Lecture series on Ukraine

Cycle of lectures organized by the Centre de Recherches Europes-Eurasie-CREE (Inalco).

Wednesdays December 1, 8 and 16, 2021 - 18.00-20.00 - Auditorium
Pôle des langues et civilisations (PLC) - 65, rue des Grands Moulins - 75013

Registration and health pass required.

L'Ukraine d'hier à aujourd'hui en trois conférences

Organizer: Iryna Dmytrychyn (CREE, Inalco)
Contact: idmytrychyn@noos.fr

How Ukraine destroyed the USSR and why the USSR is still alive?"

Wednesday, December 1, 2021 - 18:00-20:00 - PLC (Paris 13e) - Auditorium

with Mykola Riabchuk, writer and political columnist, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Political Studies in Kyiv and the Honorary President of the Ukrainian PEN Center. He authored a number of books in several languages, including From 'Little Russia' to Ukraine (2003), Die reale und die imaginierte Ukraine (2005), Gleichschaltung. Authoritarian Consolidation in Ukraine (2012), Eastern Europe since 1989: Between the Loosened Authoritarianism and Unconsolidated Democracy (2020) and, most recently, At the Fence of Metternich's Garden. Essays on Europe, Ukraine, and Europeanization (2021). Currently, he is a 2021-2022 Research Fellow at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study.

The speaker examines multiple factors that led to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and argues that Ukraine played the major if not the decisive role in the process. Thirty years later, however, one may observe an impressive survival of Soviet habits and institutions in most post-Soviet republics, including, to a certain degree, Ukraine. The reasons for their persistence and the ways to overcome them are the scholar's primary concern.

Les noms de l'Ukraine à travers l'Histoire

Wednesday, December 8, 2021 - 18:00-20:00 - PLC (Paris 13e) - Room 4.07

with Iaroslav Lebedynsky, historian, specialist in the ancient warrior cultures of the steppes and the Caucasus, to which he has devoted numerous works. He teaches Ukrainian history at Inalco.

Scythia, Ruthenia, Little Russia - but also Cimmeria, Roxolania, "Land of the Cossacks"... The study of these names and their usage allows us to revisit the history of the country, its formation, and the awakening and development of the Ukrainian national identity. It also sheds light on the visions of these regions held by foreign observers, from Herodotus to witnesses of the struggle for independence.

Ukraine: from independence to war

Thursday, December 16, 2021 - 18:00-20:00 - Maison de la Recherche (Paris 7e) - Auditorium Georges Dumézil

with Alexandra Goujon, political scientist, lecturer at the University of Burgundy and lecturer at Sciences Po Paris. She is a member of the Centre de recherche et d'étude en droit et en science politique (Credespo).

For the past ten years or so, Ukraine has regularly been at the forefront of the international scene, whether for its protest movements, or over Russia's annexation of Crimea and the conflict in the east of the country, seeming to constitute the stage for a new Cold War that crystallizes tensions between Russia and Western nations.

Recent events are also an opportunity to measure just how incomplete our knowledge of this country is, often limited to clichés of a Ukraine that is the cradle of Russia, the land of the Cossacks, the granary of the USSR and a succession of rulers marred by massive corruption.

Starting from these preconceived ideas, Alexandra Goujon paints a precise, documented portrait of this Ukraine, a land of contrasts.