The Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies presents: |
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Indigenous Siberians in the Context of War |
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Dr. Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer |
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Thursday, April 27, 2023
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Hybrid Event
Elliott School of International Affairs
Voesar Conference Room, Suite 412 | 4th Floor
1957 E St. NW Washington, DC 20052
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Russia has entered a new period of instability, made especially precarious due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. From the Arctic to Lake Baikal and the magnificent Altai mountains, Indigenous peoples are striving for degrees of self-determination. Despite curtailment of civil society under President Putin, many are defending their lands and rights without being secessionist. Some have fled into exile and formed politicized diasporas.
In this talk, Dr. Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer will explore critical questions about the survival of Russia in its nominally federal form in the context of Russia's war in Ukraine. Will Russia fall apart along the lines of its internal republics, as did the Soviet Union? Why have non-Russians been mobilized in numbers higher than their ethnic proportions? Are non-Russian peoples of Turkic and Mongolian backgrounds, far from Moscow, protesting?
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Dr. Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer is a Faculty Fellow, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, Georgetown University, and cofounder of the Indigenous Studies Working Group. Her teaching at Georgetown’s Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies (CERES) began in 1987 in a joint appointment with the Anthropology Department. She is the valedictory editor of the Taylor and Francis translation journal Anthropology and Archeology of Eurasia. She has authored or edited seven books on Eurasia/ Siberia, including the monographs Galvanizing Nostalgia? Indigeneity and Sovereignty in Siberia (Cornell 2021) and Shamans, Spirituality, and Cultural Revitalization: Explorations in Siberia and Beyond (Palgrave 2012). One of the first U.S. anthropologists allowed to do fieldwork in the Soviet period (in 1975-76; and 85-86 on cultural exchanges), she continued intensive and frequent fieldwork in Siberia’s Far East in the post-Soviet period until Putin regime politics made this difficult. Since 2016, she has worked with Siberian diasporas, creating a Siberian compound in the DC suburbs.
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Moderator
Dr. Marlene Laruelle is a Director and Research Professor at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES). At IERES, she is also Director of the Illiberalism Studies Program, Co-Director of PONARS (Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia), and Director of GW's Central Asia Program. She teaches courses in Populism & Illiberalism, the Rise of the Far Right, Politics of the Post-Soviet Space, Nationalism and Nationbuilding in Eurasia, and Central Asian Politics, and leads the Democracy Studies specialization of the MA in International Affairs. Dr. Laruelle received her Ph.D. in history at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Cultures and her habilitation in political science at Sciences-Po in Paris. She is Senior Associate Scholar at the French Institute for International Relations.
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This event is on record and open to the media. |
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The Russia Program at GW condemns Russia's invasion of Ukraine and calls for the restoration of Ukraine's sovereignty. |
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The Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES)
Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University
1957 E Street, NW / Suite 412 / Washington, DC 20052
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