Axe 3 - Modern and contemporary crises and conflicts

Responsible: Etienne Boisserie (CREE)

The "Modern and Contemporary Crises and Conflicts" axis is mainly made up of projects that continue those of the previous five-year period - partly projects from theme A (project 3.1), partly from theme B (projects 3.3 and 3.4) - which it seemed useful to bring together because of their complementarity and the synergies that can be created with two projects that are more recent in their formalization (3.2 and 3.5).

The axis is divided into two main fields of study, covering the whole of Medieval Europe and the Russian world: on the one hand, a historical dimension that focuses on the two great world conflicts of the 20th century, both the event as such and its memorial and symbolic dimensions, from a cultural and social history perspective. On the other hand, a cross-disciplinary analysis of contemporary conflicts, highlighting the different forms of crisis and risk in Russia's peripheral territories, from Central Asia and the Caucasus to the Ukraine (3.4). The approach of project 3.5 is in many ways complementary; it proposes to observe over the medium and long term the elements durably structuring societies in medieval Europe subject to the effects of tensions between two spaces - the initial core of the European Union and the post-Soviet states - and proposes to question the relevance of the categories classically used.

This line of research therefore embraces crises and conflicts in different configurations and on different scales, covering as a priority the first twentieth century and contemporary crises in our study area. Within this axis, there are strong complementarities between projects 3.1 to 3.3 on the one hand, and between projects 3.4 and 3.5 on the other. Similarly, the "Ukraine watches" integrated into project 3.3 are not disjointed from the activities of the Observatory of Post-Soviet States.

In their historical part, the work of this axis is intended to combine with project 1.2. (Heritage in post-Soviet spaces). In the more contemporary dimension of crisis analysis, complementarity with Axis 2 projects (notably projects 2.1 and 2.2) is certain.

Projects:

• Project 3.1. Middle Europe in the Great War: from event to traces (Étienne Boisserie)
• Project 3.2. Ukraine and its crises in the 20th and 21st centuries (Iryna Dmytrychyn)
• Project 3.3. Testimonies of crisis, conflict and exile in the Balkans, from the 1940s to the present day (Christina Alexopoulos, Joëlle Dalègre)
• Project 3.4. Post-communist societies facing crises and risks in Eurasia (Catherine Poujol, Jean Radvanyi, Laurent Coumel, Sophie Hohmann)
• Project 3.5. Conflicts and mutations in European and Eurasian spaces (Bruno Drweski)

PROJECT 3.1. Medieval Europe in the Great War: from event to traces

Responsible: Etienne Boisserie (CREE)

The approach of this project is primarily historian, but it can be enriched by other disciplinary contributions.

It takes into account population movements and recompositions, symbolic policies and new narratives, intellectual, social and cultural permanencies, ruptures and recompositions, and intra-regional exchanges.
Particular attention will be paid to the initial recomposition (period 1919-1923) ("Median Europe of the peace treaties") and to the observation of its effects on populations; in this sense, this project continues in part by expanding it thematically the "national construction" project of the five-year period (2014-2018).

The project is broken down into two main areas; one that continues and deepens research themes already developed during the previous five-year period, the other that opens up to other times of contemporary conflicts, through research into their impact and representations.

3.1.1. The Habsburg Empire in the Great War. A Historiographical Handbook.

Responsible: Etienne Boisserie (CREE)

This is a transformation and expansion of the working group devoted to Slavic historiographies of the Great War, which gave rise to three workshops during the previous project.

This evolution is based on the shared observation of the absence of a synthetic scientific tool on the object. The project will result in a thematized collective writing including some twenty chapters by recognized researchers in the field of studies of Austria-Hungary at war. The book will be written in English and published by a British publisher.

An annual or biannual workshop will punctuate the writing process.

Associated researchers, co-responsible: Rok Stergar, Tamara Scheer, John Paul Newman, Kamil Ruszała, Gabriela Dudeková, Rudolf Kučera.

Associated institutions: Maynooth University (Ireland), Jagiellonian University Krakow, University of Ljubljana, Masaryk Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of History of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Ludwig Boltzmann Institut, Vienna.

Expected achievements:

• publication of the book in 2020 or 2021.

3.1.2. The Austro-Italian front (1915-1918)

International research group. 
French leader: Etienne Boisserie (CREE)

This project is based on the continuation of the work of an international research group initiated by CREE in 2016, which set itself the objective of working specifically on the Austro-Italian front (see general explanatory statement here: http://www.inalco.fr/appel-communication/front-austro-italien-1915-1918). Since it was set up, this research group has organized three colloquia:
Padua: http://www.sissco.it/evento/soldati-e-quotidianita-della-guerra-sul-fronte-dellisonzo-2/ 
Paris: http://www.inalco.fr/evenement/guerre-armes-refugies-prisonniers-front-austro-italien-1915-1918-0
Ljubljana: http://www.ff.uni-lj.si/sites/default/files/Dokumenti/Dejavnosti/Novice/victory-to-defeat-programme.pdf

They have opened up and consolidated the international network working on this subject, and these colloquia have become the sole forum for exchanges on the progress of international research on this object.

The scientific responsibility of Each colloquium involves this standing committee and a national committee from the inviting institution.

Institutional partners: UMR SIRICE (Paris-I Panthéon-Sorbonne - Sorbonne Université), University of Ljubljana, University of Padua, Institute of History of the Slovak Academy of Sciences.

Expected outcomes:

• Bi-annual conference (2019, 2021, 2023), rotating venue (May 2019, Bratislava), publication of proceedings.

3.1.3. The Great War on the territories of the central empires: representations and narratives

Responsible persons: Etienne Boisserie (CREE), Jiří Hnilica (University of Pardubice)

The memorial and symbolic dimension of the Great War has long been a familiar object in the field of French, German or Italian historians in particular. In Central Europe, this event left traces of a different kind, very directly integrated into an essentially teleological discourse in the victorious successor states - created or enlarged after the conflict - or primordially victimary for the defeated successor states. In addition to this initial difference, the memory of the conflict can be blurred by other events - the Hungarian civil war, the Polish-Soviet war - which have focused the attention of historians because of their "founding" value for the new post-imperial order. The peripheries of the empire also confront historians with fragmented memories; this is the case of the approach to the territories of Eastern Galicia or the regions on the borders of Austria, Italy and Slovenia.

These multiple configurations have produced memorial policies and constructions that are the subject of a research program coordinated by Jiří Hnilica (University of Pardubice, CZ) in which CREE is associated. We will observe the traces of the world conflict from two main angles: their monumental dimension and their commemorative dimension.

Associated researchers: Juraj Babják (Comenius University Bratislava), Jiří Hnilica (University of Pardubice, CZ), Michal Kšiňan (Institute of History of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, HÚ SAV), Kamil Ruszała (Jagiellonian University Kraków).

Institutional partners:University of Pardubice, Jagiellonian University Kraków, Institute of History of the Slovak Academy of Sciences.

Expected outcomes:

• Study days.

Key words:Austria-Hungary, Great War, historiography, Austro-Italian front, cultural history, memorial policy.

3.1.4. Les cités invisibles/revisitées: destin des patrimoines et héritages urbains en Europe du Sud-Est, à la sortie des deux guerres mondiales

Responsables: Joëlle Dalègre (CREE), Nicolas Pitsos(CREE)

From Istanbul to Sarajevo and from Iași to Chania, the urban centers of the countries covering the area of Southeast Europe have undergone metamorphoses in their physiognomy linked to the management of their heritage following the conflicts of the years 1914-1922, 1940-1945 and the consequences these conflicts had on the local socio-demographic composition. While the migration of populations in a post-Ottoman context, on the eve and in the aftermath of the First World War, provides the historical framework in which these phenomena are embedded, it is above all the consequences of the Shoah that have marked the period after the Second World War.

This project aims to bring together researchers interested in the policies deployed at the level of the local society or the states concerned. How have these heritages and/or legacies been evoked in literature, personal memories, political discourse and historiographical works? What are the timeframes in which they have been symbolically or physically erased, or, on the contrary, highlighted and/or commemorated in the public arena? From policies of concealment or even destruction and/or deliberate transformation of traces of cultural heritage linked to the presence of linguistic and confessional communities from before the conflicts of these two periods, to initiatives to raise awareness of the multiple heritages of the cities concerned, supposed to maintain a plural urbanistic memory, the aim is to understand in what historical and political context these phenomena have manifested themselves and with what results on the urban fabric.

The issues raised in this project could overlap with those of the Axis 1 project on architecture and heritage in post-Soviet states.

Researchers associated with the project: Étienne Boisserie (CREE), Nicolas Pitsos (CREE), Joëlle Dalègre (CREE), Kalliopi Amygdalou (University of Izmir), Aleksandra Kolakovic (Institute of Political Studies, Belgrade), Aleksandra Ilijevski (University of Belgrade), Claudiu-Lucian Topor (Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iași).

Main collaborations: UMR SIRICE (Sorbonne-Identités, Relations Internationales, Civilisations d'Europe), Institute of Political Studies Belgrade, Institute of Balkan Studies (Sofia), Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași, European Association of Urban History (EAUH), International Federation for Public History (IFPH).

Planned research operations:

• A doctoral and research seminar: "Gestion d'héritages/patrimoines urbains à la sortie des conflits en Europe du Sud-Est au xxe siècle" ;
• An international colloquium sanctioned by a publication;
• Organization of round tables in collaboration with the cultural centers of Southeast European countries in France (Hellenic Cultural Center, Bulgarian Cultural Center, Serbian Cultural Center, Anatolia Cultural Center, Maison d'Albanie, Romanian Cultural Center) and French cultural centers in Southeast Europe, with the aim of disseminating the results of the research carried out as part of the project.

Key words:interdisciplinary and transnational theme; architectural heritage; Southeastern Europe; population displacement; refu
gies; Eastern question; Shoah; selective memory.

3.1.5 Yugoslav disintegration and European construction

Responsible: Anne Madelain 

The break-up of Yugoslavia (1991-1999) and the conflicts that accompanied it coincided not only with the fading of communist regimes in medieval Europe, but also with the strengthening of the European Union as a political and economic entity. This project questions the readings, traces and memories of the Yugoslav conflicts, as well as the way in which the history of socialist Yugoslavia is written today in the successor countries of the Federation and elsewhere in Europe, particularly in France.

The aim is to analyze the transformation of paradigms (e.g. notions of "people", "ethnicity", "war" as well as the forms of collective mobilizations) to write a connected history of the 1990s in Europe. We will also examine the concrete forms taken by the post-Yugoslav space thirty years after the disappearance of the federation, as well as the international intellectual circulations in which Yugoslavia was previously involved. This project builds on the approach developed in L'expérience française des Balkans (1991-1999)(PUFR 2019), and deepens the work carried out as part of several international study days organized between 2016 and 2019 in association with the Centre d'histoire sociale des mondes contemporains (University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, CNRS), the Centre d'études turques, ottomanes, balkaniques et centrasiatiques (CETOBAC, EHESS-CNRS) and the Centre d'études des mondes russes, caucasiens et centre-européens (CERCEC, EHESS-CNRS) and followed by publications.
https://www.cairn.info/revue-revue-d-etudes-comparatives-est-ouest-2019...
https://journals.openedition.org/rhsh/371

Associated researchers: Snježana Banović (Academy of Dramatic Arts, Zagreb), Agustin Cosovski (CETOBaC, EHESS), Igor Duda (CKPIS, University of Pula), Frank Georgi (IDHE.S, Université Évry, Val-de-Seine), Ana Miškovska-Kajevska (University of Amsterdam), Dubravka Stojanović (University of Belgrade), Ivana Spasić (University of Belgrade), Nermina Zildzo (international university of Sarajevo).
Main partner institutionsCentre de recherches culturelles et historiques du socialisme (CKPIS, Pula), Juraj Dobrila University of Pula (Croatia), CETOBaC (EHESS, CNRS), CERCEC (EHESS, CNRS).

Expected outcomes
Several study days followed by publications 
An exhibition on art and war in Sarajevo

3.1.6. History and memory of the Shoah

Responsible: Eric Le Bourhis

Work on the Shoah has long focused on the history of internment and extermination sites. Work on the memory of genocide has focused mainly on the Western world during the Cold War (trials, historiography, survivor testimony, etc.). The investigations included in this sub-project are part of a renewal effort that focuses precisely on hitherto neglected objects:

• ordinary urban environments, within which anti-Jewish persecution began before and during the Shoah, and which were profoundly transformed by it (1);
• the memory of genocide in the USSR around the trials of Nazi collaborators (2).

These investigations extend post-doctoral work carried out in several fields in Latvia. They are broadened through the study of circulations (individuals, information, practices) and a dialogue with other fields (in the Eastern bloc, East-West comparison, collective survey on persecution in the Paris region), within two research collectives.

(1) The survey on anti-Jewish persecution in urban areas employs microhistorical and urban history methods to study the daily lives of Jews and their neighbors, before, during and after persecution and extermination. It is part of a collective project entitled "Connus à cette adresse. Villes et dynamiques sociales des persécutions antijuives en Europe (1936-1948)", created at the Centre de recherches historiques (EHESS) in 2016, and benefits from cooperation with other teams, such as the Holocaust Geographies Collaborative. The survey follows several lines of research: day-to-day persecution in Riga in the occupied USSR, placed in the context of population movements from the late 1930s to the late 1940s; pathways and experiences through the Second World War of Jewish refugees in the Baltic Sea region, and of Baltic, Polish or Russian Jews in Western Europe (possible cooperation with sub-project 2.4.2 and with CERMOM).

(2) The investigation into the trials of Nazi collaborators in the USSR continues the ANR young researcher project "Nazi war crimes in the praetorium - Central and Eastern Europe 1943-1991" (2017-2020) based at CERCEC and coordinated by Vanessa Voisin (Université de Boulogne). It includes several lines of research: the history of trials conducted in Latvia between 1944 and 1974 (with the diversity of victims specific to the USSR); the dynamics of the so-called "second wave" of Soviet trials from 1957 onwards; mechanisms for writing the history of the war and the Holocaust in the East through trials; the relationship between society and a highly political justice system.

Associated researchers: Isabelle Backouche (CRH/EHESS), Shannon Fogg (Missouri University of Science and Technology), Sarah Gensburger (CNRS/ISP), Cyril Grange (CNRS/Centre Roland Mousnier), Laurent Joly (CRH/EHESS), Nadège Ragaru (Sciences Po), Constance Pâris de Bollardière (American University in Paris), Simon Perego (Inalco/CERMOM), Irina Tcherneva (CNRS/Eurorbem), Vanessa Voisin (University of Bologna/CERCEC).

Achievements:

• Publications:

1. book Seeking Accountability for Nazi and War Crimes in East and Central Europe A People's Justice ? (co-edited with Irina Tcherneva and Vanessa Voisin), University of Rochester Press / Boydell and Brewer, 2022.
2. chapter "Une opinion publique située. Parisian property managers and the disappearance of Jewish tenants", in L. Joly (ed.), La France et la Shoah. Vichy, l'occupant, les victimes, l'opinion, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 2023, pp. 333-376 (with Isabelle Backouche and Sarah Gensburger).
3. dossier "Persécution des Juifs et espace urbain", Histoire urbaine, no. 62 (3), 2021, co-edited with Isabelle Backouche and Sarah Gensburger.
4. article "Spoliation et voisinage. Le logement à Paris, 1943-1944", Histoire urbaine, n° 62 (3), 2021, pp. 79-102 (with Isabelle Backouche and Sarah Gensburger).
5. article "Du refuge au piège. German Jewish exiles in Riga, 1938-1941", Matériaux pour l'histoire de notre temps, 2019, 133-134 (3-4), pp. 40-46.
6. article "Spoliation in practice. Riga 1939-1942", Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, 2018, 65 (3), pp. 120-150. English translation available online at Cairn international: "Dispossession as practice. Riga, 1939-1942"
7. chapter "NS-Verbrechen vor Gericht. Sowjetische Kriegsverbrecherprozesse 1943-1991", in Enrico Heitzer, Günter Morsch, Robert Traba, Katarzyna Woniak (eds.), Im Schatten von Nürnberg. Transnationale Ahndung von NS-Verbrechen, Metropol, Berlin, 2019, pp. 261-271. And Polish translation: "Nazistowskie zbrodnie przed sądem. Sowieckie procesy zbrodniarzy wojennych 1943-1991", in Enrico Heitzer, Günter Morsch, Robert Traba, Katarzyna Woniak (eds.), W cieniu Norymbergi. Transnarodowe ściganie zbrodni nazistowskich, Warszawa, Instytut Studiów Politycznych Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2019, pp. 331-344.

• EHESS master's/research seminar "Housing in Paris during the Occupation" (moderated with Isabelle Backouche and Sarah Gensburger) [https://enseignements.ehess.fr/2023-2024/ue/33]

 

Project 3.2. L'Ukraine face À ses crises aux XXe et XXIe siècles

Responsible: Iryna Dmytrychyn (CREE)

We are continuing the specific research work on Ukraine in the twentieth century, while taking into account the need for interaction with the outside world and for making explicit the country's contemporary memorial and symbolic issues.
Part of the projects, in particular the conference cycles on contemporary political and geostrategic issues - and which continue what was started in 2014 and is detailed in the balance sheet -, cannot be anticipated, but these cycles will constitute an element of this project.

As it stands, and for what is in preparation, this project is broken down into several sub-projects that focus on the phases of crisis, tension and recomposition of this space, particularly in the first half of the xxe century. In addition to the specific "Ukraine Watch", which was set up in 2014 and will continue, several mutually complementary research operations are thus envisaged.

3.2.1. "Centenary of Ukrainian States"

We will continue the cycle begun in 2017 in commemoration of the centenary of Ukraine's first independence. The first international colloquium, "Emergence of Ukraine", was held in December 2017 (http://www.inalco.fr/evenement/emergence-ukraine) and was associated with an exhibition held at Bulac (http://www.bulac.fr/conferences-rencontres/centenaire-des-revolutions-russes/1917-emergence-de-lukraine/).

Two further colloquia are scheduled for early and late 2019. They will be devoted to the ephemeral but symbolic union of the Ukrainian People's Republic and the Western Ukrainian People's Republic, and to the anti-Semitic violence that marked 1919.

Researchers associated with the project and potential collaboration: Youri Shapoval, Académie des Sciences, Isabelle Davion (Sorbonne Université, UMR SIRICE), and François-Xavier Nérard (Université Paris-I Panthéon-Sorbonne)
Main collaborations envisaged: National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NANU), UMR SIRICE (Sorbonne Université and Paris-I Panthéon Sorbonne)

Proposed research operations:

• Two colloquia (2019) with publication of proceedings;
• Publication of the proceedings of the 2017 colloquium.

Key words: Eastern European history, state-building, pogroms and anti-Semitic violence, international relations, Ukraine, Russia

This project is complementary to the "The Great War in Medieval Europe: from event to traces" project, while differing in its type of periodization and its objects. It is closely linked with project 3.2.2, of which it constitutes an extension and further development.

3.2.2. Ukraine in the Great War

Preparation and publication of the French edition of Velyka vijna 1914-1918rr. i Ukrajina [The Great War and Ukraine], edited by Oleksandr Rejent (Ukrainian Academy of Sciences), published by Clio in Kyiv (2014 (vol. 1), 2015 (vol. 2)). Texts translated by Guy Imart, publisher: Institut d'études slaves. The book is scheduled for publication in 2019. This work is the first "post-Soviet" Ukrainian synthesis on the subject; it takes into account the most recent developments in historiography, and in particular the extension of the study to cultural history.

This publishing project is fully in line with the articulation of the two spaces, Central European and Russian, whose synergies the CREE promotes. It also complements project 3.1 ("Medieval Europe in the Great War: from event to traces"). The Great War is an excellent observatory of areas of friction and competition, of which the Ukrainian territory is an archetypal example. This book provides an opportunity to observe developments in this peripheral area of the two great empires of the time, a lively hotbed of political and cultural reflection with multiple borrowings that took shape in the 19th century and marked the whole of the 20th century. 

Researchers associated with the project: Étienne Boisserie (CREE), Iryna Dmytrychyn (CREE), Alisa Menshykova (UMR CERCEC, EHESS), Oleksandr Rejent (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine [NANU]).

Institutions associated with the project: Institute of Ukrainian History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine [IIU NANU], Kyiv; Institut d'études slaves, Paris; UMR CERCEC, EHESS.

Key words: Great War, Ukraine, Galicia, Central Powers, Russia, political history, social history, international relations.

3.2.3. Cities of Ukraine

We will also continue the cycle of cities of Ukraine, studied in their regional environment, historical context and memorial representation.
The previous contract after Kyiv, "The battle around a legacy" (December 1, 2016) http://www.inalco.fr/evenement/kiev-kyiv-bataille-autour-heritage and Chernivtsi (Czernowitz), "Mapping the nostalgias of a place" (October 7-8, 2016) http://www.inalco.fr/sites/default/files/asset/document/programme_cartographier_vf.pdf in 2016, we'll take the city of Kharkiv, intellectual center since the nineteenth century and capital of Ukraine until 1934: political and intellectual, artistic and literary life.

Researchers associated with the project and potential collaboration: Sylvie Archaimbault (CNRS, UMR Eur'Orbem), Institute of Slavic Studies, Kharkiv University.

Key words: Eastern European history, state and identity construction, Ukrainian language and literature, cultural history.

3.2.4. Ukraine, geopolitical issues between the two wars

A research and data processing project in the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, concerning Ukrainian issues between the two wars.

Two research projects with publications envisaged in the course of the five-year period:

• A monograph on Édouard Herriot's trip to Ukraine in August 1933, in the midst of famine, and how he reported on it in the West. This project includes long-standing research in French and Ukrainian archives. The latest additional research should enable the paper to be finalized in the first half of the quinquennium.
• A shorter study of the activity of the French consulate in Lviv during the same period, intended to highlight the main issues as perceived by France and its representation, particularly during the famine.

Main collaborations: Archives of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs.

Key words: Eastern European history, totalitarianism, Soviet famines.

Project 3.3. Testimonies of crisis, conflict and exile in the Balkans from the 1940s to the present day

Responsibles: Christina Alexopoulos (CREE), Joëlle Dalègre (CREE).

This project is a continuation of research already begun on the testimonial expression of actors in the Balkans of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in relation to a social context, particularly marked by institutional, political and economic crises of periods of war, civil war or dictatorship, repressive and protest practices, which it will be a question of continuing to explore in the diversity of their representations.

What narratives of divided memories of conflict emerge within different communities, and how do they continue to evolve over time? What are the interactions between dominant discourses and minority narratives, and how can new positionings emerge, creating historical continuities and ruptures with attitudes already adopted? What are the forms, functions and uses of these narratives in public discourse, but also in the formation of actors' identity constructions?

3.3.1. Discursive interactions and narratives of divided memories: what evolutions?

Studying the plurality of memories in contexts of conflict, between a common base of representations constructed in mirror image, but also the limits of this symmetry - notably through the specificities of each discourse and the practices associated with it - will be a first line of research, very much attached to the evolution of representations, the dynamics of change carried by the various actors and the consequences of transformations in the perception and narration of the past in the public space. We will approach the subject from several complementary angles: firstly, through testimonial expression around the Greek civil war - to be considered in the context of other conflicts in the Balkans and the Mediterranean - and resistance to the "dictatorship of the colonels". Secondly, through a reflection on the experience of exile of political refugees is also to be thought in its conflictuality between attachment to the country of origin and the need to invest the host country.

It is also important to study the interaction of different discourses, both within a country and between neighboring countries to better understand the formation of new positionings within different groups. This interaction is to be understood both in terms of long-standing oppositions on divisive issues, the stakes of which it would be interesting to understand, and in terms of the balance of power and meaning between hegemonic narratives and the emergence of new paradigms of understanding. The question of Macedonia's name, for example, a point of contention between the Greek state and the Republic of Macedonia, is an interesting one to explore in terms of the different geopolitical and historical positions of the players involved. Similarly, we'll be looking at Sephardic memory in the Balkans and the place that Jewish populations have occupied both in the telling of their history and in the representations and construction of an image of otherness by non-Jewish populations in the region. Finally, it will be useful to look at the issue of recognition of the rights of different minorities, which is particularly acute for different ethnic and confessional groups in the region, especially the Rrom population.

3.3.2. Forms, functions and uses of memorial narratives in the public space

Working on memorial narratives, whether minority or hegemonic, also means questioning their form of transmission, between expressions considered "subaltern" - as coming under orality - and learned traditions resorting to the written word. Other forms of extra-verbal narration, such as iconography, music and choreography, would benefit from a study of parallel memorial transmissions. The poetic, literary and artistic expression of the memory of conflict can thus stand side by side with the narration provided by graffiti in urban centers during the war, such as the walls of Athens or Barcelona filled with political inscriptions, the caricatures circulating in the underground press, the wordless Macedonian songs sung in the face of the Greek state's fierce repression of the use of the Macedonian language. Work on the form of memorial narration must also be accompanied by reflection on the functions of this expression at individual and collective levels.

Researchers associated with the project: Philippe Bazin (EHESS/IRIS), Marcel Courthiade (CREE), Thanassis Kalafatis (EMIAN - University of Piraeus), Vaggelis Karamanolakis (ASKI), Anna Katsigianni (University of Patras), Irène Lagani (Panteion), Arghyro Paouri (CNRS), Ioanna Papathanassiou (EKKE), Frosa Pejoska-Bouchereau (Plidam, Inalco), Nicolas Pitsos (CREE, Bulac), Maro Thanopoulou (EKKE), Marie-Christine Varol (Cermom, Inalco).

Institutional partners: Plidam (Inalco), EHESS, Kapodistrian University of Athens, Bulac, Social History Archive Center (ASKI, Athens), National Center for Social Science Research (EKKE, Athens), Center for Studies on Youth Movements (EMIAN, Athens).

Research operations envisaged:

• A doctoral and research seminar as a continuation of the cycle of conferences on conflicts and crises in the Balkans of the 20th and 21st centuries, already begun this year.
• An international colloquium with publication on Paroles d'exil, exil de la parole.
• A colloquium on Sephardic memory in the Balkans.
• Organization of round tables in collaboration with our institutional partners (with publication in Les Cahiers balkaniques).
• Publication of a series of books on conflicts in the Balkans in the "Méditerranée" collection directed by Joëlle Dalègre (Cypriot, Greek, Macedonian issues).
• Creation of a film documentary on testimonies of conflicts in partnership with the CNRS in the person of Arghyro Paouri.
• A photographic exhibition based on the work of Philippe Bazin, with whom we already collaborate as part of the project "Les non lieux de l'exil" (EHESS/IRIS) based on villages abandoned since the end of the civil war in Greece. (See https://nle.hypotheses.org/3861)A second photographic project on the refugees of Lesbos will see the light of day in the continuity of the photographic work already exhibited at Inalco by Inalco Greek section student and photographer Clara Villain.

Project 3.4. Post-communist societies facing crises and risks in Eurasia

Responsibles: Catherine Poujol(CREE), Jean Radvanyi (CREE), Sophie Hohmann (CREE), Laurent Coumel (CREE)

3.4.1. Crises and risks in post-communist Eurasia

Responsible persons: Catherine Poujol, Jean Radvanyi, Sophie Hohmann

The project proposed here is an extension, in the field of multidisciplinary research, of the training course "Management of health and social crises and natural risks in Eurasia, Southeast Asia, China, Japan", set up in May-June 2012 by Inalco, IPGP and EHESP as part of the PPE 2011 program (Sorbonne Paris Cité).
It is intended as a cross-disciplinary and multidisciplinary reflection on the crises affecting post-communist societies in Eurasia. It aims to raise awareness among SHS researchers of issues that require them to create new linguistic, IT and theoretical tools adapted to the crisis terrains in which they may be called upon to intervene. Although the break-up of the USSR, which led to the creation of fifteen new independent states, was initially hailed as a peaceful event, the delayed conflicts that have arisen in this geographical area (in the Caucasus and Central Asia since the 1990s, in Georgia in 2008, and more recently in Ukraine) show that this process is far from being definitively stabilized. In addition, the mutations at work and the multiple implications of players from outside the region (the European Union, the United States, and increasingly China) are leading us to reflect on a wider area, including all or part of Middle and Eastern Europe, with which several of the post-Soviet states interact.
The team proposes to highlight the new risks at work and their possible development into multiform crises in the entire post-Soviet space, with particular attention to the Ukraine, Central Asia and the Caucasus, but also intends to take a comparative interest in neighboring areas, particularly in Central Europe and China, which are experiencing or have experienced a communist system. We will study the political, economic, demographic, religious and environmental risks that have been at work for over twenty years in this dislocated space, but still present at least in mentalities.

The CREE is studying several areas with a potential for ethnic or political conflict, to which are added environmental and health risks that are not specific (such as water management in basins crossed by multiple borders) but are likely to take on an important dimension in regions such as Crimea, Azerbaijan, the Caspian, the Semipalatinsk nuclear test zone. Specific cross-risk studies will be carried out, and geographical maps dedicated to the issues studied will be produced. As part of the project's cross-disciplinary approach, a literary and artistic dimension (through literature and film) will also be included, as a mirror of the crises and a reflection of a traumatized memory that is willingly instrumentalized by the various powers that be. We will draw on semi-directive interviews with witnesses and actors (former officials, activists in the environmental movement, journalists, researchers).

Researchers associated with the project: Laurent Coumel (CREE), Iryna Dmytrychyn (CREE), Sophie Hohmann (CREE), Katerina Kesa (CREE), Catherine Poujol (CREE), Jean Radvanyi (CREE), Taline Ter Minassian (CREE), Julien Vercueil (CREE), Sergueï Fediunin (doctoral student CREE)

Main collaborations: CartOrient project (CNRS UMR 7528 - Mondes iranien et indien); CERCEC (Centre d'études des mondes russe, caucasien et centre-européen, UMR 8083); Franco-Russian Observatory of the Franco-Russian Chamber of Commerce, Moscow; Center for Franco-Russian Studies (CEFR, Moscow); French Institute for Central Asian Studies (IFEAC, Bishkek); Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Institute of Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Planned research operations:

• A doctoral and research seminar
• Organization of roundtables and colloquia in collaboration with research centers and French Institutes in the countries concerned by our research.
• Development of a database and mapping site (CartOrient) accessible on the internet
• Development of a blog reflecting the output of participants, power points, analysis posts, commented links etc.

Other planned achievements:Observatory of Post-Soviet States

Several questions associated with this issue have been addressed by the Observatory of Post-Soviet States, run within CREE by Catherine Poujol, Taline Ter Minassian and Jean Radvanyi. The OEPS researches and analyzes regional reorganization processes in the post-Soviet space, and monitors political, economic and geopolitical developments in the post-Soviet states. It coordinates regular scientific activities and publishes works, some of which have become veritable tools for understanding the "post-Soviet transition". OEPS pursues its monitoring and analysis work in the form of "Petits déjeuners" devoted to the political, economic and geopolitical news of the post-Soviet states. Based on the principle of a media watch, the aim is to invite an expert to speak on a subject relating to current events in the post-Soviet states. Organized on a regular basis, about once every two months, these breakfasts reach a wide audience: academics, experts and business people.
- CartOrient project (Caucasus, Central Asia, Iran): a practical and analytical aspect of the project consists in developing and enriching the cartographic database presented as part of the CartOrient project, which is the result of cooperation between Inalco and the UMR Monde iranien of the CNRS. The aim is to provide researchers and the general public with a tool for knowledge and cartographic analysis of the Caucasus, Central Asia and Iran. This project will integrate an atlas of the Caucasus developed under the direction of Jean Radvanyi as part of the European CASCADE program (FP7). The first results of this program will be available in the course of 2018, and all of this research will be continued over the next five years.
- Annuaire franco-russe OBSERVO: another achievement of this research is the participation of several teacher-researchers (Sophie Hohmann, Marlène Laruelle, Jean Radvanyi, Julien Vercueil) in the directory, published since 2013 in French and Russian, by the Franco-Russian Chamber of Commerce. Jean Radvanyi has also been responsible for cartography since the first edition.

Key words: Eurasia; Middle Europe; Eastern Europe; Russia; post-Soviet states; geopolitics; transition; crisis; conflict management; risk management; religious revival

3.4.2. Anthropocene in Russia-USSR

Responsible: Laurent Coumel

In Eastern Europe and the former USSR, marked by forty or seventy years of so-called communist regimes in the 20th century, the environmental question is posed with different temporalities than in the Western world. Here too, the pressure of society on the environment and resources is part of the long time frame of the Anthropocene, a geological era in which humanity has become a major force: whether we consider it to begin with the industrial age, between the end of the 18th and the middle of the 19th century, or with the acceleration of ecological degradation and its global recognition after 1945. But while the relative "environmental turnaround" of the 1960s and 1970s in the West had a much weaker equivalent in institutions and public spheres in the East, the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 triggered, a few years later, a first moment of strong green mobilization: the political ruptures of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe and the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 were partly the result. In the 1990s, the post-communist countries experienced contrasting situations: environmental legislation was strengthened but the institutions responsible for enforcing it weakened, and the rise of environmental movements was sometimes thwarted or even suppressed. Now, at the start of the 21st century, the environmental issue is regaining strength in these areas, including those under authoritarian regimes. Protests linked either to global challenges (climate change), to perceived risks (disasters amplified by human action), or to local concerns, are once again unfolding, notably via the Internet and social networks.

The "Anthropocene in Russia-USSR" project aims to shed light on this return of the environmental question in the former USSR from the 1950s to the present day, from a plural or even interdisciplinary perspective, primarily in Russia (Volga highlands region, Lake Seliger, Siberian and northern Russian river diversion projects, etc.). It interacts with sub-project 3.4.1.

Researchers associated with the project: Iryna Dmytrychyn (CREE), Sophie Hohmann (CREE), Eric Le Bourhis (CREE), Adrien Nonjon (CREE), Jeanna Vassilioutchek-Mestre (CREE), Charlotte Marchina (IFRAE, INALCO), Marin Coudreau (CERCEC, CNRS), Jawad Daheur (CERCEC, CNRS), Marc Elie (CERCEC, CNRS), Marie-Hélène Mandrillon (CERCEC, CNRS), Perrine Poupin (Eur'Orbem, CNRS), Camille Robert-Boeuf (LADYSS, CNRS), Michel Dupuy (IHMC, ENS), Katja Bruisch (Trinity College, Dublin), Katja Doose (University of Freiburg), Alexander Ananyev (University of Tübingen), Benjamin Beuerle (DHI Moscow) Elena Kochetkova (Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg), Julia Lajus (Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg), Evgenij Gololobov (Surgut Pedagogical University)

Main institutional partners: CERCEC, CEFR, DHI Moscow, HSE Saint-Petersburg

Achievements:

• M2 seminar "Russia-USSR: multidisciplinary approaches" (since 2020-2021)
• CEFR research seminar in Moscow (online) "Anthropocene in Russian" (since February 2021)
• Post-Soviet States Observatory roundtables "2020: Red Tide in the Russian Arctic" (June and October 2020)
• Workshop series of the Politika website (Tepsis, EHESS) "Anthropocene in the East": first workshop published in spring 2021"2020, a red tide in Siberia "
• Digital forum "Environmental mobilizations in the East: regional and local approaches (1986-2020)" and collective publication project
• Research seminar organized with Marc Elie for the Center for Franco-Russian Studies in Moscow "Anthropocene à la russe" (in Russian; since February 2021)
• Book project on Chernobyl in the USSR (2022)
• Article writing for the European Digital History Encyclopedia (Chernobyl, environmental turning point in the USSR)

Keywords: Anthropocene, Environment, USSR, Russia, Arctic, Chernobyl, disasters, pollution, mobilizations, ecology, protest, hydraulic engineering, water territories.
 

Project 3.5. Conflicts and mutations in European and Eurasian spaces

Responsible: Bruno Drweski (CREE)

The end of the Eastern bloc signified the end of an integrated system traversed by increasingly exacerbated internal contradictions that pushed the elites produced by this system to dissolve existing political and economic structures at the same time as several multinational states disappeared. We examined the issue of elite rupture and continuity after 1989/1991 at a colloquium entitled "1989 in Middle Europe: 20 years on" held at Inalco, the main contributions to which appeared in volume 43-44 of the journal Slovo: Gagnants et perdants: une génération après ...Le 'post-communisme' en Europe du Centre et de l'Est published in 2014. Yet the legacy of the previous system is far from having disappeared, which explains why both in the media and in the academic world, the notion of a post-Soviet or post-socialist space continues to be used explicitly or implicitly thirty years after the start of the disintegration process. It is therefore time to investigate the historical, geopolitical, cultural and social foundations of regional integration processes at European level on the one hand, and at Eurasian level on the other, as well as the factors of recurring tensions that run through these societies. The aim is to answer the question of ruptures and continuities not only chronologically, but also regionally and geopolitically. Tensions that are now manifesting themselves within the European Union, on the one hand, between several ex-socialist states and those of the original core of the European Union, and, on the other, between these states and post-Soviet states, as well as between countries that have joined the CIS. In order to answer the question: do these phenomena testify to a persistent problem common to all former Eastern Bloc countries - and to what extent -, or are we dealing with a growing differentiation that should eventually lead to the disappearance of the concepts of "Central and Eastern Europe", "Eastern Europe", "Eurasia", "post-socialist space" and/or "post-Soviet space"? Which social or national groups might be interested in continuing the processes of rupture, and which might seek ways to rebuild a common dynamic among the countries of the inner mass of the Eurasian continent?

Associated researchers: Ana Bazac (philosopher, Bucharest Polytechnic University, Romania), Aurel T. Codoban (philosopher, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania), Gracjan Cimek (geopolitologist, Director of the Institute of International Studies at the Naval War Academy, Gdynia, Poland), Sławomir Czapnik (political scientist, Institute of European Studies, University of Opole, Poland), Michel Korinman (geopolitologist, Professor Emeritus Sorbonne University), Claude Karnoouh (philosopher of politics, Retired CNRS, Bucharest, Romania), Alexandru Mamina (Nicolae Iorga Institute of History, Romanian Academy, Bucharest, Romania), Attila Melegh (Institute of Demographic Research, Budapest, Hungary), Zijad Abou Saleh (sociologist, Humanist and Social University, Wrocław, Poland), Jarosław Tomasiewicz (Institute of History, University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland), Mariusz Turowski (Philosopher, University of Wrocław, Poland, University of Bursa, Turkey).

Institutional partners: Naval War Academy, Gdynia (Poland), University of Wrocław (Poland).

Proposed activities:

• Organization of round tables with publication of proceedings;
• Participation in colloquia.