News
New Release: Civilian Victims of World War II in the Soviet Union (Zivile Opfer des Zweiten Weltkriegs in der Sowjetunion)
Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian, and German authors examine the German war of extermination
Germany’s war of extermination in the Soviet Union claimed the lives of 14 million Soviet civilians. In their contributions, the authors combine an examination of the contexts of these crimes with questions of legal reckoning after 1945 and contemporary memory culture. In addition to Jewish victims, the authors focus on less-studied groups of civilian victims, such as residents of destroyed villages, sick and disabled people, women and children in the occupied territories, Romani people, as well as former forced laborers and Jewish survivors who were subjected to Stalinist repression in the postwar period. In doing so, they analyze newly accessible records from former Soviet intelligence archives.
Reading and memorial event: Writing about war
Reading in Ukrainian and German with texts by Serhiy Zhadan, Halyna Kruk, Victoria Amelina and others. With an academic introduction by PD Dr. Stefaniya Ptashnyk.
Tuesday, 24 February 2026, 6 p.m. c.t.
Lecture hall of the Department of History, Grabengasse 3-5, 69117 Heidelberg
While Ukraine and Russia are engaged in negotiations, Ukrainians are not approaching the fourth year of war, but rather the twelfth. This war, which has now gripped the country for longer than the Second World War and German occupation, is also leaving its mark on Ukraine's writers and poets. How can war be put into words? What means and literary forms can be used? What functions does writing even have in times of war?
On 24 February 2026, we will read texts of various genres by Serhiy Zhadan, Halyna Kruk, Victoria Amelina and others in German and Ukrainian. The reading will be introduced by PD Dr. Stefaniya Ptashnyk (Heidelberg).
The event is organised by the Chair of Eastern European History at Heidelberg University's History Department and the Ost-West-Club e.V. Heidelberg.
International Workshop: A Window of Opportunities: Newpaper Press during Perestroika Analyses and Field Reports
Time: Feb. 26 - Feb. 27, 2026
Venue: University of Helsinki, City Campus, Athena
Siltavuorenpenger 3 A | Room 354
Salon on 16 February: What does it mean to live under occupation? The Donbas, then and now
Humans and nature – what kind of relationship do they have? Many, if not most, people who study this relationship agree that it has changed radically. It is in crisis in many ways.
Nature puts humans in the form of Can you imagine living in an occupied city? Your life is controlled by the military, your neighbours disappear and never reappear. Other neighbours become police officers and are suddenly allowed to do almost anything. Every day you fight for survival. And every day you don't know if you will succeed.
Let's be honest: we can hardly imagine this. But occupation is a reality for many people around the world – and since 2014 also in Europe, in the Donbas region of Ukraine.
This evening, we want to focus on Donbas and two very different occupations: that by Nazi Germany from 1941 onwards and that by Russia today. We will be talking to two experts who have studied these occupations in depth: historian Tanja Penter (University of Heidelberg) and journalist Alice Bota (DIE ZEIT).
Workshop: Interdisciplinary Conversations on Central Asia
Heidelberg, 22. - 23. Januar 2026
Call for Paper: (Re)labelling Queerness after Socialism
(Re)labelling Queerness after Socialism
International workshop, Heidelberg University (Germany)
November 25-27, 2026
Research colloquium on Eastern European history in the winter semester of 2025/26
Our research colloquium on Eastern European history will take place again in the winter semester 2025/26, and we would like to cordially invite all interested parties to attend!
The wide-ranging programme includes lectures on society, genocide, rule, migration, science and other topics in various regions of Eastern Europe.
Further details on dates, speakers and lecture titles can be found on the poster. We will post any last-minute changes on Facebook and Instagram.
As usual, the colloquium will take place on Tuesdays at 6 p.m. c.t. in Exercise Room II of the History Department. We look forward to welcoming a large audience and many participants in the discussion!
CfP: Religious entanglements during perestroika: Looking at cross-border contacts at state and grass-roots level
Twin workshops in Lüneburg (17-18 September 2026) and Helsinki (29-30 April 2027)
Workshop 1: IKGN, Lüneburg, Germany, 17-18 September 2026
Religion in Motion: Multi-level entanglements between USSR and Germany
Workshop 2: MWF Helsinki, Finland, 29-30 April 2027
Religious actors amid radical transformations in the Soviet Republics
Submission deadline: 31 January 2026
Perestroika reconfigured the religious field across the USSR and beyond. Policy shifts under Gorbachev – on vivid display during the 1988 Millennium of the Baptism of Rus’ and later legally fixed in the 1990 Law on freedom of faith – opened space for religion while exposing deep divisions about its place in Soviet society and history. Equally important, but hitherto little explored is the fact that borders became more permeable, both toward the West and within the socialist bloc. This produced a multi-faceted space for exchange, transfer, transcultural impact, self-representation and competition. Transformations affected the religious field at every level: from the top of the socialist state to the grass-roots levels of society, but also horizontally, in the centers, regions and peripheries of the USSR and across the hitherto restrictive borders. Representatives of émigré churches re-entered the scene with distinct agendas; the official, but hitherto subdued, church (ROC) tested new forms of publicity and self-promotion at home and abroad; local authorities experimented with notions of “national” religion; Western missionaries pursued “mission on red territory;” new forms of religious tourism emerged, and churches acted on the moving diplomatic floor, assuming relevant roles in states and societies across the ‘Socialist Bloc’. Memory politics changed rapidly, with public narratives about victims of the Soviet regime and the creation of a new pantheon of martyrs. A swift expansion of publishing, seminaries, translations, student exchanges, missions and branch offices, humanitarian relief, and even the antiquities trade reshaped infrastructures. Besides, changing emigration rules – affecting Jews, ‘Russian Germans,’ and other groups – radically altered local communities within the disintegrating Soviet Union and created new trends and communities of former Soviet citizens worldwide.
All these phenomena occurred simultaneously and impacted each other in a transnational dimension. They require further investigation while existing research findings await a comprehensive discussion in a focused scientific setting. We want to offer such a setting in two interdisciplinary workshops, the first taking place at Nordost-Institut (IKGN e.V.) in Lüneburg in September 2026, the second at Max Weber Forum (Max Weber Network Eastern Europe), Helsinki, in April 2027.
The first workshop is designed to specifically address entanglements of religious relations, including religious PR, mobility, and networks of religious actors during perestroika and early transformation. This workshop concentrates on relations between the USSR and Germany, both in their bilateral dimensions and their embeddedness in broader, global structures, due to the participation of involved actors from other countries and continents. We look for evidence on brokers and gatekeepers, linking religious and other actors in different republics of the USSR with Germany, for example in the form of support projects and aid campaigns. We presume that there were actors from all segments of state and society – political and religious hierarchies, religious and administrative practitioners, but also ‘ordinary’ people, who became interested and engaged under the new political circumstances.
The second workshop shifts its focus more on developments within the republics of the USSR, especially regarding the transformations of law, religious relations across different Soviet republics, and cases of state–religion governance. One aim is to explore how the legal announcement of religious freedom was perceived and processed by the actors; how it was understood both in the sense of a new pressure to act, even a threat, but also as the hitherto unknown opportunity for self-realization and the emergence of “traditional religions” and “national churches”.
We welcome proposals that explore the entangled history of religion during perestroika from the perspectives of history, religious studies, and anthropology. We are especially interested in source-based case studies that uncover how people, texts, funds, artifacts, and norms moved across the “Iron Curtain” and circulated within the diverse and multifaceted Soviet Union. While work on Orthodox and Catholic contexts is welcome, we especially seek contributions on initiatives from EKD milieus, free evangelical communities, and the often-overlooked Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist, and neo-pagan settings.
We are particularly interested in research that addresses:
- grassroots and regional (provincial) initiatives, especially in the republics of Central Asia and the Baltic states, as well as in the Far East, the Caucasus, and other regions;
- sensitivity to gender aspects, with special attention to hidden or overlooked women’s roles;
- religious or spiritually based humanitarian, educational, artistic, and ecological initiatives.
Please indicate which of the two workshops you would like to participate in and submit a paper proposal (400 words) along with a short CV (including current affiliation and contact details) by 31 January 2026 to Nadezhda.Beliakova@uni-bielefeld.de and Franziska.Schedewie@zegk.uni-heidelberg.de
Applicants will be informed of the acceptance of their proposal by 28 February 2026.
The working language of the workshops will be English. A publication of contributions is planned.
The workshops are organized by Nadezhda Beliakova (University of Bielefeld) and Franziska Schedewie (University of Heidelberg) in cooperation with Nordost-Institut – IKGN e.V. (Lüneburg) and Max Weber Forum Helsinki and funded by Nordost-Institut – IKGN e.V. (Workshop 1), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft – DFG, and Max Weber Network Eastern Europe (Workshop 2).
The organizers will provide accommodation in Lüneburg (for Workshop 1) and Helsinki (for Workshop 2) for the duration of each workshop. Travel costs will be reimbursed after the workshop depending on budget availability with early career researchers, participants from post-Soviet states (excluding Russia and Belarus) and scholars in exile taking precedence.
Announcement of event series
We would like to draw your attention to the new series of events entitled ‘Lokal Dekolonial’ (Local Decolonial) organised by the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb) and Mosaik Deutschland e.V., which kicked off on 3 July with the first event by Alhierd Bacharevic and Julia Cimafejewa entitled ‘Belarus! Language ≠ Identity’.
During the course of the next two events, Ira Peter will give a reading on 25 July at 6 p.m. on the forecourt of the Emmertsgrund community centre entitled ‘German enough?’ on the subject of post-Soviet identity. On 29 September, the series of events will conclude at the Karlstorbahnhof with a film screening of ‘Where Russia Ends’ starting at 6 p.m. This final event, entitled ‘How We Talk About Russia,’ will end with a discussion with Prof. Dr. Botakoz Kassymbekova from the University of Zurich.
Cooperation project with Dekoder.org: The War and Its Victims – A documentary about Germany's war of extermination against the Soviet Union, 1941–1945
As part of a new special feature, Dekoder, with scientific advice from Penter, Jasmin Söhner and Dmytro Tytarenko, is focusing on the civilian victims of Nazi crimes in Germany's war of extermination against the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1945. In ten episodes, ten individual fates will be given a voice and their stories told; representing the estimated total of almost 27 million war victims from the Soviet Union. The aim is to promote an ‘eastern expansion of German remembrance’ and to draw the German public's attention to forgotten sites of German mass crimes in Ukraine, the Baltic states, Belarus, Russia and elsewhere.
The project is based on primary sources and the research of international historians, primarily the researchers involved in the project (University of Heidelberg). It is funded as part of the Nazi Injustice Education Agenda by the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ (EVZ) and the Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF).
DFG-Graduiertenkolleg 2840 „Ambivalent Enmity. Dynamics of Antagonism in Europe, Asia and the Middle East
A new graduate college based at Heidelberg University and headed by Prof. Dr. Tanja Penter is addressing the topic of ‘Ambivalent Enmity’ in the humanities and social sciences. The focus is on ‘Dynamics of Antagonism in Asia, Europe and the Middle East’. The programme (GRK 2840), which is run jointly with the College of Jewish Studies, is being funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) with 6.5 million euros over a period of five years. The research programme plans to train two cohorts of twelve doctoral students each. Two positions are also earmarked for postdoctoral researchers.