practices and Collective Memory: Bridging or Dividing Communities?
Alexander Makhov (IFiS PAN) Memory of Soviet Repression among Wartime Migrants from Russia
Kristina Šliavaitė (Lithuanian Center for Social Sciences) “We Do Not Have to Explain Our Situation to You”: Soviet Repressions and Colonization as Promoting Understanding and Uniting Lithuanians and Ukrainians in the Narratives of Forcibly Displaced Ukrainians in Lithuania
14:00 – 15:00 | Lunch
15:00 – 17:00 | Panel Session 7 Mutability of Memories of Soviet Repressions
Moderator: Joanna Wasiluk (University of Warsaw)
Ulla Savolainen (University of Helsinki) Between Recognition and Ignorance: Mutable Memorability of Stalinist Repressions of Ingrian Finns in Finland
Tamar Karaia (Tbilisi State University) Framing the Soviet Past: The “Occupation” Narrative in Contemporary Georgia
Laura Mafizzoli (Czech Academy of Sciences) Between Revelation and Concealment: Negotiating the Past and Making the City of Tbilisi, Georgia
Marko Raat (Tallinn University) ‘Escalation’ with an Uncomfortable Memory?
17:00 – 17:15 | Stretch Break
17:15 – 17:30 | Closing Remarks
Organizers
Conference Convenors
Zuzanna Bogumił, PhD (Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, UW)
Margaret Comer, PhD (Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, UW)
Conference Secretary
Anna Pazio, MA
Conference Committee
Magdalena Lejman, PhD
Alexander Makhov, MA
Maciej Towalewski
Academic Council of the conference
Ketevan Gurchiani, Prof. (Ilia State University, Georgia)
Iwona Kaliszewska, PhD. (Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, UW)
Shugyla Kilybayeva, PhD. ( Al-Farabi Kazakh National University)
Raili Nugin, PhD. (Tallinn University, Estonia)
Andriy Fert, PhD. (Kyiv School of Economics, Ukraine)
Conference language: English
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Biblioteka Uniwersytecka w Warszawie, ulica Dobra 60, 00-312 Śródmieście, Polska, Warsaw, Poland
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