Public lecture series

Press release — 08.04.2014

The Centre for EU-Russia Study (CEURUS) at the University of Tartu is hosting a series of public lectures addressing the situation in Ukraine, the Eu and Russia. 

On 21 April 2014, Mykola Riabchuk from the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna, will speak about

THE END OF THE SOVIET UKRAINE. WHAT’S NEXT?

Summary: After two failed attempts to break radically with the Soviet legacy and put their country on the European way of development, Ukrainians are trying now to complete once again the unfinished business of the 1989 East European revolutions. The shift of values that occurred in the relatively open and pluralistic Ukrainian society within the past two decades increasingly facilitates post-communist transformations. On the other hand, yet, they are dramatically complicated by the institutional and economic ruin left by the predecessors, as well as by Russian unprecedented political, economic, and military pressure.

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On 23 April 2014, James Sherr from the Royal Institute for International Affairs/Chatham House, UK will discuss the

UKRAINIAN CRISIS: IMPLICATIONS FOR INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, MARKETS AND NORMS

Summary: The paper will  analyse the external dimension of the conflict focusing on the following questions: What does the crisis in Ukraine mean and what can it tell us about the political and economic developments in the world? What implications does it have for international relations? How to understand the involvement of major actors (i.e. Russia, EU, USA) and what do their responses to these developments tell us about the state of the international system?

Both lectures will take place from 14:15-15:45 at the UT Faculty of Social Sciences, Lossi 36, room 215.

 

About the speakers

Mykola Riabchuk is a political and cultural analyst in Kiev and currently a senior visiting fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and senior research fellow at I.F. Kuras Institute of Political and Ethno-National Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He graduated from the Lviv Polytechnic Institute and the Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow and previously was a senior research associate at the Ukrainian Centre for Cultural Studies in Kyiv. Mykola lectured at Columbia (2006), Alberta (2007/2008), Warsaw (2009-10), Regensburg (2011) and held a number of fellowships including Fulbright (USA, 1994-96), Reuters (Oxford, 2000), Milena Jesenska Fellowship (Vienna, 2001) and visiting research fellowship at UCRS (Uppsala, 2011). He authored a number of books and numerous articles on civil society, state/nation building, nationalism, national identity, and post-communist transition in the post-Soviet countries, primarily in Ukraine. His most recent book is “Gleichschaltung: Authoritarian Consolidation in Ukraine, 2010-2012.”
See also a recent op-ed by Riabchuk about the situation in Ukraine in The New York Times

James Sherr is Associate Fellow at Royal Institute for International Affairs/Chatham House. Previously he was head of Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House; fellow, Advanced Research & Assessment Group, at UK Defence Academy and lecturer in International Relations at Lincoln College Oxford. His interests include foreign and security policy of the Russian Federation, Ukraine, NATO/EU Enlargement and the Black Sea Region, security sector reform in post-Communist states, the energy relationship between Russia, Ukraine and the EU. His latest book is Hard Diplomacy and Soft Coercion: Russia’s Influence Abroad.