International History Now International History Now

On 24 February 2022 Russia turned its military actions against Ukraine which were going on in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine since 2014 into a full-blown, total war. The language of the international media to describe the conflict is unstable: first, a Russian invasion; then, “Russian-Ukrainian war”, then “Russia’s war in Ukraine”, “Russia’s war against Ukraine”, “Ukraine’s war against Russia-backed forces” or a “fratricidal war”. In Russia itself, calling the war anything other than a mere “special operation” carries with it the risk of punishment with 10 years of prison colony. If there is a war, Russian officials say, it is with NATO and the US.
How is Ukrainian identity represented on the streets of Europe, and what are the political functions of this representation? How do Ukrainians think about their past in the light of the present? In what sense have European states, especially Germany, reassessed their past alignments in Europe? And how have historians approached the subject of Ukrainian identity?

In this episode we have two conversations on Russia’s war against Ukraine. First we speak to the photographer and writer Evgeniya Belorusets. She is the co-founder of “Prostory”, a journal for literature, art and politics. Her works move at the intersection of art, literature, journalism and social activism, between document and fiction. In the current war, she has become, in her own words, the “hostage of her own war diary” as she remained in Kyiv throughout the Russian attack. Now she is just back from the Venice Biennale where she has worked with the Ukrainian pavilion.

Our second conversation is with Stefan Troebst, a historian and a Slavicist until recently Professor of East European Cultural History at Leipzig University. He has published widely on the modern cultural, political and legal history of Eastern Europe - editor of a book series Visual Historical Cultures. He also worked as a German member for missions of long duration for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe in the former Yugoslavia and former USSR.

We are grateful to Lviv-based band Okean Elzy for allowing us to use their single Obiymi (2003), remixed by Dima Zago from Kramatorsk.

Hosts: Dina Gusejnova, Georgios Giannakopoulos

Editorial and production assistants:
Thomas Walsh, Clara Castello, Louis Wong, Zaid Salam

In this episode we want to find out what the early creators of the term ”prisoners of conscience” had meant by it, and what motivated them to institutionalise this status legally. In 2021, Amnesty International celebrated its 60th anniversary. Since then, the organisation has played a key role in mobilising international support for political dissenters and dissidents. This protection often revolves around the act of assigning the status of a “prisoner of conscience” to a protected individual.
We also want to go all the way back to the early modern history of political Dissent, associated with such figures as the Quaker William Penn, who had been imprisoned several times in the Tower of London for his religious views but later in life founded a colony in America which was to become one of the United States - Pennsylvania. The term “Dissenter” describes the experience of religious oppression under different ‘old regimes’ in Europe. In more recent times, ‘dissent’ has been associated with the activism of political dissidents under different oppressive regimes, from the Soviet Union or modern Russia to Myanmar and China.
What is the relationship between the faith of dissenters and their political dissidence? At which point does the collision of dissenters with the cultural and legal system of their societies render them from powerless victims to powerful speakers and politicians?

With us to discuss the long history of Dissent in politics are

Tom Buchanan, Professor in British and European History at the Dept for Continuing Education at the University of Oxford and the author of Amnesty International and Human Rights Activism in Postwar Britain, 1945–1977 which came out in 2020 with Cambridge UP.

Andrew Murphy, Professor for Political Science at VIrginia Commonwealth University and just published, in 2021, the political writings of William Penn for the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. He is also the author of a biography of William Penn. A Life. (Oxford UP, 2018).

The episode also features exclusive recordings by Cy Grant, with the kind permission from his family and the London Metropolitan Archives

Tracks featured:
Psalm 137, By the Rivers of Babylon
Untitled Calypso (recorded ca. 1976)
Fayo (a Haitian lullaby)

In this episode we discuss two recent takes on the 30th anniversary of the collapse of the socialist bloc. What began with the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the collapse of the socialist regimes of Central Europe and the Balkans (from Czechoslovakia to Romania), led, in 1990, to the end of Europe's last Stalinist regime in Albania and culminated, in 1991, in the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Vladislav Zubok’s Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union (Yale U Press, 2021) “rethinks the inevitability of the Soviet collapse” by carefully reconstructing the political landscape of the Gorbachev years.
Lea Ypi’s Free: Coming of Age at the End of History (Penguin/Allen Lane, 2021) is a deeply political but also autobiographical account of ideas and experiences of freedom in socialist and post-socialist Albania.

Music
The Internationale, in Albanian
Felicitá, a citation of Al Bano and Romina Power´s classic by Strannye Igry (1985)

25 March 1821 is celebrated annually in Greece as Greek independence day; a day marking the birth of what some have seen as the first nation-state in Europe after post-revolutionary France. A series of localised revolts against Ottoman rule gave rise to a broad revolutionary wave that swept parts of the country. By the end of the 1820s, interventions by different European powers and the rise of philhellenic sentiment secured the state's autonomous existence from the Ottomans. This came at the price of greater dependence upon the so-called Great Powers: Britain, France, and Russia.

As Greece prepares to celebrate the bicentennial of the events of 1821, we want to examine the dimensions of Greek dependence and independence from different angles. Was the war of independence a standalone event or part of a transnational process of revolutionary activity? How did the heterogeneous populations (Jews, Muslims) within what became the Greek nation-state experience the revolution and its aftermath? What kinds of sovereignty did Greece gain and how did its place in the world change over time? Finally, how is the revolution remembered in Greece today?

With
Mark Mazower, Ira D Wallach Professor of History at Columbia University and founding director of the new Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination

Katherine E. Fleming, Provost of New York University, Alexander S. Onassis Professor of Hellenic Culture and Civilization in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at NYU

Effi Gazi, Professor of History at the University of the Peloponnese and a member of the editorial board of the journal Historein

Music by Κυριάκος Τζωρτζινάκης, "4 Δημοτικές Εικόνες - 3ο μέρος: Του
Βουνού" ("Four Folk Images - part 3: Of the Mountain") (1975),
recording by Andreas Vlachos (2021)

Nagorno-Karabakh in history

Against the backdrop of a new war in Nagorno-Karabakh, in this episode we explore the region’s history through the lenses of political conflict as well as cultural interactions. Since 1994, Nagorno-Karabakh brokered an existence as an autonomous region, and the fortunes of its population were supposedly entrusted to international intermediaries, the so-called Minsk group. While the UN Security Council had ruled to restore the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, de facto throughout this period Nagorno-Karabakh was controlled by Armenia. In the autumn of 2020, Azerbaijan carried out a military operation, which resulted in the transfer of a large part of Nagorno-Karabakh, previously controlled by Armenia, to Azerbaijan. Now Armenian refugees have fled from here to Armenia or to Russia, while the Azerbaijani population expelled from Karabakh in the early 1990s is preparing to return. Among the ruins of towns and villages are both Armenian and Azerbaijani cultural monuments, some of which document a kind of coexistence that now seems unimaginable. Our guests speak about the region in relation to the Russian Civil War, Soviet culture of the 1960s, the role of the diasporas, and the impact of Soviet collapse on the Caucasus as a whole. The episode features music by composers and performers from the region.

With
Zaur Gasimov, Senior Research Fellow, Department of History, University of Bonn

Ronald G. Suny, William H. Sewell Jr. Distinguished University Professor of History and Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan.

Music
Grikor Suni, Ov Dook Sarer (1997 recording, with Armena Marderosian, piano, and Henrik Mihranian, tenor, words by 19th c poet Ghazaros Aghayan) suniproject.org

Bülbül (Murtuza Mammadov), Sevgili canan (1975, Melodiya, words by 12th c poet Nizami)

Grikor Suni, Yete mi Oor (1997 recording, words by 19th c poet Hovhannes Toumanian)

Rashid Beibutov, Armenian folk song (Bulbul- Nightingale) (1971, Melodiya)

Hosts Georgios Giannakopoulos and Dina Gusejnova in discussion with

Jeanne Morefield, Senior Lecturer in political theory at the University of Birmingham, Co-President of the Association for Political Theory and fellow at the Quincy institute for responsible statecraft

Sam Moyn, Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale Law School and Professor of History at Yale University.

Charles Smith, Distinguished Professor of Playwriting, Ohio University Presidential Research Scholar in the Arts and Humanities, and head of the Professional Playwriting Program at Ohio University

The American election has created a closely watched spectacle across the world. The interests of those watching are as widely divergent as those of the American electorate itself. For the past four years, the words and gestures coming from America’s now departing president have made for a horrible show of dehumanisation, farce, and contempt. And yet the election is also a passing moment in a much more protracted crisis revolving around the state of American democracy as well as its status worldwide.

Music by Buster Ezell, 'Bottle up and go' (1941), from the Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/item/ftvbib000036/

Extracts from the play by Charles Smith, Knock me a Kiss, productions at Jubilee Theatre in Fort Worth, TX (2013).