Calendar | Conference

Russian & Ukrainian Emigration: Then & Now

Fribourg, 14 - 17 February 2023

Official Website

The 20th Century witnessed successive waves of emigration from the Soviet Union: a first "white" wave after the Russian Civil War and the Ukrainian War of Independance, which saw the creation of great centres of émigré culture in Berlin, Paris or Prague; a second, lesser-known one during World War II, which also coincided with the displacement of the Western European émigré centres to North America; a third and fourth wave, mainly to the USA, then happened respectively in the 1970s and 90s with the progressive liberalisation and eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. Today, the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine has led to yet another wave of emigration, both from Ukraine and Russia.

In the context of the SNF-Project “Communities of Dialogue: Russian and Ukrainian Émigrés in Modernist Prague”, this conference aims to broadly reinterrogate the cultural and political significance of Russian and Ukrainian emigration (which were undoubtedly distinct, if correlated phenomena), in particular by focussing on their social and institutional structures, as well as their intellectual dimension.