Authors

Tania Plawuszczak-Stech³; Volodymyr Kravchenko¹; Marko Robert Stech³; Andrew Wilson²;  ¹ Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada;  ² University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UK;  ³ Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, Canada

Discussion

The launch of an unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation in February 2022 was a jolting turn of events for the majority of Western scholars studying Eastern Europe. Moreover, the dramatic unfolding of the subsequent all-out Russo-Ukrainian war helped unmask an array of fundamental deficiencies—and even outright flaws—in the dominant Western perceptions of Russia and Ukraine and of their respective places in, and relation to, Europe’s past and present.

The participants of this roundtable will discuss a wide spectrum of issues associated with the need for a reconceptualization and “decolonization” of the entire cluster of Russian, Slavic, post-Soviet, East European, and Ukrainian interrelated disciplines in Western scholarship. Much of the discussion will be based on the contents of the book "The Unpredictable Past? Reshaping Russian, Ukrainian, and East European Studies," edited by Volodymyr Kravchenko and Marko Robert Stech. This book offers readers an extensive collection of insightful essays by thirty prominent international scholars who were invited to discuss the state of the art in their respective disciplines and suggest feasible solutions for re-evaluating them in the context of recent events.