Crossing borders: Migration, Generational Change and Historical Narratives
On June 12-13, the MoveMeRU welcomes an international group of research to their Berlin offices for a workshop on Migration, Generational Change and Historical Narratives in the post-Soviet region.
Mobility and generational change contribute significantly to changes in collective memories and reconfigure the associated spaces thereafter. When people move, traces of previous memories travel with them and become embedded in new places, shaping their social experiences, interactions, and perceptions of local and global contexts. Having to negotiate between different temporalities and value regimes that may be contradictory between ‘here’ and ‘there’, people develop their own hybrid understandings of the past. In this process, the past itself changes its meaning and established narratives might find themselves challenged. Generational change is another important factor behind new social visions and the ways in which people handle time, leading to further reconfiguration of historical realities.
The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine has revitalised debates around the post-Soviet region’s past, the present and future projects, as well as the historical relations between the people living across the territory. The forced migration of Ukrainians to nearby Poland, the Baltic States, Germany or countries further afield, as well as migration of Russians to Georgia, Kazakhstan, and beyond, have transformed the landscape of historical memories and relationships in those countries. This new context has exposed numerous intergenerational and interspatial fissures regarding the narration of history and oftentimes led to controversial approaches to dealing with diverging visions of the past. In Germany, for example, debates about a responsibility to deliver – or not to deliver – arms to Ukraine often refer to the country’s history of Nazism, whereas references to the fragile European peace achieved with the 1919 Treaty of Versailles serve as a reference point for German discussions about how to proceed with Russia after the armed conflict. Meanwhile, in Poland the arrival of millions of Ukrainians has regenerated memories of the violent inter-state history that the two countries share, especially during the latter half of World War II.
The workshop is a collaboration of the following projects:
► Conflict and Kooperation in Eastern Europe: The Consequences of the Reconfiguration of Political, Economic, and Social Spaces since the End of the Cold War (KonKoop) - funded by the BMBF Konflikt und Kooperation im östlichen Europa. Die Folgen der Neukonfiguration politischer, ökonomischer und sozialer Räume seit dem Ende des Kalten Krieges (KonKoop) (zois-berlin.de)
► Moving Russia(ns): Intergenerational Transmission of Memories Abroad and at Home (MoveMeRU) - funded by ERC
► Ambivalences of the Soviet – Research Network 2020-2023 funded by the Niedersächsisches Vorab/Volkswagen Foundation
Verbundforschungsprojekt „Ambivalenzen des Sowjetischen, 1953-2023“ (uni-goettingen.de)
Vertreten durch das Nordost-Institut, Institut für Kultur und Geschichte der Deutschen in Nordosteuropa (IKGN e. V.) https://www.ikgn.de/