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

Friday, April 24, 2026 9:00 am – 8:00 pm CET/GMT+1 

JJK Hall Café (W15) & Metis

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 Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur. More information can be found in this Google Doc.

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Email: [email protected]