Politics of Identity in Post-Communist E

The course examines the complex relations between politics and identities in various countries of post-communist Eastern, Central and Southern Europe. It deals with various aspects of the politics of identity, including language, ethnicity, religion, and memory, in an array of social domains encompassing education, public administration, media, churches, linguistic landscapes, and public monuments. It seeks to describe post-communist processes in these domains as both grounded in ideologies and practices of the communist and pre-communist past and shaped by the domestic sociopolitical situation and external (geo)political contexts. A case featured in the course is Ukraine, which is very interesting in view of its ambivalent historical legacy, contradictory policies in post-Soviet years, and the remarkable resilience that has been demonstrated in time of war with Russia. At the same time, considerable attention will be paid to cases as different as Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, the Baltic and post-Yugoslav states. This choice of cases makes it possible to present a diversity and complexity of identity politics in post-communist societies.