Dr. Andreas Umland
Why the War Cannnot Easily End: Six Hindrances for a Russian-Ukrainian Truce
Abstract: This presentation will briefly analyze each of the six major hindrances for a Russian-Ukrainian cease fire today: the Ukrainian Constitution, Russian Constitution, imperial Russian groups, patriotic Ukrainian public, Crimea's connection to mainland Ukraine, Ukrainian historical experience, and Western interest in preserving the international order. Each of these factors would by itself be a unsurmountable challenge for a ceasefire based on a "land for peace" or "land for NATO membership" deal. Therefore negotiations between Russia and Ukraine can only start at a point when Moscow either has lost all occupied territories or when it is ready to discuss the modalities of a Russian withdrawal for the occupied territories. A transitory process could, among others, include a temporary UN peace-keeping mission and international administration on Crimea, before Kyiv takes again full control of the peninsula.
Biographical note: Dr. Andreas Umland has degrees as a Certificated Translator (Leipzig), MPhil (Oxford), Diploma in Political Sciences and Dr. of Philosophy (FU Berlin) and a PhD degree from Cambridge University. He was a visiting fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, 1997-99, and Harvard’s Weatherhead Center, 2001-02. Bosch Lecturer in International Relations at Yekaterinburg’s Ural State University, 1999-2001, and the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, 2003-05. Currently he is analyst at the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs and Associate Professor of Political Science at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Kyiv, Ukraine). Dr. Umland is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Boris Nemtsov Academic Center for the Study of Russia in Prague, the Board of Directors of the International Association for Comparative Fascist Studies in Budapest, and the International Council of the Institute for the Danube Region and Central Europe in Vienna. He is also a member of the editorial boards for the book series: “Explorations of the Far Right”, “Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society” and “Forum für osteuropäische Ideen- und Zeitgeschichte”, “Fascism: Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies”, “CEU Political Science Journal” (Central European University, Budapest), “World Affairs”, and “The Ideology and Politics Journal” (Foundation for Good Politics, Kyiv).
Dr. Tatiana Zhurzhenko
War, Displacement, and Transnationalization of Ukrainian Society: Why It Will Be Different from the 'Russian world' - and from the Post-WWII Ukrainian Diaspora
Abstract: Wars, revolutions, and political cataclysms have often produced waves of refugees, divided families, and new, sometimes highly politicized diasporas. The mass displacement of Ukrainians to other countries caused by the Russian invasion on February 2022 has dramatic demographic, economic, and social consequences for the country. At the same time, the war has not only revealed the high level of transnationalization of Ukrainian society (first of all due to three decades of labour migration) but has given this transnationalization a huge impetus. Millions of Ukrainian citizens are having now first-hand experience of welfare state, labour market, health care and school system in other countries, first of all in the EU. They learn languages, make new acquaintances, self-organize, create networks and lobby for the support of their country. Some of them will return to Ukraine with this new social capital, but others - or their children - will stay; there will be millions of transnational Ukrainian families. Why and how this new "Ukrainian world" will be different from the post-imperial and nostalgic "Russian world" instrumentalized by Putin's regime? Why and how will it also be different from the post-WWII Ukrainian diaspora separated for decades by the Iron Curtain from its country of origin?
Biographical note: Dr. Tatiana Zhurzhenko completed degrees in Political Economy (1989) and Philosophy (1993) at the V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University (Ukraine), where she subsequently taught as Associate Professor. From 2002 to 2004, she was a Lise Meitner Research Fellow at the Department of East European History, University of Vienna, with a project on the “Ukrainian-Russian Border in National Imagination, State Building and Social Experience”. From 2007 to 2011, she was an Elise Richter Research Fellow at the Department of Political Science, University of Vienna, with a project on the “Politics of Memory and National Identity in Post-Soviet Borderlands: Ukraine/Russia and Ukraine/Poland”. She has taught East European Politics at the Department of Political Science, University of Vienna, since 2005. From 2014 to 2018, she led the Ukraine and Russia programmes at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. Zhurzhenko has been a visiting scholar at the Universities of Helsinki and Toronto, as well as Harvard University and London Metropolitan University. She joined ZOiS as a researcher in July 2021.
