Autor: Irene Heffel-Boussaa

19.2.2026 | Vortrag "Aufstieg und Fall des Paragraphen 22.2" – Oleg Reut (Vortrag auf Russisch)

Donnerstag, 19.2.2026, 13.30-15.30, Raum A.227 | Четверг, 19 февраля 2026 г., аудитория А.227

Vortrag im Rahmen des Seminars Umkämpftes Gedächtnis | Erinnerung konfrontieren / Contested Memory | Confronting Memories

Рабочий язык: русский. Докладчик выступит очно. Будет возможность присоединиться по Zoom. Ведущий: Арсений Куманьков
Взлёт и падение § 22.2
На основе описательного портрета россиян-обладателей гуманитарных виз Германии по параграфу 22.2 (AufenthG – Закона о пребывании иностранцев) выявляются паттерны адаптации и интеграции в стране приёма, а также анализируется уровень коммеморативных (и более широко – общественно-политических) активностей как в Германии, так и направленных на Россию и россиян. Они не являются заданными или статичными, а практически полностью зависят от динамики российско-украинской войны и ставшего резким изменения политики приёма мигрантов в Германии.

9.2.2026 | Vortrag "History Makers – The Construction of Aggressor Images in (Digital) Historical Propaganda in Putin-Era Russia" – Daniel Weinmann (Universität Heidelberg)

Montag, 9. Februar 2026, 16.50-18.20, Raum N.316 | Monday, 9 Feb 2026, 4.50-6.20 pm, room N.316

Daniel Weinmann

Vortrag auf Englisch

Link zur Online-Teilnahme

This PhD project investigates how officially sanctioned historical narratives are utilised in present-day Russia under Vladimir Putin to construct and stage hostility. The primary object of analysis is the “Russian Military Historical Society“ (RVIO), a Government-Organized Non-Governmental Organization (GONGO) that effectively simulates civil society while executing state memory politics. By combining historical inquiry with memory theory and media analysis, the project examines the “staging of enmity” across two levels: the institutional rise of the RVIO, and the analysis of digital propaganda. Case studies focus on YouTube series about “The Wild 90s” and the RVIO-journal “Ideology of the Future”. These sources reveal how the “Wild 90s” and the “Great Patriotic War” are reshaped to legitimise Russia’s war against Ukraine, producing and staging an “Ambivalent Enmity“ – characterised by simultaneous contradictions, such as framing Ukraine as both a “brother nation” and a “Nazi state.” The project thus contributes to understanding the performative dimensions of Russian authoritarianism in digital spaces and the development of its historical narratives.

Daniel Weinmann is a Research Associate and PhD candidate in the project “The Aggressor“ at Heidelberg University. He earned his B.Ed. and M.Ed. from the University of Tübingen in 2023 with a thesis on Vladimir Medinskij’s “histotainment” on YouTube. His research explores politics of history and remembrance cultures, historical propaganda, and the contemporary history of Russia and Ukraine, including Putinism and the transformations of the 20th and 21st centuries.

5.-7. Februar 2026 | Escaped Memory: Transmitting Narratives, Images and Technologies – International Conference

Escaped Memory: Transmitting Narratives, Images and Technologies – International Conference

5-7 February, 2026, Johannes Gutenberg University, Germersheim Campus

Conference programme

War not only kills; it also displaces—and, in doing so, reshapes how uprooted societies and individuals engage in mnemonic practices. Since February 2022, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has generated new waves of Russian and Ukrainian emigration, dispersing people across Europe and beyond. In such a context, memory has functioned as a shared language, bringing together actors from diverse social, cultural, and political backgrounds. Remembrance practices have become a central arena for meaning-making, community-building, grief, protest, and political positioning.

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3.2.2026 | Vortrag "’Oioioi, die Russen kommen’ – Postsowjetische Populäre Musik in Deutschland": David-Emil Wickström (Popakademie Mannheim)

Dienstag, 3.2.26, 9.40-11.10 Uhr, Raum N.308

Prof. Dr. David-Emil Wickström von der Popakademie Mannheim wird mit vielen Musikbeispielen über postsowjetische Popmusik in Deutschland berichten.

Der Vortrag findet im Rahmen der Vorlesungsreihe "Transkulturalität und Transnationalität" statt.

Die Veranstaltung ist offen für alle, Russischkenntnisse sind NICHT erforderlich.

Oioioi, die Russen kommen’ – Postsowjetische Populäre Musik in Deutschland

Als die Erste Allgemeine Verunsicherung 1997 sang: „Oioioi, die Russen kommen! Nastrowje, und schon sind sie da!", war „die Russen" ein populärer Sammelbegriff für Menschen, die verstärkt nach der deutschen Wiedervereinigung aus dem Gebiet der ehemaligen Sowjetunion nach Deutschland und Österreich migrierten. Die erste Liedzeile „Igor kam aus Kasachstan mit Transsibirski Eisenbahn" verweist dabei bereits ironisch auf die Heterogenität dieser Migrationsbewegungen, die im öffentlichen Diskurs jedoch weitgehend nivelliert wurde. Weiterlesen "3.2.2026 | Vortrag "’Oioioi, die Russen kommen’ – Postsowjetische Populäre Musik in Deutschland": David-Emil Wickström (Popakademie Mannheim)"

29.01.2026 | Ausstellung "Menschen im Krieg: Fotoreportagen von Victoria Ivleva" – Eröffnungsveranstaltung

Eröffnung der Ausstellung: Donnerstag, 29.01.2026, 18:30 Uhr, FTSK Neubau, 2. OG

Eine russische Journalistin im ukrainischen Krieg

Die russische Fotografin und Journalistin Victoria Ivleva wurde für ihre Aufnahmen aus dem havarierten Atomreaktor Tschernobyl mit dem World Press Photo Award ausgezeichnet. In Moskau hatte sich die 66 Jahre alte Ivleva für ukrainische politische Häftlinge in russischen Gefängnissen eingesetzt. Gleich nach Kriegsbeginn ist Ivleva nach Kiew umgezogen. Von dort berichtet sie über ihre Arbeit bei der Hilfe von Menschen und beim Dokumentieren von Massengräbern.

Der Vortrag wird von den Studierenden aus dem Russischen ins Deutsche gedolmescht.

26.01.2026 | Vortrag "Ageing after Deportations in the Soviet Union"

Montag, 26. Januar 2026, 16.50-18.20, Raum N.316 | Monday, 26 Jan 2026, 4.50-6.20 pm, room N.316

Botakoz Kassymbekova

Prof. Dr. Botakoz Kassymbekova, University of Zurich

Vortrag auf Englisch

Link zur Online-Teilnahme

What did it mean to age after Soviet national deportations? This talk investigates how survivors processed deportation experiences in later life, and how deportation traPof. Dr. Kassymbekova Jan 26 uma continued to influence family relations, intergenerational narratives, and everyday wellbeing.

Prof. Dr. Kassymbekova studies colonialism, imperialism and dictatorships, exploring these as systems of power structure and as lived experience.  Her first book, entitled Despite Cultures. Early Soviet Rule in Tajikistan (Pittsburgh University Press, 2016) examines Soviet colonial strategies in Central Asia and analyses how Moscow communicated and enforced rule across large distances, with a particular focus on how Soviet officials in the colonized peripheries (mis)understood the system they were building. Her research interests include Soviet colonial photography, comparative analysis of "merit" under capitalism, communism and colonial systems, Russian colonialism in comparative perspective, the history of childhood and ageing, post-Stalinism, urban and food history.
She is currently working on a manuscript that investigates how older people aged after Stalinism in the Soviet Union. Another book project titled “Imperial Innocence” (under contract with the Cambridge University Press, Elements Series) is a cultural history of Soviet imperialism in co-authorship with Yevhenii Monastyrskyi (Harvard University).
Prof. Kassymekova conceptualized and co-convened online exhibition Soviet Central Asia in 100 Objects together with professor Alexander Morrison (Oxford) and Edmund Herzig (Oxford)  at the Oxford Nizami Ganjavi Centre in 2021. She co-founded the RUTA Association, based in Ukraine.
Kassymbekova holds a Ph.D. in Modern History from Humboldt University in Berlin; an M.A. from Social and Cultural History from the University of Essex; and a B.A. from the American University – Central Asia with a Major in Comparative Political Science and a Minor in Sociology and Social Anthropology. She held postdoctoral positions at the Technical University Berlin and the Liverpool John Moores University. She was also a Visiting Fellow at the Harriman Institute at the Columbia University and at the Center for Advanced Studies LMU (CAS LMU) at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich.

26.01.2026 | Vortrag „Translating for Change: Women Translators and the Politics of Anonymity. The Women’s Publishing Cooperative in St. Petersburg, 1863–1879“

Masha Bratishcheva

Montag, 26. Januar 2026, 11.20-12.50, Raum N.307

Dr. Masha Bratishcheva (Universität Bielefeld)

Link zur Online-Teilnahme

In nineteenth-century Russia, translation served as one of the few pathways through which women could participate in intellectual and professional life. Yet women translators remained largely invisible—unnamed on title pages, excluded from historical records, and unrecognized in the public sphere. This lecture examines how Russian women translators organized collectively to transform their anonymous labour into a visible force for social change. Weiterlesen "26.01.2026 | Vortrag „Translating for Change: Women Translators and the Politics of Anonymity. The Women’s Publishing Cooperative in St. Petersburg, 1863–1879“"

19.01.2026 | Vortrag "Sovietizing Diversity: Interwar Experiments in South Asia and the Middle East"

Montag, 19. Januar 2026, 16.50-18.20, Raum N.316 | Monday, 19 Jan 2026, 4.50-6.20 pm, room N.316

Roy Bar Sadeh

Dr. Roy Bar Sadeh

Vortrag auf Englisch

Link zur Online-Teilnahme

The Soviet nationalities policies is one of the most intensively studied subjects in the historiography of the Soviet Union. Scholars have shown how the Soviet state elaborated a vision of governing difference grounded not in religion but in ethno-territorial categories, institutionalized during the 1920s through a federative architecture of national republics. This project aimed, above all, to reorder the former territories of the Russian Empire while tightening Moscow’s political authority. Yet we still know remarkably little about how Soviet ideas of ethno-territorial self-determination travelled beyond Soviet borders. This lecture argues that Soviet approaches to managing diversity acquired unexpected resonances across parts of the global South, becoming an object of engagement for a wide range of state and non-state actors. It focuses on the post-Ottoman Middle East and British-ruled South Asia – two arenas in which anti-colonial politics and rival imaginaries of sovereignty took especially sharp form during the interwar years. Drawing on sources in Arabic, Urdu, Russian, and other languages, the lecture places Soviet nationalities policy in dialogue with select case studies from the interwar histories of both regions. In doing so, it seeks to generate new questions not only about Soviet nationalities policy itself, but also about the political and intellectual trajectories of South Asia and the Middle East in the first half of the twentieth century.

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5.01.2026 | Vortrag "Survival and Prosperity Strategies in Central Asian Political Regimes: A Comparative Perspective"

Montag, 5. Januar 2026, 16.50-18.20, online | Monday, 5 January 2026, 4.50-6.20 pm, online

Anna Jordanová

Vortrag auf Englisch

Link zur Online-Teilnahme

Anna Jordanová is a PhD Candidate in the Institute of International Studies at Charles University in Prague and an associate at the Association for International Affairs (AMO). Her primary expertise concerns the wider Central Asian region, especially political and economic developments in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. She also focuses on Central Asia within the framework of her PhD at Charles University and international research projects such as MOCCA (Multilevel Orders of Corruption in Central Asia).

 

Anna Jordanová will present her research on the political dynamics of the five Central Asian states. Her thesis, grounded in regime theory, political economy, and autocratic governance, explores how these national regimes develop distinct strategies to preserve power, (refuse to) share authority, or shape distinct foreign policy. The lecture will also discuss the utility of conventional perceptions of frequently articulated phenomena in the region, such as state dependence as an overall negative feature or the presumed geopolitical competition among major powers in the region. The presentation will cover the core arguments of the research, along with reflections on how Western European perspectives on regional political affairs are preserved or challenged, as well as notes from field trips and study visits to the Central Asian states conducted during her PhD studies.