41st Annual Conference: “Journeys” nui galway, 4-6 May 2017 Conference Abstracts

41^st Annual Conference: “Journeys”



NUI Galway, 4-6 May 2017

Conference Abstracts

Friday, 5 May

8:00-9:00 Conference Registration, Foyer of James Hardiman Library Building

Note: All panels will take place in the James Hardiman Library Building. Rooms G010 and G011 are on the ground floor. The Bridge is on the first floor and can be reached by stairs outside G010. At the top of the stairs, go through door on left, turn left and enter the first door on left.

9:00-10.40 Session A

Panel 1: Travels in Habsburg Lands from the Nineteenth to Early Twentieth Centuries (Room G010)

Chair: Balázs Apor (Trinity College Dublin)

‘Modernist Empire: Hermann Bahr’s and Béla Zombory-Moldován’s Journeys to the Habsburg Borderlands.’

Andreas Agocs (University of the Pacific, Stockton, California)

This paper will discuss and analyze the observations of two Habsburg artists at the beginning of the twentieth century during their respective journeys to the borderlands of the late Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. In 1909 the Austrian Modernist writer Hermann Bahr (1863-1934) recorded his observations and memories as a tourist on a journey down the Dalmatian coast, from Triest to Ragusa (today’s Dubrovnik). Bahr, an artist who in his critical writing introduced the Vienna public to modernist concepts such as expressionism, recorded surprisingly detailed—and critical—observations of the Austrian administration in Dalmatia, the relationships between the different ethnic groups, and the state of the multicultural Habsburg empire at its southeastern border. The paper will compare Bahr’s journey to the impressions of the Hungarian painter Béla Zombory-Moldován, whose memoirs describe his experiences during his journey to the Galician World War I front in 1914. Like the Austrian writer, Zombory-Moldován, who becomes wounded and shell-shocked in his unit’s first engagement, commented on the relationship of the Habsburg administration to its subjects. At the same time, the painter’s memoirs combine observations of the relationships between Hungarians, Slovaks, and Poles in Galicia with comments on the cultural scene in Budapest, with its fragmentation into modernist and more traditionalist camps. The paper compares the two artists’ journeys to suggest that their impressions of cultural and political fragmentation combined and reinforced each other and ultimately shaped their ambivalent views of the Habsburg imperial mission.

‘Something Between Slavs and Celts’: A Journey of Harold Spender and the Creation of National States in the Balkans’

Sanja Lazarević Radak (University of Belgrade)

In the early 1920's, a British diplomat and Lloyd George's adviser, Harold Spender visited the newly formed Kingdom of Yugoslavia in order to examine the ethnic tensions and political problems which followed its constitution. The result of his journey was a book Cauldron of Europe, (H. F. & G. Whiterby, London, 1925). The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was formed after the end of the First World War, Balkan Wars and numerous uprisings aimed at creation of independent, national states at the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. The Kingdom was declared along with the so-called Vidovdan constitution which was supported by the Serb majority. This became a pretext for ethnic tensions between Serbs and Croats. Harold Spender searches for the roots of the conflict between two nations, seeking a "reasonable solution" that would prevent open conflict. Having failed to find the answer in political circumstances, Spender bring into stereotypes about the Serbs and Croats. Equating Croats with Irish, Spender is leaning on stereotypes: "wild nature", "disobedience", "infantilism," He compares both nations with "wild horses", while Serbs are recognized as "genetically codified warriors." The open conflict between Serbs and Croats escalated seventy years later. Along with this conflict Serbs started to identify themselves with Irish, seeking for Celtic origin, which Spender attached to Croats. From this idea arises subculture of Orthodox (Serbian) Celts. Therefore, I point out the stereotypes which served in the British public as a justification for the creation of national states in the Balkans, analyze the image of Serbs and Croats as a mixture of Celts and Slavs and point out the possibility of internalising representations that occurred in the nineties, during the conflict in the Balkans.

‘The transformation of Habsburg Central Europe in Irish travel accounts in the early twentieth century’

Lili Zách (Independent Scholar, Dublin)

Irish interest in Hungary, the Czech lands and Austria had been present long before 1918. This paper proposes to demonstrate that personal encounters on the Continent in the first decades of the twentieth century had a crucial role in shaping Irish opinion of Habsburg Central Europe, especially regarding the transformation of political order in the region. It is noteworthy that many respected Irish travellers, clergymen, politicians, journalists, and intellectuals, including contributors to nationalist newspapers or influential Catholic journals such as the Jesuit quarterly Studies, were open to news and influences from the wider world and had personal experience (educational and/or travel) on the Continent prior to the dissolution of the Dual Monarchy. Travel accounts from the period provided unique insights into a variety of issues; those of Jesuit Professor George O’Neill about political and religious developments in independent Czechoslovakia; University College Dublin student Celia Shaw and Irish Slavonicist John J. R. O’Beirne concerning the poverty in post-war Austria. Moreover, it is crucial to stress the lasting reputation of the owner and editor of the Tuam Herald, Richard John Kelly, well beyond the Great War – especially due to known his appreciation for Slavic culture in general. In addition, Hubert Briscoe also revealed ongoing and continuous interest in East-Central Europe; first as a Catholic journalist, then from the mid-1920s, as the Honorary Consul of Hungary in Ireland. Investigating the connection between Irish journeys and nationalism may reveal an alternative interpretation of the transformation of political order both in Habsburg Central Europe and in Ireland at a time of change. Therefore, this paper proposes to highlight the possibility of a more complex comprehension of how Ireland aimed to forge new, transnational connections with the wider world in addition to its existing contacts with the British Empire.

Panel 2: Journey to the Orient (Room G011)

Chair: Cathal Smith (NUI Galway)

‘“Savage Europe” or “charming Orient”: Images of Russia in British and American Travelogues in the early Twentieth Century’

Alexander B. Okun (Samara University)

The paper is devoted to the different images of Russia in the representations of British and American travelers in the beginning of the XX Century. During this period Russia attracted a lot of Europeans and Americans who had visited it for various purposes trying to solve “Russian enigma”, to understand “Russian soul”. The result was a tremendous increase in the number of publications in the genre of travel writing creating very different images of the country and its people from admiration to hostility (“the land of mystery, gloom, and death”). The author based his analyses of the travelogues on the conceptions of Orientalism and imaginative geography affirming that positive or negative attitude of the travelers to the various features of the Russian social life was based not only on their prejudices and stereotypes. No less important were the idea of Russia as European or Asiatic country, so they attributed the same features as manifestations of the “savage Europe” or the “charming Orient”.

‘Places of Public Memory in Various Travel Journals of Romanian Writers in Russia during the Cold War’

Gabriele Sandru (Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iași)

In the introduction to his travel journal in Russia, Mihail Sadoveanu wrote some words in praise of books and of the struggle against cultural barbarism: „The Muses should be silent hitherto”. In other words, literature should serve the politics of proletariat and the writers from the satellites states should spread the achievements of the Lenin and Stalin's politics. In this regard and winning the writer's benevolence, Russia invited groups of intellectuals from outside to take part in different celebrations joined by trips to Moscow and Leningrad. They aspired to show them the manner in which the communists reshaped the public spaces by endowing them with a novel meaning. The following paper aims at identifying some “places of public memory,” as they are depicted in the traveling diaries of various Romanian writers who visited Russia. The electrical subway and its stations which look like underground palaces, the kolkhoz and the Lenin's Mausoleum are the novelties which impress the foreigners with their grandeur and efficacy. Kremlin, the synthesis of Russian history, becomes public wealth, but its beauty is left behind only by the subway which has also a utilitarian purpose. While Moscow seems to be the new, the city that doesn't cease to resemble a building site, Leningrad preserves the charm of the tsarist past which is connected to the Soviet present through his monumental features. The royal palaces are turned into museums, libraries and schools, a fact which fallows to insert in the people's mind the idea that this newly established political regime has already a history of its own. These places are meant to carry a memory which is still in a process of formation, but which rhetoric holds the monumental past and a national pride.

‘The Cold War gaze: origins, variants and persistence in western views of USSR/Russia’

Christopher Read (Warwick University)

This paper forms part of a broader work on visitors to the USSR together with reflections on visitors since 1991, noting especially the continuation of Cold War tropes in many of the post 1991 visitors. Less politicised views have emerged from the growing number of adventure tourists – mountaineers, walkers, canoeists, cyclists and motorcyclists – who have begun to ‘explore’ the formerly ‘forbidden’ territories. This paper focuses on John Steinbeck, Dervla Murphy, Gerald and Lee Durrell, Jonathan Dimbleby (including the interesting responses to his work on the Amazon comments pages) and one or two of the adventure tourists, possibly Macgregor and Boorman. The paper will ask questions about the nature and origins of their ‘gaze’ and the notion of achieving ‘true’ representation of another culture and also on the nature and persistence of ‘Cold War’ perspectives in the western view of Russia/USSR.

Panel 3: Recent Patterns of Emigration and Migration across Europe (The Bridge)

Chair: Conny Opitz (Trinity College Dublin/University of St. Andrews)

‘Journeys as an Impulse for Migration’

Marina Grinfeld (Free University, Berlin)

Most people know the thought “what would happen if I do not return home?” during a journey. Few people, however, actually realise it and migrate. This paper deals with the existential motivations behind emigration from Russia to Germany in the last five years. Based upon the conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews, it seems that the experience of previous journeys often gives the first impetus to the decision to leave. It is through the course of these travels that one experiences feeling free, gains a shift of perspective and sees a completely different life than that know at home. Travelling shows the possibility of escaping the given alternatives, fulfilling the longing for the wider world and enabling one to re-establish one’s own self and realise one’s potential. This paper also looks at East versus West and why a specific place rather than country exerts a draw.

‘A struggle across the Iron Curtain. Soviet dissidents in emigration in the 1970s’

Barbara Martin (Moscow Higher School of Economics/University of Bremen)

For the Soviet people, the prospect of travelling abroad or emigrating was mostly limited. However, in the 1970s, tens of thousands of Soviet citizens, mostly Jewish, were allowed to emigrate to the West or forced into exile as a result of the regime’s repressive policies. Although they stepped into a new realm of freedom, Soviet emigrants were often unprepared for this one-way journey into the unknown. For those who had been active dissidents in the Soviet Union, this entailed a whole change of strategy: they were now cut off from the Soviet people in whose name they had been struggling. At the same time, new possibilities in terms of activism also opened up before them. This paper looks at the trajectories of two Soviet dissident scholars in exile in the 1970s and seeks to show the difficulties they faced, but also the new avenues of protest that they made use of to pursue their struggle. The first case examined is that of Zhores Medvedev (born 1925), a dissident biologist who was deprived of his Soviet citizenship as he was on a scientific leave in London in 1973. Medvedev was able to use his new situation in various ways: he acted as the publishing agent of his brother Roy, also a dissident, who remained in Moscow, and himself went on numerous conference tours to seek to influence public opinion in the West. The second case is that of Alexander Nekrich, a historian pushed to exile after his exclusion from the Communist Party. As he settled in the United States, he faced various challenges, from the difficulty of obtaining political asylum to the lack of a permanent position. However, he was also able to publish new books on the history of the Soviet Union denouncing the regime’s record of repression and violence.

‘Rising nationalist and patriotic sentiments among Polish economic emigrants in the 21^st century’

Maciej Cupryś (NUI Galway)

Since the start of the twenty-first century, Poland has faced an unprecedented rise in economic emigration. This increase was mostly attributed to Poland’s accession to the structures of the European Union and its open labour market. People driven by economic reasons and a perspective of improvement of their existence left Poland without any ideological or political agenda, for their country or Europe. Over the past couple years this has changed. Many of those emigrants have since came back home, but the communities that stayed in foreign countries experienced a rise in nationalist and patriotic sentiments. The easily observable trend of the strengthening of the widely understood right wing narrative is part of a bigger world-wide tendency in politics, but it would be unwise to attribute it only to a mere fashion. I believe that this upswing can be explained by a comprehensive analysis of sociological and political factors and micro-mechanisms, which have modified the political and social landscape of the world in an unprecedented fashion. Contrary to earlier large-scale emigrations from Poland, such as those in the early 1980’s and after World War II, the connection of the emigrants with the home country was not severed by the oppressive regime. Rather it flourished thanks to new technologies. The growth of cheap means of fast communication and long-distance travel as well as easy access to news and information from Poland through internet and Polish satellite television caused this new generation of emigrants to be more aware of trends in Polish politics, fashion and intellectual life. Other very important mechanisms that played a crucial role in the development of this modern mindset of Polish emigrant were of psychological and political nature. As for political reasons, the most important was a political agitation of Polish right-wing political movements. My argument is that, thanks to modern means of communication as well as successful internet based campaigns, widely understood nationalist movements have gained an upper hand in their struggle for the minds and souls of Polish diaspora.

‘A Legendary Journey Which Lasts for 85 Years: Composer Sofia Gubaidulina’

Ludmila Snigireva (Marino Institute of Education, Dublin)

This paper presents an ongoing journey inside and outside of Russia which is being made by composer Sofia Gubaidulina, a living legend in contemporary music who has constantly followed the “incorrect path” on which Dmitri Shostakovich once encouraged her. Her music was an escape from the socio-political atmosphere of the USSR. She now lives in the house in Appen, a village north of Hamburg. Despite many obstacles she realised her dream of composing utterly without any compromise. This path turned out to be quite a complicated one, but Sofia Gubaildulina has never been afraid to make her journeys alongside these paths, even when, in 1973, she was attacked in the lift of her Moscow apartment building. The man started to strangle her. The composer thought grimly that this was the end and, if so, her chief regret was that she would never complete the bassoon concerto on which she'd been working on. "I'm not afraid of death but of violence," she told her biographer later. This paper will analyze how Sofia Gubaidulina’s concern has always been about the elementary power of music, which changes human existence. It will show the circumstances that led to Sofia Gubaidulina's first actual journey abroad in 1967, travelling to Zagreb during which she attended International Biennial for Contemporary Music. She was ultimately blacklisted at the Sixth Congress of the Composers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – denounced, along with six other composers, for producing "noisy mud instead of real musical innovation". Thus, the composer became one of the Khrennikov Seven, most of whom then went into exile. Roads and journeys, obstacles and denouncement, world recognition and “collaborating with God” will be considered.

10.40-11.10 Tea/Coffee Break in Foyer

11.10-12:30 Session B

Panel 4: Journeys in Early Modern Russia (Room G010)

Chair: Pádraig Lenihan (NUI Galway)

‘The Journey of Georg Wilhelm de Hennin to the Urals and Western Siberia in the early 1720s’

Elena Borodina (Russian Academy of Sciences, Ekaterinburg and Ural Federal University)

Wilhelm de Hennin, or Vilim Ivanovich de Gennin in the Russian writing tradition, was one of those foreigners who came to Russia as the result of recruitment efforts made by Peter the Great during the Great Embassy (1697). Having been invited into Russian Military Forces, de Hennin had a successful career both as military officer and mining engineer. During the Great Northern War de Hennin was occupied at an engineering works connected with fortification building and gained the rank of major-general. In 1713 he was appointed in the head of Olonets mining and metallurgic plants. In 1722 de Hennin was sent to the Siberian province where he was to organize the investigation about the problems of iron-making plants building. Along with Vasilii Tatischev, de Hennin is a founder of new Ural cities, Ekaterinburg and Perm’. Although major-general spent 12 years in the region and was to become the manager of Siberian ober-bergamt, at first his position was considered as temporary. During his trip to the Ural plants de Hennin kept a journal which was a meticulous description of his everyday life. The journal was written with the help of Russian clerk whose aim was to fix important things which de Hennin had met on his way to Siberian province. The journal is an important primary source which helps us to understand the intentions of the major-general and reveals views of the foreigner on the administrative practices and social relations in provincial Russia. Within the journey, he had found that his vision of this aspects of society differed dramatically from the reality. Nonetheless, the mission of de Hennin was to create new system of administration and new metal production system based on European norms and patterns.

‘Ivan Semenov’s Journey to Ingermanland and Karelia: National and Confessional Perspectives’

Adrian Selin (Higher School of Economics, St Petersburg)

Russian Czardom during the first years of Peter the Great seemed to be at the low starting point of westernization. The North-Western border of the Czardom close to Sweden was the part of the State most open to that process. The contact zone in the borderland shaped after the Swedish annexation of former Muscovite provinces in 1617 could be characterized as an area with complicated national and confessional situation, especially after church reform in Russia in 1660s. In 1685 a special mission to these former Orthodox provinces was sent by Russian state in order to check the loyalty of local Ingrian and Karelian population to the Russian Church authorities. The report by Muscovite secret agent Ivan Semenov shows the complicated confessional picture in Ingermanland and Karelia after the activities of Superintendant Gezelius the Younger in 1684. During the journey Ivan Semenov found priests – Russian emigrants in Kuivosi parish, in Gory, Koporje District, in seven of fourteen Karelian parishes, where Orthodox churches existed. In the early 1680s, the first Old Believers’ communes were established on Swedish soil, near Narva. In addition, Old Believers’ communities were established in Swedish Kurland and in Ryapinmaa. The local population willingly accepted and adopted their ideas. Numerous priests from Muscovy appeared in Ingria in 1670s-1680s because of their disagreement with the church reform in Russian State. Old Believers and other refugees in late 1680s were often depicted as a conservative social and religious group; in Ingermanland and Karelia the group was also seen as nationally specific. At the same time they, together with other very diffuse population in the Russian-Swedish borderland, shaped a very special social picture. That part of Russian State, well acquainted with Swedish culture (especially material culture), seems to be the most prepared for Petrine Westernization in early 18th century.

‘Escaping Russian Serfdom: Peasant Flight to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1750-1780’

Andrey Gornostaev (Georgetown University)

Living in the age of serfdom, Russian peasants had very few means to improve their way of life. Running away to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was the best way, allowing them to escape permanently their bondage to the tsarist state and serf-owners. Considering the period from 1740 to 1780, my paper, based on extensive archival research, addresses this insufficiently examined issue, tracing various parts of the process of flight, from leaving peasants’ official places of residence and crossing the border to being captured or settling down. It seeks to understand what motivated peasants to run away abroad and why they thought of life in the Commonwealth as more advantageous, despite their having no legal status there. The second part of this paper centers on the analysis of state policies regarding the peasant runaways and aims to reveal not only the domestic complexity and scale of this issue, but also its importance for Russia’s relations with the Commonwealth before the First Partition of 1772. The security of unstable western borders and the impossibility of controlling them efficiently were an ever-increasing concern of both Elizabeth and Catherine the Great, who perceived fugitives as one of the most destabilising elements. In response to depopulation, decline in agriculture, and banditry, the tsarist state sought to return peasant runaways and utilised different means, ranging from severe punishments and investigative expeditions across the border to appeals, backed by promised amnesties, to peasants to return home. These policies varied in the extent of their success, sometimes leading to military raids from abroad and sometimes attracting Russian and even Polish peasants to begin a new life in the Russian Empire.