CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

"A Small State on the Global Scene: Bulgaria’s ‘Developing World’ in the 1970s" with Theodora Dragostinova, Associate Professor of History at Ohio State University. LECTURE DESCRIPTION: In the 1970s, officials and intellectuals in communist Bulgaria launched an ambitious program of international cultural outreach. Paris, Vienna, London, Munich, and New York City all hosted spectacular exhibitions of Bulgarian ancient treasures and medieval icons, but Bulgarian cultural ambassadors also sponsored concerts, film showings, and book readings in regional centers and rural areas throughout Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Focusing on Bulgarian cultural events in India, Mexico, and Nigeria, this talk highlights the role of culture in a small state’s foreign policy choices. By interrogating the unique notions of development that emerged out of these encounters, it explores the role of cultural diplomacy in the relationship between the Second and the Third Worlds during the later years of the Cold War. SPEAKER DESCRIPTION: Theodora Dragostinova is an Associate Professor of History at Ohio State University. Her work focuses on nationalism, migration, global history, and Cold War culture. She is the author of Between Two Motherlands: Nationality and Emigration among the Greeks in Bulgaria, 1900-1949 (Cornell UP, 2011) and the co-editor of Beyond Mosque, Church, and State: Alternative Narratives of the Nation in the Balkans (CEU Press, 2016). Her newest book, The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene, is forthcoming with Cornell University Press in 2021.

"Putin's Constitutional Amendments - 2020" with Ekaterina Mishina, Independent Legal Scholar. LECTURE DESCRIPTION: At his 2020 Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed substantial amendments to the Russian constitution. The proposed referendum would allow Putin to serve as the President until 2036, give the Russian Constitutional Court the power to nullify international tribunals' decisions, and make gay marriage unconstitutional. In July, the referendum was passed by a– contested– national popular vote. This talk will address the 2020 amendments to the Russian Constitution, the procedure of approval, and explain how these changes affect all branches of power and further strengthen the President's role. SPEAKER DESCRIPTION: Ekaterina Mishina is an independent legal scholar. She received a B.A. and M.A. in Jurisprudence from the Faculty of Law of Moscow State University, graduating in with the highest honours in 1987. Dr. Mishina holds a Ph.D. in Jurisprudence from the Institute of State and Law of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1992). Selected positions held: Principal Advisor to the Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court of the RF (1995 – 1997) Deputy Director, Legal Advisor ( “Legal Culture” project of the Russian Foundation of Legal Reforms (1997 -1999), head of the Legal Department of “MOSTELECOM” JSC (1999-2002), advisor to the Chairman of the Foundation for Development of Parliamentarism in Russia ( 2002-2005), Deputy Director of the Institute of Legal Studies, the National Research University –Higher School of Economics (2005 – 2011). Associate Professor, Department of Constitutional law, Faculty of Law of the National Research University – Higher School of Economics (2005 – 2014). Visiting Professor at the Law School (2012-2013) and the Department of Political Science (2014 – 2016) of the University of Michigan. Image credits: Putin’s 2020 Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly [“File:2020 Putin Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly (12).jpg” by kremlin.ru is licensed under CC BY 4.0]

“The Fall of Europe’s Last Dictator” with Yuliya Brel of the Center for Applied Demography and Survey Research at the University of Delaware LECTURE DESCRIPTION: Belarusian citizens elected their first president in 1994. Within the next 26 years, A. Lukashenko ran for the presidency five more times. With the exception of the first presidential election, the outcomes of all other consecutive elections were invariably disputed by the opposition and deemed undemocratic and rigged by the European community and the USA. Since 2006, presidential elections have been routinely followed by opposition rallies and protests as well as subsequent crackdowns on the protests and mass arrests of the protesters by the riot police. Every time, after the suppression of the protests, the situation would normalize, and Lukashenko would continue ruling the country without much threat to his personal power. However, the situation that arose in Belarus right before and after the latest presidential election of August 9, 2020, turned out to be completely unique. The scale and duration of mass protests against the rigged election (Lukashenko announced himself the winner with over 80% of votes for the sixth time) have been unprecedented. At the same time, the scale of repressions on the part of the state, and the brutality, cruelty, and downright sadism of the riot police have been unprecedented, too. This presentation analyzes how and why the first democratically elected Belarusian president became a dictator. It also offers a tentative explanation of changes that took place in Belarusian society and led to the current confrontation between Lukashenko and the people of Belarus. The presentation concludes with possible implications of the confrontation for the future of Belarus. SPEAKER DESCRIPTION: Yuliya Brel is an assistant policy scientist at the Center for Applied Demography and Survey Research at the University of Delaware. She holds Master’s and PhD degrees in Urban Affairs and Public Policy from the Biden School of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Delaware, and a Master’s degree in linguistics from Minsk State Linguistic University in Belarus. Her research interests concentrate on the problems of transition from authoritarianism to democracy in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries and the former Soviet republics, and on why some of them fail to democratize. She also studies, modern dictatorships, democratic governance, and the role of civil society in the process of transition to democracy and its subsequent consolidation. Additionally, her research focuses on the modern nation-building in post-communist states and on whether the strength/weakness of national consciousness, alongside other factors, played a role in the divergent outcomes of the process of democratization in CEE countries. Finally, she inquires into social policy, for example, language policy and how it may affect minority language speaking communities, or utilities and housing sector policy and the reasons for its ill success in some authoritarian states.

“Moral Future: Halal Businesses in Central Asia” with Aisalkyn Botoeva of the George Washington University LECTURE DESCRIPTION: How do people in Central Asia understand the Islamic Economy and enact its principles in their day-to-day lives? In her 18-month research in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, she explored a wide range of sites within the burgeoning Islamic Business sector, from high-visibility financial firms to small and medium-sized businesses, and all the way down to bazaars and street stalls. In this talk, she focuses on one of the key arguments of her work – that the halal business is a space of ethical inquiry, exploration, experimentation, and debate for those who decide to adopt this form of business practice. When it comes to food, for example, there is a strong belief that the consumption of halal food can lead to physical and psychological cleansing and spiritual nourishment. Along with discussions of how people understand halal, she also presents contentious cases such as the one involving kymys [fermented mare’s milk], and whether it is halal (permissible)or haram (forbidden). Moreover, ideals of what constitutes halal have spilled over to various areas of business activities that go beyond entrepreneurs’ concern with the technical aspect of food production. Some of the key debates involve questions around bribes and corruption. Entrepreneurs voice their aspirations to earn their money through adal ish (here literally halal work, but in Kyrgyz generally means work based on good intentions) and ak söz (literally white words, but connotes words of wisdom and propriety). Exploring emic ethical vocabulary and repertoires among those involved in the halal business sheds light on broader processes through which halal economy is embedded in local cultures of doing business as well as being a pious Muslim. The talk aims to give a snapshot from an ethnographic study that aims to contribute to more “top-down” accounts of Islam and the economy in the region. SPEAKER BIO: Aisalkyn Botoeva currently serves as a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for European, Russian & Eurasian Studies (IERES) of the George Washington University. She is a sociologist with broader research interests in socio-economic development, economic decision-making, and resilience in the face of uncertainty. Her past and current research experience is in topics of industrial revival in resource-poor contexts of Central Asia, entrepreneurship in the post-Soviet region, as well as the varying strategies and economic repertoires of action that entrepreneurs employ in this context. In addition to research, she taught a wide range of courses from Social Research Methods, to Globalization & Social Conflict, Leadership & Global Development both in Kyrgyzstan and the U.S. Her individual research has been funded by the Aga-Khan Foundation, Open Society Foundations as well as Hazeltine Fellowship of the Business, Organizations and Entrepreneurship Program at Brown University. The results of her individual and collaborative projects have been published in Politics & Society, Theory & Society, Families, Relationships and Societies, Post-Soviet Affairs, and Central Asian Survey among other journals.

“When is home? Exploring Kazakhstani Koreans’ notions of place and homeland” with Dr. Elise Ahn, International Projects Office, UW-Madison July 23, 2020 ABSTRACT: The collective memories of Central Asian Koreans have not been fully explored, particularly in connection to notions of “homeland” and identity. This lecture explores the linkages between participants’ family histories regarding the Korean deportation, notions of historic homeland, and participant identities regarding their “Korean-ness” through ethnographic interviews. The interview questions were based on a study looking at the lived experiences of other diasporic communities in Kazakhstan (Li Wei, 2016; Smagulova, 2016). The broader study explores questions related to issues of social mobility, socio-economic access, and identity construction among ethnolinguistic minorities in Kazakhstan. LECTURER BIO: Elise S. Ahn is the Director of the International Projects Office at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an adjunct lecturer at Edgewood College, where she teaches research methods and the internationalization of higher education in their Doctor of Education program. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA) in 2011 in Education Policy Studies with a concentration on Global Studies in Education and a methodological specialization in Program Evaluation. Before coming to UW–Madison, Elise worked at KIMEP University (Almaty, Kazakhstan) as an assistant professor and director of a master’s degree program in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. Her research interests focus on the intersection of space, structures, and scale in examining the effects of internationalization in education and language policy production processes. She is also interested in issues related to language, education, and equity/access with a focus on urban contexts. She co-edited Language Change in Central Asia (with Juldyz Smagulova), which was published in 2016 and is co-editing a forthcoming special issue of World Englishes examining English in Central Asia.

CESSI Alumni Research Panel with Nick Seay and Laura Tourtellotte “Reaping the Benefits of the Harvest: Towards an Applied Approach of your Central Asian Language Skills” Speaker: Nick Seay Nick Seay shares some of his research experiences, specifically as they relate to working with the Tajik language. He then shifts the conversation to talk more concretely about ways in which language learners can target the study and use of Central Asian languages towards research and/or professional goals. Part of this talk includes Nick’s reflections after talking with several leading scholars in the field of Central Asian studies. “Deserving Daughters, Martyred Mothers: The Role of Reproductive Politics and ‘Good Women’ within Gendered Social Programs in Kazakhstan” Speaker: Laura Tourtellotte Laura Tourtellotte presents some results from her dissertation fieldwork and explores how these findings relate to the necessity of equity and context-informed interventions in social service provisioning within the contemporary reality of a global pandemic.

Dr. Madina Djuraeva talks about her 8-year long research on multilingualism among Central Asian young adults. She shares her fieldwork experience in both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan where she collected narrative data from over 60 student participants. Dr. Djuraeva also shares a number of her key research findings around the themes of morality, belonging, and education. Madina Djuraeva defended her Ph.D. in the department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a Lecturer of Elementary Uzbek and she has previously taught both Tajik and Uzbek languages through CESSI. Originally from Bukhara, Uzbekistan, Madina grew up in a multilingual environment of the city, which eventually contributed to her choice of profession. Her doctoral research examines lived experiences of being and becoming multilingual at the nexus of language, education, policy, and identity in the contexts of post-Soviet Central Asia and transnational migration. She has published on the issues of (non)nativeness, language policy, and morality in multilingual Central Asian communities

“An Uzbek Patron and the Limits of Eurasian Power” - Morgan Liu (The Ohio State University) Can the rich and powerful (“elites”) make society a better place? How can they transform structural problems and are there limits to what elites can accomplish for the common good? I present a case from Jalal-Abad, Kyrgyzstan where an Uzbek grand patron claimed to act for the communal good by building urban institutions serving people of all ethnicities. As a result, Uzbeks, who have experienced discrimination in Kyrgyzstan, actually flourished in this city under politically adverse circumstances for the first two decades of post-Soviet independence, until the violence of 2010 brought this Uzbek patron’s endeavors to a crashing and burning halt. We conclude with the global implications about what elites can and cannot do for the public good.

After the fall of communism, regardless of debates on the nature of systemic change, most agreed on the importance of non-violence. In this paper, I argue that the year 1989 represented a revolution in the very idea of revolution—self-limiting, non-violent, and yet far reaching in impact. However, Cold War triumphalist narratives and Western liberal mis-readings have together misrepresented the lessons and legacies of 1989, generating a “recipe-based” approach to regime change. Yet today multipolar great power politics, the soft power decline of the United States and liberal democracy more generally, an international legal regime that dis-incentivizes unpopular authoritarians to step away from power, and the moral hazard associated with the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect, have made non-violent or “1989-type” revolutions far less likely.

While recent findings suggest that violence during civil war can generate pro-social behavior, why do we often see polarization between groups based on ethnic, religious, or sectarian differences after conflict? What conditions explain why we see this in some cases, but not others? These questions matter, given that polarization complicates peacebuilding, affects post-war party politics, and may lead to a return to conflict. Presenting evidence from Bosnia, Price argues that how violence is targeted during civil war is essential to explaining the observed variation. Collective violence increases the salience of group identity while selective violence is unlikely to provoke these responses. Where these changes are widespread, they aggregate into cleavages, the social divisions which define political competition, and these results may persist well past the initial conflict.