Bard College Berlin Presents

National Internationalism? Nation, Race, and Class in the Soviet Sphere

This conference explores the paradoxes of communist internationalism by focusing on the USSR and its satellites. Soviet type regimes claimed to transcend the nation-state and condemned nationalism as a bourgeois relic, yet they relied and often mobilized national loyalties to legitimize and maintain control. Communist countries theorized anti-colonialism and promoted racial equality abroad, even while repressing minorities and silencing ethnic tensions at home. The collapse of communism as a social and political system exposed these contradictions. By examining the gap between ideology and practice, the conference investigates nationalism’s persistence and its enduring role in shaping contemporary politics.

Organized by Berit Ebert, Denis Skopin, Ewa Atanassow. In cooperation with Smolny Beyond Borders and Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur. More information can be found in the conference overview document.

From 9:00-17:45, the conference takes place in Julie Johnson Kidd Hall of Bard College Berlin (Waldstr. 15, 13156 Berlin). From 18:30-20:30, the evening event will take place at Metis Books and Café (Gleimstraße 21, 10437 Berlin).

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Conference Program:

8:30 - Сoffee/Tea/Snacks
 
9:00-9:15 - Welcome remarks: Philipp Fedchin

9:15-10:15 - Panel 1: Communism and the Jewish Question (Moderation: M. Litvin)
Ewa Atanassow, Marx and the Jewish Question
Konstanty Gebert, Communism and the Polish Jews

10:15-10:30 - Refreshments

10:30-11:45 - Panel 2: Nationalism in three Soviet(-type) Regimes (Moderation: B. Ebert)
Momchil Metodiev, "Towards Unified Socialist Nation": Secularism and Nationalism in Communist Bulgaria 
Ostap Sereda, Rethinking Soviet Ukraine in American Academia. Was there a “revisionist turn” in Ukrainian studies during the “Cold War”?
Oleg Vasiukov, “Speak Polish correctly!” Language homogenization as a tool of national integration in postwar Poland

11:45-12:00 - Refreshments

12:00-13:15 - Panel 3: Race in the Soviet Sphere (Moderator: P. Fedchin)
Joshua Yaffa, The Black Experience in Communist Moscow
Margaret Litvin, Microcosm of Internationalism: Racist Inclusion in the USSR’s Foreign Student Dormitories
Denis Skopin, Vladimir Aboltin and his Photographs of Ghana (1963)

13:15-14:30 - Lunch

14:30-15:45 - Panel 4: USSR and the East (Moderation: D. Skopin)
Maria Chernyshova, Between Soviet Internationalism and Nostalgia for the Russian Empire: The Film White Sun of the Desert
Ramil Nyiazov, “Alik, Pull the Guys Back”: A Chechen War Song Between Post-/Soviet and Islamic Internationalism
“Nobody Wants This: Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev and the Establishment of the Tatar Autonomous Socialist Republic”

15:45-16:00 - Refreshments

16:00-17:15 - Panel 5: Nationalism and the Communist collapse (Moderation: O. Sereda)
Una Blagojević, “Is nationalism our destiny?” Yugoslav Marxist Humanism, self-government, and the national question
Peter Rutland, Nationalism and the Soviet Collapse 
Snežana Stanković, Hana Levy and Yugoslavian Language as a Freedom Dream: Longing, Connection, and Hybridization

17:15 - Concluding remarks 

17:45 - Departure from campus

18:30-20:30 - Evening event: Brothers and Ghosts
Khue Pham in conversation with Berit Ebert
(Metis Books and Café
Gleimstraße 21, 10437 Berlin)

For more information, e-mail [email protected].

Time: 9:00 am – 8:30 pm CET/GMT+1

Location: Julie Johnson Kidd Hall & Metis Books and Café

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