Rethinking Slavonic Studies in Aftermath of Russia's Imperialist War

 

How should academia look now at "Russia"? This topic is discussed in an extremely US-centred article (Todd Prince  2023, 'Moscow's Invasion Of Ukraine Triggers 'Soul-Searching' At Western Universities As Scholars Rethink Russian Studies'  Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Jan 2 2023). I am left wondering about some of my old writings, dare I revisit them?

In Ukraine, Moscow's unprovoked war has killed tens of thousands of people and laid cities and towns to waste. At universities across the West, it has thrust Russia's history of imperialism and colonialism to the forefront of Slavic and Eurasian academic discussion -- from history and political science to art and literature.

The war is forcing scholars, departments, and university officials to question how they teach the history of Russia, the former Soviet Union, and the region, what textbooks and sources they use, whom they hire, which archives they mine for information, and even what departments should be named.

The Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) has made "decolonization" -- which it describes as "a profoundly political act of re-evaluating long-established and often internalized hierarchies, of relinquishing and taking back power" -- the theme of its 2023 conference. "Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has led to widespread calls for the reassessment and transformation of Russo-centric relationships of power and hierarchy both in the region and in how we study it," the association says in a notice on the convention. [...] Among other examples, scholars in North America are working on a book of essays that will focus on "decolonizing Eastern European and Eurasian art and material culture."

It will be interesting to see how this develops and what new insights it will bring. Together with it should be a decolonisation of Russian museum collections, with the return of items taken to what is now the Russian federation (particularly in Moscow and St Petersburg) from the former Soviet colonies.

Many scholars say the Russian state receives too much focus in academia at the expense of the colonized nations, regions, and groups, including Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, as well as ethnic minority communities in Russia itself. The view from St. Petersburg and Moscow -- the capitals of Russia since the tsarist era and of the Soviet Union -- dominates. Proponents of decolonization or "decentering" are calling for a greater inclusion of voices from those nations and regions in the curriculum of Russian, Soviet, and Eurasian history, literature, culture, political science, and economicss [...] many scholars of the region feel that academia has "overlooked to a large extent" the trauma caused by Russian imperialism and colonialism.

The past of a vast region of central and eastern Europe (and north Asia) has historically been seen from a Moscow-centric perspective because of the outsized influence of Russian-born scholars engaged in the field. More related to my own field is the way Kievan Rus is treated in academia

One key narrative passed on from imperial-era historians [...] is that Russia is the direct and sole successor to Kievan Rus -- also known as Kyivan Rus, from the city's Ukrainian name -- a state that reached the peak of its power a century before Moscow was founded. Putin, who has falsely claimed that Ukrainians and Russians are "one people" and has suggested in numerous historically inaccurate written and spoken remarks that Ukraine has no right to exist as a fully sovereign state, has used that vastly simplified notion of continuity in attempts to justify his war. His skewed version of history appears to be at the center of what numerous analysts have said is Putin's obsession with dominating Ukraine.

Mark Steinberg, professor emeritus of Russian history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is quoted saying that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has "pushed the field to understand empire and colonialism as probably never before [...]. Previously it was all academic discussion but now people are dying over this."