CBEES Advanced Seminar with Jessie Barton Hronešová, Lecturer in Political Sociology at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London and Co-Director of the Centre for Study of Places, Identities and Memories.

pAbstract: This talk offers key insights from an upcoming book on the politics of victimhood as a central yet contested feature of contemporary public life in eastern Europe. While the region is often described through its long history of violence, foreign domination, and geopolitical marginalization, I argue that it is not past victimizations per se but their selective reinterpretation that animates political discourse today. Victimhood functions as symbolic and moral capital: it can legitimize demands for redress, defend national identity and democracy, or be hijacked to invert moral orders and absolve responsibility. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, political speech analysis, elite interviews, and focus groups with students in Czechia, Hungary and Serbia—I analyse how actors strategically deploy narratives of victimhood through frames of suffering, injustice, security, and lessons from history. I treat victimhood not as an objective status but as a narrative and interpretive framework. This allows me to capture its relational and situational nature: who is cast as a victim, who as a perpetrator, and what moral obligations follow. My analysis highlights how dominant political actors in Hungary, Serbia, and the Czech Republic mobilize defensive and hijacked victimhood to resist external criticism, consolidate power, and reframe national belonging vis-à-vis the European Union, Russia, and global liberal norms. At the same time, counter-narratives—especially among younger generations—demonstrate scepticism and disillusionment, pointing to the limits of hegemonic victimhood discourses. By tracing these dynamics, the book contributes to a broader understanding of how victimhood politics shape democratic trajectories, memory practices, and Europe’s fractured moral and political landscape.

Speaker: Jessie Barton Hronešová, Lecturer in Political Sociology at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London and Co-Director of the Centre for S
Discussant: Kjetil Duvold, Associate Professor of Political Science at Dalarna Univeristy and Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Södertörn University.

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New Politics of Victimhood in Eastern Europe

Chair: Çağla Demirel, PhD in Political Science, CBEES, Södertörn University and Visiting Scholar
at Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies (SUITS).