For a PDF of the full schedule, please click the link here.
Day 1
Day 1: Wednesday 4 June, 2025
Symposium begins
10.00-10.15
Welcome Address | Zakhar Ishov
10.15 – 12.00
Day 1/ Panel 1:
Ukranian Resistance during Soviet period & today
Poetry and Resistance: The Parallel World: Cultural Underground in Lviv in the 1970-80s
Mykola Riabchuk, University of Warsaw
Negotiating the Non-Negotiable: Bypassing the Censorship in the Late Soviet Years
Natalka Belocirkivec, Kyiv, Ukraine
Ukrainian poetry and translation in opposition to the Soviet regime. As it was in Kiev in the 1970s.
Mark Belorusets & Alla Zamanskaia, Kyiv / Berlin
Discussion / Q&A
12.00-13.00
Lunch break
13.00 -14.45
Day 1/ Panel 2:
Post-Stalin Thaw: its cultural, private, juridical, & poetic discourses
Emotional Judgment: Family Life in Soviet Journalism After Stalin
Rebecca Reich, Cambridge, UK
Literary Connotations of a Political Statement: Kuron’ and Modzelewski in Dialogue with Bulat Okudzhava
Olga Rosenblum, ZfL, Berlin
When Dictators Die: The Origins of the Post-Stalin Thaw
Anatoly Pinsky, Aleksanteri Institute, Helsinki
Discussion / Q&A
14.45-15.00
Fika Break
15.00-16.45
Day 1/ Panel 3:
Polish People’s Republic: poetry & politics, censorship & independent publishing
Red Ink on Snow: Nordic Children’s Literature under Censorship in Communist Poland (1944–1990)
Anna Wiśniewska-Grabarczyk, University of Lodz
Poetry & Politics during late socialism: a personal memoir
Irena Grudzinska Gross, writer and scholar (Zoom)
Russian-Polish Cross-border Solidarity on the pages of the Paris-based Quarterly “Zeszyty Literackie”
Zakhar Ishov, Uppsala University
Discussion / Q&A
16.45-17.00
Fika break
17.00-18.30
Day 1/ Panel 4:
Poetic Protest in the Soviet Union & in the world today
The reliable witness of Poetry
Ellen Hinsey, Universität Göttingen
Identity formation and aesthetic dissent in Natal'ia Gorbanevskaia's pre-emigration poetry
Allan Reid, University of Alberta (Zoom)
Vladimir Mayakovsky, Yuri Galanskov, and Russian-language protest poetry of the 2020s
Ilya Kukulin, Stanford University (Zoom)
Discussion / Q&A
18.30-21.00
Dinner
Day 2
Day 2: Thursday 5 June, 2025
10.00-11.45
Day 2/ Panel 1
Official vs. unofficial poetry after Stalin & today
From Poems in the Gulag to Official Soviet Poetry: How Viktor Fogelson Edited Varlam Shalamov
Josefina Janjic, , Uppsala University
With Roots in the Wind. Poetic Voices from the Borderlands of Dictatorship and War: Daria Serenko, Zhenia Berezhna, Natalya Klyucharyova, and Zhenya Berkovich
Olga Engfelt, Uppsala University
Poets-essentialists in official and samizdat registers Stanislav Kunyaev, Yegor Isaev, Sergei Vasilyev
Gasan Guseinov, Free University
Discussion / Q&A
11.45-12.00
Fika break
12.00-13.15
Day 2/ Panel 2
Poetry in Times of Trouble: a poetry reading
Poetry in Times of Trouble
Poetry reading:
• Ellen Hinsey
• Natalka Bilotserkivets
• Mark Belorusets
Discussion / Q&A
13.15-14:00
Lunch
14:00-14.45
Final joint discussion and planning of thematic issues
14:45
Symposium ends
Departure