The Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET) at the University of Vienna and the Research Platform "Transformations and Eastern Europe" invite to their regular Transformative Salon on 3 October 2024 at 7 PM, this time with Maria Todorova (Professor Emerita at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign).
Venue: Café Merkur, Florianigasse 18, 1080 Vienna.
This talk is partly a summary of the main points Prof. Todorova developed in her book "Imagining Utopia: The Lost World of Socialists at Europe's Margins", partly a chronological extension into the decades that were not covered by the book. This is done by focusing on the life and activities of Christian Rakovsky (1873-1941), as well as the assessments in the aftermath of his death. The change of the scales of analysis would allows Todorova to demonstrate the interplay between center and periphery, especially the "paradox" of socialism in agrarian societies and the attitude to the national question, the mechanisms of how socialist ideas were generated and received, and to emphasize the benefits of microhistory through the biographical method. The book ended with the demise of the Second International. In this talk, Todorova is taking the narrative further by stressing the activities of Rakovsky in the Soviet Union and particularly in the Ukraine, as well as his diplomatic work and his place in the Left Opposition. It thus highlights the move from the realm of the "utopia of the future" to the reality of "utopia on earth."
The talk will be commented on by Goran Musić and moderated by Agata Zysiak.
Maria Todorova is the Gutgsell Professor of History Emerita and Professor Emerita, Center for Advanced Study at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She specializes in Eastern Europe, specifically the Balkans in the modern period. Her research focuses on historical demography, nationalism, socialism and post-communism.
Goran Musić is a social historian of labor in socialist and postcolonial settings approaching the field from a broader disciplinary background in Global History, Nationalism Studies and Political Economy. He is the author of Making and Breaking the Yugoslav Working Class: A Story of Two Self-Managed Factories (CEU Press). His current research project advances knowledge about Yugoslavia's 'socialist globalisation' through the example of Yugoslav companies in Zambia.
Agata Zysiak is a historical sociologist working as a researcher at RECET and as an adjunct at the Institute of Sociology, University of Łódź in Poland. Her latest book, “Limiting Privilege: Upward Mobility Within Higher Education in Socialist Poland” (2023), examines first-generation students’ struggles with reluctant academia. Her research focuses on social mobility, modernization dreams, and state socialism.
FREE ENTRY. No registration is needed to participate. The event language is English.
The organisers plan to record the event and publish it on the RECET YouTube channel 2-3 days later.
