Program
The IWM invited ten PhD students and postdoctoral researchers to take part in a three-week Summer School within the Institute’s research focus on “United Europe – Divided History”. It provided a forum for study and discussion on major debates and questions related to the topic.
Focus 1: “Backwardness” and the legacies of peasant societies
This focus was devoted to the examination of arguments as to how, and how much, economic and social “backwardness,” compared to Western Europe, determined the timing and shape of political and economic developments in Eastern Europe and Western Eurasia. “Backwardness,” including the existence of strong peasant majorities, was considered as a determinant of 1) the extent and contours of industrialization, 2) the
specifics of political structures, and 3) international contexts – economic and political - of the region.
Focus 2: The persistence of multiple roles of violence
This focus explored the phenomenon of societal and political violence in the region, both its persistence and its evolution. Three aspects were considered: endemic local violence; state violence (both everyday and in domestic crises); the international contexts for violence (war, other political disjuncture, prolonged peace). They were considered in relation to both social structure (strongly peasant societies, later industrializing and
urbanizing under duress, then globalizing) and political structure (authoritarian but weak states).
Focus 3: Memory, including the Role(s) of Moralism in Politics
This focus analyzed the political functions of memory in the region. Special attention was given to memory’s twin roles of 1) supporting and 2) overcoming the moralism that has historically characterized its political cultures, with a specific focus on the actual events of the 1980s and 1989 as a testing ground. The moralism of both
populations and governments were considered in relation to each other.
Focus 4: Remembered and “Historical” Events
The final sessions of the summer school took Ambassador Simons’ oral history interviews on his two tours as a diplomat in Poland (1968-1971 and 1990-1993) and critique them in light of the historical record that has emerged subsequently, in order to explore how remembered experience measures up against historical understanding based on documentation.
Faculty
The summer school was taught by Dr Thomas W. Simons. In his 35-year U.S. Foreign Service career, he specialized in East-West relations, including service in Warsaw, Moscow, and Bucharest, and as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State responsible for Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (1986–1989). During the 1990s he was U.S. Ambassador to Poland, Coordinator of U.S. Assistance to the New Independent States of the former Soviet Union, and U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan. He is the author of four books and some 30 articles on the European East, Eurasia, and the Subcontinent. His most recent book is Eurasia's New Frontiers: Young States, Old Societies, Open Futures (Cornell, 2008). He has taught at Brown, Stanford, Cornell, and in Harvard's
Government Department, and is currently lecturing at Harvard on post-Communist Central Asia and the Caucasus.
