With support from the Society for the Study of Labor History, Northumbria University's History of Activism research group is hosting two online symposia on different ways in which communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe was being critiqued and contested during the 1970s and 1970s. To register for these online symposia, please contact Daniel Laqua.
Friday, 6 November 2020, 1:30 pm to 5:00 pm
- Charlotte Alston and Daniel Laqua (Northumbria University) – Welcome
Challenging ‘Actually Existing Socialism'
- André Keil (Liverpool John Moores University) – ‘Instandbesetzen’? Squatting in the Late GDR between Social Protest, Youth Culture, and Conservation
- Richard Millington (University of Chester) – Challenging the State? Petty Thieves in the GDR, 1971–1989
Cultural Change and New Social Movements
- Aleksandra Gajowy (Newcastle University) – Polish Queer Homecomings: Filo, DIK Fagazine, and Unearthing Ryszard Kisiel’s Archive
- Alexandra Wedl (University of Basel) – Green Volunteers in Czechoslovakia: The Youth Newspaper Mladý svět and Its Environmental Campaign, 1970s –1980s
Critiques and Future Visions in the Late 1980s
- Dirk Dalberg (Slovak Academy of Sciences) – Self-Government as an Alternative Socialism: Czechoslovakia in the Late 1980s
- Anna Calori (University of Leipzig) – Between Reformism and Neoliberalism: Envisaging Alternative Socialisms in the Debates of Yugoslav Economists (1987–1991)
Friday 20 November, 1:30 to 5:00 pm
Opposition Movements
- Anselma Gallinat (Newcastle University) – Challenging the State on Pastoral and Theological Grounds: Church–State Engagements in East Germany
- James Koranyi (Durham University) – Romanian Skirmishes: Aktionsgruppe Banat, Trade Union Nostalgia, and Opposition to Ceaușescu
- Daniel Laqua (Northumbria University) – Solidarity and Protest: East–West Responses to the Biermann Expatriation of 1976
Dissent in Transnational Perspective
- Irina Gordeeva (Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History, Potsdam / St. Philaret’s Christian Orthodox Institute, Moscow) – Edward Palmer Thompson and the Soviet Independent Peace Movement
- Mark Hurst (Lancaster University) – ‘Conversations with Cannibals’: Misunderstood Activism across the Iron Curtain during the Cold War
- Kim Christiaens and Jos Claeys (KU Leuven) – Failures, Limits and Competition: Campaigns on behalf of Eastern European Dissidents in Cold War Belgium, 1960s–1980s
Concluding Discussion
- Charlotte Alston (Northumbria University) – Discussant Comments
- Daniel Laqua (Northumbria University) – Next Steps
