Donnerstag, 19.05.2022, 18:00-19:30
Raum 33.1.054, Merangasse 70 (Wall)
Die Russistik des Instituts für Slawistik möchte zu einem Gastvortrag des jungen Moskauer Historikers Vasilij Starostin einladen, der seit Mitte März in Österreich lebt und von seinen Erfahrungen in der Bürgerrechtsgruppe „Memorial“ erzählen wird.
Damit die Veranstaltung auch jenseits der Slawistik Interesse erweckt, wird der Vortrag auf Englisch gehalten. In der Diskussion sind russische und deutsche Beiträge willkommen.
Kontakt: Heinrich Pfandl, heinrich.pfandl(at)uni-graz.at
«The Topography of Terror. Moscow»
«International Memorial» is one of the oldest and largest research centers of the history of political repressions in Russia. Throughout its long 30-year history Memorial created and made a large variety of research projects. From an ambitious and still continuing work of creating a unified database of those who were arrested and shot during the Great Terror and commemorating the victims to creating historical media projects about dissent in Eastern Europe’s communist regimes.
One such project – «The Topography of Terror. Moscow» tries to examine how the city surroundings tell the story of those repressions. The main goal of this project is trying to answer the question of just how one can comprehend the history of human rights abuse in the USSR. In this sense the city of Moscow, being the central place of decision making in the Soviet government, is crucial in understanding the scale of repressions. Its archives hold massive information, but how can one use it to tell the history of repressions to an ordinary person? What form factor can be used to tell this story that would be comprehensive and engaging at the same time?
We will discuss just in what ways you can classify archival information using a city map and the educational practicalities of this method. We will talk about the varieties of topics that can be covered and in what way can one engage the audience by using the city’s topography.
Short Bio:
Vasily Starostin, born in 1996 in Moscow, MA public history, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, University of Manchester.
Archivist, researcher, guide in Memorial International from 2017.