We are happy to announce the next presentations of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA. Join the event in the Archivum, or online following the link below!
The presentations will be held at 11:00 a.m. on Monday, March 20, 2023, in the Meeting Room of the Blinken OSA Archivum, and online. The Zoom link of the meeting is: https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/94224597406?pwd=QUFqSkdEZ3pzdzcxbVJtejlWKzU5Zz09
The Kosovo War Between History and Memory: Notes from an Ongoing Research
What were the reasons that brought NATO to intervene against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999? How does today’s Serbia, with its politics of memory, make sense of the Kosovo War (1998–1999)? This presentation aims to briefly address these questions, trying to underline some aspects encountered during the research at the Blinken OSA Archivum. Indeed, after almost a quarter of a century, the causes of the Kosovo War and, more specifically, the reasons of the NATO intervention against Yugoslavia are still disputed in the academic community, notwithstanding the quantity and quality of available historical sources. Meanwhile in Serbia, an active politics of memory is contributing to build a collective awareness about the Kosovo War based on a selective memory. The presentation will focus on the opportunities and challenges that emerged during this research and will share some reflections on how it is possible to engage with historical research, the interpretations of the sources, and the creation of narratives
Transitional Justice in Russia: the Case of Failure
The current war in Ukraine may be a consequence of Russia’s failed democratization process. One of the fundamental causes of this failure is the inability of politicians and civil society to come to terms with the dark legacies of the Soviet Union. Although the massive repressions and deportations of the Stalin era were addressed before and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the process was a limited and incomplete one. One of the most convenient explanations for the failure is to employ the concept of transitional justice. A large portion of the extant scholarship sees the consolidation of the Putin regime as the main reason for the failure of the transitional justice process, and many scholars identify the causal mechanism as Putin’s memory policies, which portray a “great” Soviet past while overlooking its dark sides. In contrast, this presentation engages with the earlier period (1985–1993), a period that may be considered a missed opportunity to rework the image of the violent past. This period had many of the necessary prerequisites for a successful transitional justice process—i.e., relative freedom of media and adherence to democratic ideals—but failed nonetheless to produce anything permanent.