This CENTRAL workshop is a cooperation between the University of Vienna, the University of Warsaw, ELTE Budapest and Charles University Prague.

Venue: University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

Can we speak of colonialism in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? And can we use categories of (post-)colonialism to analyze the history and present of the region? The Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine since 2022 has brought these questions to the fore with urge. They tie in with a broader debate about the place of the region in global political geography, as a former "Second World" of the Cold War era and economic "semi-periphery" in past and present. Here, the issue of race also acquires great significance: given the region's in-between position, are Central and East Europeans "fully white" in global hierarchies of race? And how do they, in turn, negotiate racial difference within and beyond the region? Bringing together senior and junior scholars working on the global history of CEE and on the history of race in the region, these workshops will discuss these key topics of historical and contemporary analysis.

Workshop Program (also see the program flyer):

Thursday, 12 March

9:30 – 11:00

• Keynote: Jan Musekamp (German Historical Institute in Warsaw): Global "Color Lines" as Racist Boundaries. Global Migration From Eastern Europe in the Nineteenth Century
• Chair: Tomasz Zarycki (University of Warsaw)

11:15 – 13:15

• Jannis Panagiotidis (RECET) Ukrainian Experiences in German Job Centers
• Anton Saifullayeu (University of Warsaw): "Reverse Dependence” in Global Knowledge Regimes: Colonial Transfer and the Case of Belarus
• Daria Tashkinova (RECET): Thinking Postcolonially about the Late Soviet Baltics: Questions of Empire, Bureaucracy, and Power
• Iskra de Vries and Marta Gospodarczyk (University of Warsaw): Polemics on Polish Progressiveness and Patriotism: A Fanonian Reading of National Consciousness
• Chair: Zsuzsanna Kiss (ELTE)

14:30 – 16:30

• Laura Plochberger (RECET): Center-Periphery Relations in the Habsburg Labor Movement: Bucovina Woodworkers in Viennese Labor Archives
• Nino Aivazishvili-Gehne (IOS Regensburg): Facets of ‘being German’ in Germany in the 1990s: perspectives ‘from below’
• Gergely Magos (ELTE): Race and ethnicity in Hungarian medical discourse
• Sonia Styrkacz (University of Warsaw): Decolonizing Knowledge about Roma: Identity, Culture, and Appropriation from the Perspective of a Roma Scholar.
• Chair: Márkus Keller (ELTE)

16:45 – 18:30

• Naum Trajanovski (University of Warsaw):Post-Earthquake Reconstruction of Skopje: Race, Politics, and Cold War Interactions in the Late 1960s.
• Andrzej Turkowski (Copenhagen Business School): The Inconveniences of Putting on “Western Suits”: Europeanization, Knowledge Hierarchies, and Peripheral Agency in the EU 
• Jan Dawidowicz (University of Warsaw): Enlightening the “unmodern”. Symbolic violence and legitimation of modernity from stalinism to post-socialism
• Chair: Zofia Rohozińska (University of Warsaw)

Friday, 13 March

9:30 – 11:00

• Zsombor Bódy (ELTE): Socialist travel literature beyond solidarity: perceptions of non-European landscapes in Hungarian-language travelogues
• Mikuláš Pešta (Charles University): Betrayal of socialist internationalism? Europeanization in the student movement and global solidarity
• Csenge Faur (ELTE): CEE Socialist Housing Models in "Third World"
• Chair: Jakub Szumski (Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena, Friedrich Schiller University Jena)

11:15 – 12:45

• Vojtěch Šimák (Charles University): Solidarity through arms: Czechoslovak military support to independence movements in Africa
• Goran Music (RECET): Socialist Servants': Domestic Workers in Yugoslav Expat Households in Zambia
• Jan Koura (Charles University): White Saviorism from the East? Czechoslovak Experts in Nkrumah's Ghana
• Chair: Zachary Mazur (Museum of the History of Polish Jews POLIN)