The Third Annual Conference of the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies, a joint program by the Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität München (LMU Munich) and the Universität Regensburg (Regensburg University), is dedicated to the Russian Revolution. The international conference will take place June 2-4, 2016 in Munich.
Until the late 1980s, the October Revolution of 1917 served as the undisputed focal point for historical research on Russia. With the collapse of the Soviet Union on the one hand and the rise of cultural history on the other hand, the political and social significance of the caesura has been questioned while later periods have attracted considerably more attention. Yet, for scholars no other event has gained the paramount significance the 1917 revolution had. What is the meaning of this event in history hundred years later? And how have the historiographical debates of recent years led to a reevaluation of the events leading to and triggered by the Revolution?
One focus lies on the artistic reactions to the revolution. Papers will explore particular performances intending to strengthen the identification of audiences with the ideas of the Russian Revolution in media like theatre and film. Different facets of the rhetoric of revolution and its interconnections with aesthetic phenomena will be also explored, including Lenin’s language and formalist poetics as well as the rhythms of revolution as an aesthetic principle. Other papers will address the revolutionary semantics of religious beliefs and the interdependencies of religion and revolution. Moreover, the global dimensions of the Russian Revolution will be discussed during the conference. Though its protagonists declared the October Revolution a cataclysmic turning point in world history, they remained far more interested in Germany than, for example, in China. The actual impact of the revolution outside Europe is comparatively understudied. Which factors contributed to the success of the Bolsheviks in Asian Russia, how did Russia’s Asian neighbors view – and react to – the upheavals next door?
Taking stock of current research and worldwide debates among historians, slavicists, and scholars from other disciplines, the conference is going to explore the interrelation between revolution and performance, the rhetoric of revolution, the revolutionary semantics of religious beliefs, the perceptions of the revolution particularly in East Asia, and its global impact.
The Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies is delighted to welcome many internationally reknowned scholars. Keynote-lectures will be given by Boris Kolonitskii (European University at St. Petersburg), Yuri Slezkine, and Alexei Yurchak (both University of California, Berkeley).
Conference language is English.
For attending the Graduate School’s Third Annual Conference please register until May 22, 2016 via email: gs-oses@lmu.de