See the program for this upcoming conference to be held at the Institute of Modern Languages Research, University of London, here and follow the twitter feeds @airportculture and @citiesatSAS. See also the Cities project at the School of Advanced Study, University of London.
In the spirit of this conference, here is a scene from an airport of the Second World:
Tolmachevo airport in Novosibirsk. Source: Institute of Modernism, Moscow.
School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London
10 November 2015
9.15am-6pm. Followed by prosecco and canapés.
How can scholars working in the framework of East European studies engage with a world of people, objects, ideas and practices in motion? How does looking beyond geographically bounded nation-states and regions enrich the possibilities of East European area studies? What are the practical implications for research, teaching and training? And how does such work in East European studies speak to scholars in other fields? A workshop will be held in London on 10 November 2015 to consider these issues through the lens of recent research on three topics: cities, travellers, and networks/linkages.
This workshop will be preceded on 9th November by the linked conference “Area Studies in the 21st century”.
Speakers at “Eastern Europe without Borders” include:
The full programme is available for download:
http://www.ceelbas.ac.uk/
Further information and registration is available below:
http://www.ceelbas.ac.uk/
Workshop organizers:
Centre for East European Language Based Area Studies (CEELBAS): www.ceelbas.ac.uk
Academic contacts:
Wendy Bracewell w.bracewell@ucl.ac.
Administrative contact:
Anna Tremain a.tremain@ucl.ac.uk
A LONG, HAPPY LIFE. BUILDING AND THINKING THE SOVIET CITY: 1956 TO NOW
October 30–31, 2015
West Gallery
Garage Museum of Contemporary Art
Admission free
Prior registration required
Сonference is focusing on Soviet Modernist architecture and urban planning. Participants include historians of art and architecture, cultural theorists, sociologists, media-studies experts, and practicing architects, who will attempt to overcome the traumatic rupture with the Soviet past and reconnect it to our present culture. Continue reading
September 3 – 5, 2015
University of Toronto
Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies
Munk School of Global Affairs
1 Devonshire Place | Room 108N
Toronto, ON M5S 3K7
Sponsored by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Toronto. Continue reading
First of all, I want to thank: Steve Harris and Steve Barnes for taking the time to organize these blog conversations; Ana, Ekaterina, Asif, Wilson, and Jeff for taking the time to read my book with such care and offer their comments; and Yale University Press for facilitating the discussion. Second, I want to apologize for how long it’s taken me to formulate my first response. I’ve been traveling, and this has prevented me from sitting down to write something that is equal to the very high standards set by my fellow participants!
I’ll now take some time to respond to some of the questions and comments that the panelists have offered, in the hopes that this will then spark more questions and conversation about my book. I’ll start with what seem to be some common themes in the responses.
The volume is an extension of the main research themes explored by the exhibition Enchanting Views. Romanian Black Sea Tourism Planning and Architecture of the 1960s and 70s, held in the Sala Dalles of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest between 10 October and 23 November 2014.
There is a lot to say about Alan Barenberg’s deeply researched book Gulag Town, Company Town: Forced Labor and Its Legacy in Vorkuta, partly because there are so many ways to approach it critically as a work of scholarship. The history of the Gulag and the history of urbanization in the Soviet era are two obvious points of reference, but the book could also be offered as a meta-narrative on the transition from Stalinism to post-Stalinism and how that passage was contingent, complicated, and colored by historical memory: the late Soviet period had elements of the Stalinist past, and Stalinist past had embedded in it the roots of the post-1953 Soviet Union. This kind of articulation, of effacing the firm boundaries that one might seemingly expect in Soviet history, across time (think 1917, 1953, etc.), across space (the “Gulag/Ne Gulag” problem, in Oleg Khlevniuk’s formulation, for example), and across populations (“free” workers and prisoners) are at the heart of the Alan’s fascinating book. Continue reading
Alan Barenberg’s fascinating book Gulag Town, Company Town presents different stages in the life of the town of Vorkuta. The story is based on rich archival material and numerous interviews, mostly with former Gulag prisoners or their relatives. In the beginning of the 1930s, high-quality coal was discovered above the Arctic Circle of European Russia. Shortly afterwards, a decision was made to begin building a rapidly growing Soviet forced-labor camp. During the Second World War, the construction began of a town, separate from the camp complex. Continue reading
The study of one city as a litmus test for broader issues is becoming very widespread because a particular urban case gives an excellent opportunity to trace the formation and unexpected intersections of different processes on the ground level over the long term. However, the main (and rather obvious) challenge of a deep analysis of one case is the question of scale – how to estimate what is typical and what is original in that particular story, how to combine internal and external factors, and many other issues related to the levels of analysis. Alan Barenberg’s Gulag Town, Company Town: Forced Labor and Its Legacy in Vorkuta gives a good example of how to put the story of a particular settlement into a broader and more complicated context. Continue reading
In recent years, scholars have demonstrated the critical role that the Gulag played in building socialism under Stalin, the exercise of power and ideology in this totalitarian regime, and ordinary people’s interactions with the Stalinist state. While much of the Gulag’s history in the Stalin era remains to be examined, a few scholars have begun to explore how its post-Stalinist dismantling and transformation shaped Soviet state and society in subsequent decades. 
A chief example of this recent scholarship is Alan Barenberg’s Gulag Town, Company Town: Forced Labor and Its Legacy in Vorkuta (Yale University Press, 2014). In this richly researched study of Vorkuta, Barenberg (Texas Tech University), chronicles how a town and its residents participated in the larger transformation of the Gulag during and after Stalin’s rule. For students of socialist cities, this book is of critical importance for several reasons.
First, Barenberg’s study is one of the few we have on a particular category of socialist cities: the Gulag town. Alongside other categories–such as atom cities and closed cities–the Gulag town was a peculiar type of Soviet city that scholars have only begun to examine in studies of socialist urbanity. His book, therefore, contributes to our understanding of the different types of cities (and their respective planning, economy, political functions, and social composition) that socialist regimes developed over the course of the 20th century. Continue reading
