Participation in the Annual ASEEES Convention 2012 in New Orleans

 

The Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) is one of the leading organizations in the field of the former Soviet Union (including Eurasia) and Eastern and Central Europe from an interdisciplinary and international point of view.

 

After a successful year with meetings in Prague, Regensburg, Belgrade, and Kraków the physical violence project took part in ASEEES Convention 2012 with four panels.
 

The panel examined the relation between physical violence and state legitimacy and the practices of everyday domination in relation to the body, gender, family, childhood and medical practices, both in the private sphere and in state institutions. The contributors presented cases from the GDR, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia.

Chair: Daniel Cohen (Houston, Texas)

Muriel Blaive (Vienna)

State Violence over the Female Body: Giving Birth in Czechoslovakia and in the US from the 1950s to the 1970s

Barbara Klich-Kluczewska (Krakow)

Breaking the Taboo of Domestic Violence in Poland and Czechoslovakia in Late Socialism

Jennifer Rasell (Potsdam)

Child’s Play? Growing Up in State Care in Hungary and East Germany in the 1980s

Discussant: Cynthia Paces (Ewing, NJ)

 

This panel investigated the relationship between violence both exercised by the state and that occurring in the society during the last few decades of state socialism in central and eastern Europe. The concepts of “violence” and “non-violence” were at the center of the three papers that approached the topic from different angles.

 

Chair: Jeffrey Kopstein (Toronto)

Jens Gieseke (Potsdam)

Late Chekism and the Concept of Violence. East Germany and Eastern Europe in Comparison

Michal Kopeček (Prague)

Permissive Cultures. The Interactive Roots of Regime Non-Violence and Implosion in 1989   East Central Europe

Stefano Bottoni (Budapest)

From State Terrorism to State Security. The Romanian and Hungarian Political Police during Late Socialism in Comparison

Discussant: Kacper Szulecki (Constance)

 

The third panel analyzed and discussed violence as a social practice in Socialist Yugoslavia. The participants examined in their presentations various types of state security organs such as the Yugoslav police during demonstrations against the war in Vietnam in Belgrade in 1960s, the function and the actions of the Yugoslav intelligence service in the troubled region of Kosovo in the 1960s and 1980s as well as the Yugoslav People`s Army and its participation in the Break-up-War in Croatia 1991.

Robert Lučić (Potsdam)

Violent Communities – The Soldiers of the Yugoslav People´s Army and the Outbreak of War in Croatia 1991

Radina Vučetić (Belgrade)

The Double Game - Using Violence on the Demonstrations against the War in Vietnam in Socialist Yugoslavia

Edvin Pezo (Regensburg)

Violence and State (Dis)Integration. A Comparison of the Ranković Era and the Eighties in Kosovo

Discussant: Ulf Brunnbauer (Regensburg)

 
Panel four: Military Violence and Soviet Civil Society from the Civil War to Afghanistan. A Russian Sonderweg?

The panel investigated the relationship between military violence and civil society in Russia in a longue durée perspectives from the Russian Civil War (1918-1922) to the end of the Soviet Union. Using sources from Russia and Ukraine it aimed to contribute to the ongoing discussion on the role violence has played in modern Russian history.

 

Chair: Radina Vučetić (Belgrade)

Jan C. Behrends (Potsdam)

The Afghan War and the Fate of Perestroika. Examining the Debate about Violence and its Impact on Late Soviet Society

Alena Maklak (Potsdam)

The Kings and the Pawns: “Non-Statutory Relations” in the Soviet Army on Trial

Paul Hagenloh (Syracuse, NY)

Military Violence and Soviet Administration in the Civil War
Discussant: Jeff Rossmann (U of Virginia)