The Havighurst Center annually hosts the International Young Researchers’ Conference (YRC), which invites advanced graduate students and recent doctorate recipients from the U.S. and abroad to present their research on a specified topic within the region of Russia, Eastern Europe and/or Eurasia.
Centennial, Commemoration, Catastrophe: 1917-2017 as Past and Present in Russia and Beyond
June 13-16, 2017
Cuma, Italy
Keynote speakers:Catriona Kelly (University of Oxford); Boris Kolonitskii (European University at St. Petersburg)
Discussing the Russian revolution is impossible without addressing the causes, legacy, and echoes of this event. The very phrasing is contentious—was 1917 a revolution, overthrow, or accident? Examining the Russian and Soviet response is complex enough, yet the Bolshevik takeover had ramifications for the world. In literature the image of the revolution and the ensuing changes was polarized from the beginning, both in the new Soviet state and abroad. Those in history and the social sciences have long puzzled over interpreting the USSR, its influence on Eastern Europe (and the developing world), and the aftermath of its collapse. In otherwise disparate regions—from eastern Germany to Central Asia and the Russian Far East—1917 and the USSR defined the twentieth century, whether as horrific trauma, utopian promises, or a confounding combination of the two. How our field responds to the Russian revolution will define Eurasian studies for the coming decades, just as experts continue to debate the significance of other cultural markers such as 1905, 1956, and 1989.
